The One has become Two, and the Two have become One

Different cultures think about the concept of TIME in different ways. In general, Chinese people have a past-orientation when it comes to time. For them, all the great achievements of the world occurred in their history. Also broadly speaking, Mexican people view the world with a present-orientation. This means that more than the past or the future, events that are occurring RIGHT NOW hold the most meaning for them. There are other cultures, such as that of North Americans, who live in the world with a view of time that focuses on the future. We are always looking forward to something, or making plans for some event that has yet to happen. We find it difficult to enjoy the present, and we're constantly told NOT to live in the past. "Time" is a fascinating subject (to me, anyway).
As time passes, it invariably carries CHANGE in its luggage. Allow me to unpack two of those big changes in my life.

The first change is that "the one has become two." My first year as a graduate student studying MISSIONS has come to a close, and I am now beginning my second year. It's hard to believe. This first year in the program has been fantastically challenging and formative. I find myself full of hope as this year begins. My classes are: 1) Theology of Mission, 2) Growth Strategies for Established Churches, and 3) Field Education. In addition, Erica and I will again join the Japanese student Bible study group that meets every Wednesday.

The second, and most exciting change, is that "the two have become one." Erica and I were married this past December 27th in the Prayer Chapel at York College! It was a perfect day, surrounded by family and close friends. Joel Osborne performed our ceremony, which, if I may say, was absolutely beautiful. We hope to make pictures available for people to look at as soon as possible. We want to solicit your prayers as we begin this journey together. We know that it is because of our God, families, friends, and faith community that we have made it this far, and hope that all of you will continue to pray for our marriage even as we are praying for yours.

Finally, know that we are continuing to pray about returning to Japan. Our vision for mission work in Japan is continually shaped and refined as we keep praying and studying. And this is how it should be. Incarnational and cruciform living is far from easy, but it will always be worth the effort. And it is always TIME for us to submit to God and to CHANGE. In this new year, I hope we will all commit to that, together.

Blessings,
Ben

Japanese Students Take Abilene!

Students from Japan's Ibaraki Christian High School descended upon the Abilene Christian University campus this last month in order to practice English and learn American culture.

During the day, the 23 students took classes on subjects such as English conversation, American culture and word processing, as well as received conversation tutoring and attended a daily Chapel service. My job was to organize these chapels from 11:30-11:55 each weekday. These 16 and 17 year-old students describe their experiences of chapel at school as, "boring," and "make me sleepy," so I wanted to engineer chapel in a way that would be interesting and relevant to them. We had several engaging speakers who came, and we had some great conversations about the nature of God, Jesus, the Bible, as well as our own identity. Almost every chapel was crafted around a memorable activity.


Their evening and weekend activities included swimming, movies, miniature golf, the Abilene Zoo, and cook-outs at the park.

High school students from Ibaraki Christian High School, located in Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan, have been coming to ACU each July for eight years. This year's batch of students are back in Japan now, but I hope to see them the next time Erica and I make the trek across the sea!

Persecuted as Christians (History cont.)

"The exact motives for the persecution of the Christians are a little difficult to fathom. In part, the position of the Jesuits had been weakened by the arrival of the Franciscans and Dominicans from Manila, and by the manifest lack of unity among the missionaries themselves, still more by the arrival of the 'red heads', the Dutch and British, who lost no opportunity of carrying forward in Japan the feuds which divided their nations in Europe. The most remarkable of the British, Will Adams, who arrived in 1600, lived for many years in Japan and was employed by the shogun as the builder of his fleet. The Jesuits roundly blamed the Spanish Franciscans for the violent reaction against Christianity, and there is reason to think that the rash talk of the latter did suggest to the sensitive Japanese that they were there as forerunners of an army of conquest, and that Christian infiltration would be followed by political occupation. But, when all is said and done, Christians were persecuted because they were Christians and had introduced into Japan a law which turned the world upside down." (136-7)

Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

Share Nicely

We should all share. That's why I've added a new section to my blog called, "Ben's Shared Items." This section (found in the right hand column) is dedicated to the sharing of interesting articles especially related to Japan. You may see a few in there unrelated to Japan, but those will be rare. So avail yourselves of this nifty way to stay up-to-date on the happenings of our friends in the Far East. どうぞ、お読みください！

Some Background on Japanese Missions (Part III)

Xavier stayed some twenty-seven months in Japan. He left behind him three little groups of converts; how much they understood of the Gospel is questionable - they probably imagined themselves to have accepted a new and superior kind of Buddhism. The great thing, however, was that a beginning had been made and the way had been shown. A French scholar, Claude Maitre, has summed up in the following terms what Xavier had achieved:

With remarkable penetration he had grasped the social and political situation in Japan, and had settled on the methods which could ensure success. He had realized that it was both impossible and useless to gain access to the emperor or to the Shogun (Mayor of the Palace); and that on the other hand conversions among the lower classes would never be able to produce a great movement towards the Faith. The only way to secure permanent results was to win over the local rulers with their almost complete independence - this is what the daimyos were at that time - nothing, therefore, must be neglected with might help to win their favour, their confidence, and if possible, their conversion. He had understood that, if this proud, intelligent, logical people, with its passion for disputation, was ever to be won, it would be necessary to send missionaries of the highest quality, flexible enough to adapt themselves to the customs of the country to the limit of what was permitted by their faith, but strong enough in character to fashion their conduct according to the most rigid requirements of the faith which they taught.

Until 1593 the evangelization of Japan was entirely in the hands of the Jesuits. The number of missionaries increased rapidly, and their work was crowned with notable success. The first converts had been from among the poorer classes. In 1563 began the conversion of the daimyos; the first to receive baptism was Omura Sumitada, who remained faithful and active to the end of this life. His example was rapidly followed by others, and in many cases the conversion of the daimyo was followed by that of the majority of his subjects. This did not always take place immediately; in 1571 Sumitada had only 5,600 Christian subjects, but then the mass movement set in , and by 1575 the whole population of the region - amounting in all to more than 50,000 - had become Christian. Of the depth and sincerity of these conversions it is hard to judge. As in the case of other mass movements there were no doubt many weaknesses and shadows, but unquestionably there was in Japan an elite of convinced and devoted Christians.

Daimyo: feudal lords of the provinces, and generals of the Samurai class

In 1579 Japan was visited by Alessandro Valignono (1539-1606), and Italian Jesuit who had been appointed Visitor of all the eastern regions. He left his impress on the Japan mission in three remarkable ways.

He held very strongly the view that in all possible ways, especially in external matters, missionaries ad Christians must adapt themselves to local customs and prejudice. The then Superior of the Mission, Francis Cabral, did not see eye to eye with the Visitor on every point; the crucial issue - one that may seem utterly trivial to the Western reader, unfamiliar with the importance that may attach to such details in an Eastern country - related to the dress of the missionary: should this be of cotton or of silk? Cabral held that cotton was more in accordance with evangelical poverty; Valignano decided in favour of silk, and there can be little doubt that in the circumstances of the time he was right, since a missionary dressed in cotton was inevitably associated in local opinion with the poorer classes and denied access to the wealthy and the influential.

Secondly, Valignano decided that the time had come when selected Japanese should see for themselves the glories of the Christian world of which they had heard from the missionaries. Four young men of noble family in Kyushu were selected to make the hazardous journey to Europe, and set out in 1582 under the care of Valignano and of a Jesuit Father who travelled with them as their tutor. It was not until the year 1590 that they returned to Japan. In the course of their travels they were received by King Philip of Span and by Pope Gregory XIII; such an unusual group of travellers attracted great attention throughout the Christian world.

In the third place Valignano held the view that the time had come for Japanese to be admitted to the priesthood. IN this, needless to say, he was opposed by the redoubtable Cabral. The Japanese, affirmed Cabral, are naturally proud; if they are put on the same level as the Europeans through admission to the priesthood, they will be swept away with intolerable arrogance. But Valignano had his way. A seminary was opened; the statistics for the year 1593 show that in that year fifty-six European priests and eleven lay brothers were active in the mission, and that the seminary had eighty-seven students together with five novices. Most of those who had attached themselves to the Jesuit Order served as dojuku, catechists of a higher order; only those were admitted to this rank who had taken the vow of celibacy and had pledged themselves to serve the mission till the end of their lives. In 1601 there were no less than 250 dojuku, but none had yet been ordained to the priesthood, for the simple reason that there was no bishop in Japan. A Jesuit had been appointed Bishop of Funai in 1587, but had died on the way. His successor, Pedro Martinez, arrived in Nagasaki on 14 August 1596, but found the mission in such confusion, through rivalries between between the Portuguese and the Spaniards who had recently come in from Manila, that he decided to return to Rome and seek guidance, and died on the voyage. Fortunately he had been provided with a suffragan bishop, Luiz de Cerquira, and it was he who on 22 September 1601 carried out the first ordination of Japanese priests. One was a secular; two were Jesuits - Sebastian Chimura, and Aloysius Niabara from Nagasaki; of these the former died as a martyr on 10 September 1622.

Tokugawa Ieyasu

For in the meantime a complete change had taken place in the political situation of Japan, and also in the situation of the Christian Church, which by the end of the century was reckoned to have 300,000 baptized believers. The chaos of the period of the daimyos was about to pass away. By about 1590 the first of the new centralizing rulers, Hideyoshi, had managed to subject the whole of Japan to his control, and was thus the first ruler for 500 years to bring the country once again to unity. He was followed after the brief reign of his son Hiyadori, by Ieyasu (1542-1616) and Iemitsu (1603-51), under whom persecution of the Christians reached such a level of ferocity that the flourishing work of half a century was demolished and the Christian problem solved by the death or apostasy of almost all the believers." (134-6)

Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

Some Background on Japanese Missions (Part II)

"The missionaries suffered severely from the cold -- they had no idea in advance what a Japanese winter could be like. They had difficulty in getting enough to eat. They wrestled with the daunting difficulties of language:

Now we are like so many strange statues amongst them, for they speak and talk to us about many things, whilst we, not understanding the language, hold our peace. And now we have to be as little children learning the language.


They gradually became aware of the imperfections of Yajiro's translations, in particular of the harm wrought by his choice of the wholly inappropriate Buddhist term Dainichi to represent 'God' -- a difficulty the missionaries then dodged by simply introducing Portuguese terms into Japanese to represent the Christian ideas. And yet friendship and understanding did develop, and in spite of all disappointments Xavier never lost his feelings of respect for the Japanese. In a letter of 5 November 1549 he writes:

Firstly the people whom we have met so far are the best who have as yet been discovered, and it seems to me that we shall never find among heathens another race to equal the Japanese. They are a people of very good manners, good in general, and not malicious; they are men of honour to a marvel, and prize honour above all else in the world.... They are a people of very good will, very sociable and very desirous of knowledge; they are very fond of hearing about the things of God, chiefly when they understand them.... They like to hear things propounded according to reason; and, granted that there are sins and vices among them, when one reasons with them, pointing out that what they do is evil, they are convinced by this reasoning.

These early contacts with the Japanese produced a change in Xavier's understanding of the nature of Christian missionary work which was to be of the greatest significance for the whole future of the enterprise. In earlier years he had been inclined to accept uncritically the doctrine of the tabula rasa -- the view that in non-Christian life and systems there is nothing on which the missionary can build, and that everything must simply be levelled to the ground before anything Christian can be built up. This was the general view of the Spanish missionaries in Latin America and the West Indies; in his dealings with the simple and illiterate fishers in South India, Xavier had seen no reason to modify it. But now that he was confronted by a civilization with so many elements of nobility in it, he saw that, while the Gospel must transform and refine and recreate, it need not necessarily reject as worthless everything that has come before. This new idea was to be fruitful in results -- and also in controversies." (132-3)

Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

Some Background on Japanese Missions (Part I)

"Basque Francis Xavier (1506-52) was to become the most famous of all Roman Catholic missionaries. To a passionate but disciplined nature, profound devotion, and an eager longing for the salvation of souls, Xavier added the wide outlook of the statesman and the capacity of the strategist for organization on a large scale.

Xavier, whose commission from king and Pope extended to the whole of the East, spent some months in this region (Malacca) in 1546 and 1547. But his eager mind was already ranging onwards, and was filled with thoughts of Japan.

Japan had for some centuries been unknown to the West only through the somewhat imaginative eyes of Marco Polo, who had never been there:

Chipangu is and Island towards the east in the high seas, 1,500 miles distant from the continent; and a very great Island it is. The people are white, civilized, and well-favoured. They are Idolaters and are dependent on nobody. And I can tell you the quantity of gold they have is endless.... Moreover all the pavement of the Palace, and the floors of its chambers, are entirely of gold, in plates like slabs of stone, a good two fingers thick; and the windows also are of gold, so that altogether the richness of this Palace is past all bounds and belief.

It seems that the first contact in historical times was made by a group of Portuguese mariners, who in 1542 were driven far out of their course by a storm and found themselves on the shores of the unknown land.

A certain Anjiro (Yajiro), who had killed a man in Japan, had escaped from justice and by devious ways had made his way to Goa (India). There Xavier met him in 1548, and learned from him something of the was of his country:

I asked him whether, if I went back with him to his country, the Japanese would become Christians, and he said that they would not do so, until they had first asked me many questions and seen how I answered and how much I knew. Above all they would want to observe if I lived in conformity with what I said and believed. If I did those two things, answered the questions to their satisfaction and so demeaned myself that they could find anything to blame in my conduct, then, after knowing me for six months, the king, the nobility, and all other people of discretion would become Christians, for the Japanese, he said, are entirely guided by the law of reason.

It is not surprising that the soul of Xavier became inflamed by the desire to preach the Gospel to this superior people. It was with high hopes that at last, on 15 August 1549, after many perils passed, he landed - together with two Jesuits and Yajiro and his Japanese attendants - at the port of Kagoshima, Yajiro's native town.

Mt. Kaimon-dake, Kagoshima, southern Japan

Yajiro proved indeed to be a broken reed: he had very little knowledge of his own country; he was not a highly educated man; his efforts at the translation of Christian terms into Japanese was to lead the missionaries into errors, which they were later to sorely rue, and his character was far from being altogether admirable. But the moment of the arrival of the missionaries was on the whole propitious. Japan was passing through a period of grave political disorder; there was no central authority, and the land was divided up among 250 daimyos, local rulers, each of whom claimed full authority in his own dominions. The country was open to the foreigner. The Japanese were eager for trade, and were especially interested in guns, which, once acquired, they set to work to copy in their own arsenals, with the remarkable Japanese capacity for imitation. Buddhism was in discredit; there was no strongly established form of national religion to resist the preaching of the Gospel, and there was genuine openness to new ideas." (127, 131-2)

Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

The Wednesday Night Gang

Wednesday night is a gathering of Japanese friends (and some white people, too). We studied a little bit about the covenants of the Old Testament recently, and acted the stories out. It was a lot of fun and interesting to see the tremendous acting skills of the people in our group!

A Cornucopia If You Will

CORNUCOPIA

Etymology: Late Latin, from Latin cornu copiae horn of plenty.

1 : a curved goat's horn overflowing with fruit and ears of grain that is used as a decorative motif emblematic of abundance

2 : an inexhaustible store : ABUNDANCE

The word cornucopia resounds with color and meaning. I love the images of fruits and grains, shapes and textures, abundance and variety. The Giver of Good Gifts has abudantly blessed me with laughter and rich life experiences. Why don't you go ahead and take a look at a few of the blessings that have spilled out of my cornucopia recently?

HIJIRI GIDEON STRAKER

Jon and Michiko's beautiful baby, Hijiri, is one of the most wonderful blessings in our lives! We were able to celebrate his first birthday this past January up in Hokkaido. When Hijiri got his first bite of cake (first bite of sugar!) he was forever ruined for the ordinary!

Crawling around!! This cute little tyke can take about five steps on his own now.

Talking to friends on the cell phone. He's actually called me a couple of times!

Hanging out with the monkeys at Yagiyama zoo.

OXYMORON?

"How funny is that?!" I said to Joel on the way to our neighborhood
7-11.

"What?"

I pointed to a guy in white clothes meandering down the sidewalk. "That doctor. See? He's smoking! Is that an oxymoron or what? A smoking doctor. Ha!"

Joel didn't miss a beat. "Yeah, that is funny. I guess it's kind of like a sinning missionary!"

FRESH TOWELLS
Erica's family came for two weeks in November and boy did we have a blast! Not only are Jay, Melanie, Cami and Nathan just really great, but it was so cool to see Japan and the mission here through their fresh perspectives. We did so much stuff together I can't remember it all ... but, I do remember that we laughed A LOT and enjoyed some really special moments together. And I guess that's the key word, together. They love being together with one another, and together with others. I'm glad I could be together with them.

It's a family thing: if there's not enough room on the chair, they sit on each other!

Erica, Cami & Melanie - The ladies in blue, surrounded by green, in Matsushima.

Jay loved this. He's pretty much taller than any doorway and constantly had to be avoiding "mishaps." We took several of these types of pictures ... here's one at our front door.

Saying goodbye at the airport. It's so hard to say goodbye, yet they look so happy!

INTERNATIONAL CHRISTMAS

No one could say it wasn't unique. Trying figuring that sentence out if you're not a native English speaker. And several of our Christmas guests weren't. They were Swedish, Chinese, Thai, and Japanese. (We also had Canadians and United Statesians.) 12 people. Hours of food, fun, and fellowship. Presents galore and hearts full of thanks.

Rumiko (Japan), Hijiri (Japan and N.America) and Gae (Thailand). It's Christmas morning!

Above: Bjorn the Bear. Also known as "Our Swedish Friend." Some say he's my twin.
Next Picture: Shi (China) and Erica (US). Sisters in Christ sitting in the sun.

Dan (US) and Joel (Canada) neighbors geographically and neighbors on the couch.

I think that this could be a Christmas card, Michiko (Japan), the Xmas tree, stocking and cell.

Jon (Canada/US) is about to find out what he got for Christmas ... it's ... ski goggles!

And here we have our other Canadian friend and fellow missionary, Judith.

WRAPPING IT UP
Well folks, that's about all I can pull out of the horn of plenty for now. There's definitely more. So I'm going to ask you to stand by while I go eat some delicious lasagna! It's eatin time!