A Japanese theologian’s perspective on suffering

“You mock my pain!” the princess berates the man in black.

“Life is pain, Highness,” the man in black offers, his gloved hands folded behind his head. “Anyone who says differently is selling something.”¹

So goes one iconic interaction from The Princess Bride, a movie close to so many of our hearts. And yet we often dismiss the early musings of our jaded antihero who quickly turns his gaze from existential suffering to true love. I submit that most of us do the same. Victory, optimism, and celebration are prominent in this beloved film and are also hallmarks of Western culture; we love a winner! Losing, pessimism, and grief, on the other hand, make for glum companions. For Western missionaries, evangelism often rides along the same cheerful highways; Christ’s suffering makes an early appearance, but with glorious victory on the horizon, we say in the spirit of Prince Humperdink from The Princess Bride, “Skip to the end!”

Meanwhile, in Japan, instead of The Princess Bride, the hearts of the people are touched by the forty-seven ronin.² In perhaps the most Japanese of stories, an honored samurai is goaded by an upstart bureaucrat into committing a capital offense. The samurai is killed, and his subordinates are scattered and fall into lives of vagrancy and dishonor. After a year, all seems forgotten. But when their return is least expected, we find that their demise was a ruse! The forty-seven masterless swordsmen returned to avenge the insult done to their leader, killing his antagonist and being allowed an honorable death by ritual suicide. The story never fails to produce tears.

When I look at the tale of the forty-seven ronin next to The Princess Bride, the amount of time spent on suffering compared to hope is astounding. The Western hero laughs in the face of a shameful defeat while the Japanese heroes embrace their shamed existence. Perhaps this is why Western missionaries find Kazoh Kitamori’s Theology of the Pain of God so unpalatable. Perhaps it is also why many Japanese find Western theology to be the same. While Kitamori’s book is certainly dense, I would suggest that there is much in it for Western thinkers to gain as we seek to convey the beauty of the gospel to the Japanese people and broaden our own understanding of an infinitely beautiful God.

What is the “pain” of God?

What is salvation? Kitamori writes, “Salvation is the message that our God enfolds our broken reality. A God who embraces us completely—this is God our Savior. Is there a more astonishing miracle in the world than that God embraces our broken reality?”³ The pain of God is God embracing our broken reality. Just as a person who grasps a handful of razor-sharp seashells can’t do so without causing injury to themselves, so God takes our pain upon himself when he enfolds our broken reality. “It is obvious that a God who does not embrace is a God without pain.”⁴ For Kitamori, the love of God collides with the wrath of God, producing the pain of God, which is most visible at Calvary. God’s love for sinners, for that which must not be loved, causes God to take on his own wrath on the loved sinner’s behalf. The concept is a lot like penal substitutionary atonement but less lawyerly.

Three orders of love

In chapter 10 of his book, following Augustine and Pascal, Kitamori systematizes the love of God using ordo amoris, orders of love. For Kitamori there are three: the love of God, the pain of God, and love rooted in the pain of God. The first order, the love of God, is God’s love for the deserving, or at least for those who are not disqualified. This is most easily seen in intra-trinitarian love between the Father and the Son and the Spirit. It also describes the love of God for humanity before the arrival of sin in the world. It is right and good for a loving God to love that which has not lost God’s favor.

The second order, the pain of God, is the result of God’s response to human rebellion: “Love betrayed can only turn to anger. When love is confronted with duplicity, it becomes angry and rejects its object.”⁵ By all accounts, it would have been right and good for God to destroy those that betrayed his love. But “God did not repulse those who should be repulsed; he enfolded and embraced them. God appears to become spineless!”⁶ Here is where Kitamori’s contribution to a Japanese understanding of honor and shame really shines through. In forgiving those that shouldn’t be forgiven, God himself accepts shame.

To the devout older son, the father who joyfully welcomed back his prodigal son must have seemed spineless (Luke 15:28). Thus God suffered pain in his forgiveness. ‘Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart is troubled for him’ (Jer. 31:20). This pain appeared in the shame of the cross which God accepted in the person of his Son.⁷

Thus, the pain of God is the result of the collision of the wrath of God against sinners and the love of God for sinners. In Christ’s death, our pain is healed by the pain of God.

Kitamori classifies the third order as love rooted in the pain of God. As the first order of love, immediate love, is only proper for sinless parties, a mediator is necessary for disqualified parties, or sinners, to receive God’s love. The mediator is Jesus, achieved through his death on the cross. This mediation is the pain of God, which paved the way for sinners to be loved by God once again and become beneficiaries of love rooted in the pain of God.

The cross of the Lord is a sheltering rock from the tempest, a hiding-place in the desert. When we are within the pain of God, we are protected. How does this happen? What actually smites and destroys us is the wrath of God. But the ‘pain of God’ results from the love of the one who intercepts and blocks his wrath toward us, the one who is himself smitten by his wrath.⁸

Simply put, this third order, which qualifies sinners for God’s love is possible because of the pain God accepted on our behalf. God’s love drives him towards us, which causes him pain.

Honor and shame in Kitamori’s theology

There are two prominent blessings within the framework of the honor–shame gospel presentation: status reversal and group incorporation. Within Kitamori’s book, we see these elements but with a Japanese flair. In status reversal, a redeemed person’s shame is removed, and they are given honor by their new position in Christ. While these concepts are true in their mooring to God’s perspective, Kitamori takes a much more practical and immediate approach to honor and shame. He makes multiple references to the book of Hosea as it clearly illustrates the shame of a rejected and cheated-upon spouse. Hosea marries a sex worker and raises multiple children born of infidelity. It’s rare for someone to name their child Hosea because, honestly, nobody looks at him as a role model. But Kitamori indirectly points out that we should. In a remarkable twist to the typical honor–shame paradigm, Kitamori shows that we achieve group incorporation by shouldering shame as Christ did. When Christians forgive those who sin against us, we love that which must not be loved (e.g., God loving sinners and Hosea loving his wayward wife). This identifies us with Christ, and we achieve group incorporation; we do what Christians do because it is what Christ does. Our group incorporation is achieved by accepting shame as God does. According to Kitamori, in this way, our pain is healed by the pain of God.

I have called Kitamori’s approach practical and immediate because, rather than focusing on an eschatological hope of glory, Kitamori gives readers a tangible way to identify with Christ in the midst of the sufferings of everyday life. We can bear the shame of being wronged and forgive as we have been forgiven. While Western theologians are tempted to skip to the end and talk about glory and perfection, Kitamori positively savors the hard road of the Christian in this world that mirrors the hard road that Jesus walked. The road is difficult, but the group association with a God that loves that which must not be loved and forgives that which cannot be forgiven by embracing our broken reality and healing our pain with his pain is a refrain that speaks to the Japanese sentiment and, upon proper reflection, to mine as well.

1. The Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner (1924; Beverly Hills, California: MGM, 1987), DVD.
2. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-seven_rōnin
3. Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God, 5th ed. (Eugene:Wipf and Stock, 2005), 20.
4. Ibid, 23.
5. Ibid, 118.
6. Ibid, 119.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid, 123.