Freedom from shame before the dead
“They could not bear the shame of letting down the ancestors by discontinuing their Buddhist memorial services”
After fifteen minutes of chatting over coffee, Yukiko1 dropped her gaze and scratched the back of her head in embarrassment. I sat silently, waiting to hear why she had asked to meet. After a minute, she said, “Um . . . since I’m getting baptized soon . . . do you think . . . well, maybe I don’t need to keep sending monthly payments to the temple for my child’s memorial services (mizuko kuyō)? I mean, I know it’s strange for a Christian to send money to a Buddhist temple. But . . . for my child . . . I’m not sure what I should do.”
As we talked, Yukiko’s story came out bit by bit. Years earlier, she’d had a brief love affair and gotten pregnant. Her boyfriend had pressured her to get an abortion, and she’d given in. But she was ashamed and wanted to “do something for the child.” So she’d consulted with a Buddhist monk and decided to pay for a small stone jizō statue dedicated to the child and for monthly memorial prayers. Now, as a Christian, she knew those things were useless, but she was unsure what to do.
Together, we brought the situation before the Lord in prayer, giving thanks for the forgiveness we have in Christ and prayerfully entrusting her child to him. Yukiko rejoiced in God’s love and the hope of meeting her child in heaven.
Yukiko may have felt guilt, but her dominant feelings were of shame. She thought she was a bad person because she shirked her duty to raise her child. She was worried what I and others would think of her, but, most of all, she was worried how her child would judge her. These feelings are typical for honor–shame cultures like Japan.
The deep root of shame in Japanese culture
The roots of this focus on shame likely lie in Confucianism, but it is most visible in Buddhism. The website of the Midwest Buddhist Temple (True Pure Land) in Chicago, US, provides the following explanation:
Guilt is not really found in Buddhism. Buddhism teaches us to take responsibility for our thoughts, words and actions. If we make our decisions with the best of our abilities, then as long as we also take responsibility for those decisions, then there is no guilt.
Culturally, many Buddhists and especially Japanese Buddhists live in a society that is strongly biased by shame. One does not do things that bring shame to the family or to the village or to the group. Shame can function much like guilt, but one should know the difference.2
Given the above, and Buddhism’s influence on Japanese culture, it is not surprising that Japanese tend to express their negative feelings in terms of shame rather than guilt. Nor is it surprising that Japanese find gospel presentations that focus on sin and our guilt before God difficult to relate to. These realities challenge us to reframe our message of God’s love in terms Japanese can more readily understand. The cultures of the Bible understood shame, and Scripture provides abundant support for such efforts (e.g., Is. 54:4, 61:7; Rom. 5:5, 9:33, 10:11).
Rituals of remembrance
On one occasion, I visited Isshin-ji (One Heart Temple) in Osaka, which is famous for its eight okotsu butsu—Amida Buddha statues made from the bones and ashes of about two million people.3 While there, I observed the daily memorial service (eitai-kuyō). The smells, bells, chanting, and the ritual movements of the monks blended to create an atmosphere of sadness and solemnity. People were wiping away tears as they remembered departed loved ones. Later, I talked with a few people in the temple graveyard and heard their stories. Stories about lost spouses, parents, and siblings—stories occasionally tinged with shame over how they had treated a family member years ago or for their failure to visit a grave more often.
Yukiko’s story, the stories of the people in the graveyard, and the daily eitai-kuyō ritual of remembrance share a common thread. It’s the Japanese sense of continuing bonds with the departed and their concern for how the living and the dead might judge their failure in fulfilling their obligations through the rituals of remembrance. To many Japanese, the dead are not really gone. Rather, they are an integral part of the community whose needs and feelings should be respected. Because of this, a common and formidable obstacle to the gospel is the desire to avoid being shamed for failure to conduct the ancestor rituals. On multiple occasions, Japanese have told me they could not become Christians because their obligations to maintain ancestor rituals outweighed their personal beliefs. Many Japanese feel they are doing right—and therefore are being good people—by maintaining the rituals for the dead.
Reducing the distance in our worldviews
The doctrine of the communion of saints, especially as envisioned in Hebrews 12, has much in common with Japanese thinking. Indeed, the Roman Catholic church’s expression of this doctrine through memorial masses bears considerable resemblance to Isshin-ji’s eitai-kuyō. Also, some of the ideas of Bishop John Zizioulas, an influential Greek Orthodox prelate, are striking in their resemblance to Japanese thought. In his lecture entitled “The Doctrine of God,” Zizioulas wrote, “The person is the identity born of a relationship and exists only in communion with other persons.”4
Many of us might rightly hesitate to adopt ideas from the Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox traditions, but the doctrine of the communion of saints is also found in the Apostles’ Creed and is well worth careful consideration.
I think we would do well to develop our own expressions of this doctrine as bridges between Western and Japanese thinking. When we speak of the dead in Christ as living people with whom we will enjoy fellowship in heaven, we reduce the distance between worldviews and offer membership in a vibrant and vast family of faith.
To the extent allowed by our theological convictions, we might also want to be as generous as possible in our comments about who might be in heaven. For example, I never say any individual is in hell—only God has the authority to declare a person’s eternal fate. We do not need to slide down the slippery slope of universalist teaching to allow that God’s grace may extend to many who have not made a clear, public confession of faith in Christ. A few quotes suffice to show that this is well-trodden theological ground:
C. S. Lewis: “We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.”5
Dale Moody (Southern Baptist theologian): “It is possible to say that this general revelation of God has only a negative function that leaves man without excuse, as I understand Emil Brunner to say. But what kind of God is he who gives man enough knowledge to damn him but not enough to save him? The perception of God in creation has both negative and positive possibilities.”6
William Lane Craig (apologist): “God will judge the unreached on the basis of their response to His self-revelation in nature and conscience . . . Now this does not mean that they can be saved apart from Christ. Rather it means that the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice can be applied to them without their conscious knowledge of Christ.”7
I know Japanese who considered and ultimately rejected Christianity because they could not bear the shame of letting down their ancestors by discontinuing their Buddhist memorial services. None of them suddenly became Christians when I shared with them the possibility that some of those ancestors might be in heaven fervently hoping that they would choose faith in Christ. But I sometimes felt that they were taken aback by this idea and that it might grow in their hearts with time.
Perhaps the words of the prophet Hosea are even deeper than we imagine. “In the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God’” (Rom. 9:26, cf. Hos.1:10).
1. Name changed to protect privacy.
2. See: https://mbtchicago.org/buddhism-say-guilt/ (accessed May 25, 2022).
3. See: https://www.isshinji.or.jp/nokotsu.php (accessed May 30, 2022).
4. John D. Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of God,” in Lectures in Christian Dogmatics (New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 57.
5. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 65.
6. Dale Moody, The Word of Truth: A Summary of Christian Doctrine Based on Biblical Revelation (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1990), 59.
7. “Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?” (Reasonable Faith, 1994), https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/can-a-loving-god-send-people-to-hell-the-craig-bradley-debate (accessed May 30, 2022).