Three Mile an Hour God

What if fashion begins to dictate to man what to wear? Would not this produce indecency and wastefulness? What if income is using man instead of man using his income? Does not this often lead man to strains and mental exhaustion? Man must not live even by all these essentials alone. Man needs the bread plus the word of God.

She came out on the other side of ‘protection-from-danger religion’ and ‘happy-ending religion’. She trusted in Jesus Christ. ‘O woman, great is your faith!’ The ending of this story is not a ‘happy-end’. It is a ‘trust-end’.

Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, whether we are currently hit by storm or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.

beautiful. Rich is rich when it makes poor rich. ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8.9). Theological language is ‘transitive’. Our God is a ‘transitive’ God, the God of the covenant-relationship. The strength of the four friends, expressed through the act of helping the paralytic, is a Christianized strength. It is a ‘baptized’ strength. The strength here served the commandment: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ It became ‘neighbourly strength’. It became ‘community strength’.

Only rarely is the church moved. Often it has rejected, ‘thrown cold water upon’ the one who said ‘all these I have observed from my youth’. The cultural values of Asia and the Pacific have not been appreciated. They were, in a package, decided to be against the values for which Jesus Christ stood, though in most cases such judgment has been given in terms of the values found in the Western lifestyle for which Jesus Christ does not necessarily stand. That which was unfamiliar to the church was condemned as anti-Christian. One of the few most critical problems posed to the life in the Christian faith is this lack of appreciation-perspective. I think the basic reason for the lack of the appreciation-perspective in any human situation, including that of the Christian church, is and must be absence of love. One cannot appreciate all kinds of human relationship without having love. Love is an inner energy of man which makes him perceptive to the presence of good and bad in human relationships.

‘None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s’ (Rom. 14.7–8). We are the Lord’s. On this basis we live the life of danger and promise. We do not live and die for ourselves. Our life must not be one of isolation and egocentricity. Our life must be one of sharing.  The affirmed life is new life.  The new life is overwhelmed life.  Overwhelmed life lives with danger and promise.

But time humiliates me. It limits me. I cannot push it. Time pushes me. I say innocently that ‘time flows’. Actually it may be I that am flowing. If, then, I flow, I hope to flow with time and in time. It would be intolerably lonely to be outside of time. Timelessness would be homelessness. I don’t want to be orphaned by time.

after yourself the stronger the grip of time upon you. Thirst after yourself? Yes. All sorts of thirsting after self-importance. I perceive … I may be wrong … in the message of the Buddha subtle suggestions of a relationship between greed and time. Time will be destructively at work upon the hot man of greedy self-importance. But time will be nirvanic (cooling) to those who are free from thirsting after self-importance.

I touch my tree. Am I touching time, as day by day I relate myself once more to this constant physical reality? I want to live a life humbled by time. Touching my tree, day after day, reminds me of time. It

Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.’ Luke 12.15–21 Here is a standard success story of a rich man.

Deprivation made him to say ‘What shall I do?’ In the present parable, saturation is making the man to say ‘What shall I do?’ The two contexts are very different: saturation and deprivation. Yet both are asking the question with regards to the fundamental orientation of life. What shall I do? I have too little. I have too much.

Why does a man become insensitive when he thinks about his own achievement in the temple? The temple stands for a time and place in which man is invited to experience the glory of God, not the glory of man. But it is in the temple we engage in thought of self-glorification. This is the source of the insensitivity of the spiritual man.

When limitation is devalued, civilization tends to become idolatrous. There is some correlation between ‘dislike of limitation’ and idolatry. ‘I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones …’ ‘This night your soul is required of you.’ As I have suggested, this thought first must have come to him from himself. The great harvest made him indeed secure. He was indeed jubilant. But exactly at that moment, he became insecure and apprehensive. How strange. He began to ask a question of the ultimate character: his own death, his complete disappearance from this world, and his complete non-relationship with all he has accumulated.

‘You must answer me,’ God is saying, ‘where you are!’ Where do you stand with the truth that will make you free? … ‘I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones …’ Fine, but do it with the good understanding that ‘this night your soul is required of you’. Then, your development programme will be a meaningful one. It will have profound effect upon you and your community … Otherwise, you are, in spite of all your brilliant performance, a ‘fool’! Fool? Yes, not in the eyes of man, but in the eyes of God.

‘I was dead but now I am alive; I was lost, but now I have been found.’ This was not a monologue. It was a response to the utterance of the father’s acceptance. In this response, to his own amazement, he became a new man. The response, not his prepared speech, was decisive to his resurrection.

The self-love which does not understand the relationship between ‘the soul’ and ‘the bigger barns’ will eventually injure us. The self-love which does not hear the warning of God will eventually destroy us. Self-love that integrates the mind of God is a self-love in the process of being purified. Perhaps here we may begin to love ourselves without injuring ourselves and others.

The word ‘holy’ has an almost esoteric sound in our ‘secular’ environment. I would like to attempt some paragraphs here in which the words ‘holy’ and ‘unholy’ are contrived to appear.

The engine sound and the smell of fumes must stay outside the temple. One must not ride the motorcycle into the courtyard of mosques, churches and wats (Thai Buddhist temples) because these are holy zones. There is incongruity between the technological and the spiritual. Mixing up of the two kinds of powers and two kinds of zones is an affront to the holy.

Export our chimneys to South East Asian countries. To Mindanao. To West Malaysia. Do they welcome them? Yes. Those who will make money will allow importation of pollution. Exporters and importers have made a pollution conspiracy. I find this whole international situation chemically polluted. I find it unholy.

As I watched the operation I sensed an inspiring harmony of medical technology, science, skill and trained mental concentration. Here technology seemed to me to be something more than technology. I felt some mysticism of technology. I sensed there the presence of the holy.

The reason for this must be that the holy is a depth reality and not a surface reality. It is present but it is hidden in depth. It is hidden but it is related and pervading. It comes to us in many forms in the context of our experience of life. It is there … in the depth.

Even the sum of all the attributes and activities of ‘the holy’ is insufficient to exhaust its meaning, for to the one who has experienced its presence there is always a plus, a ‘something more’, which resists formulation or definition.1

When I say the Word of the cross is the word that communicates, I am thinking of things relating to that which is ‘at the foundation of human life’. ‘For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men’ (1 Cor. 1.25) … the communication of God is wiser than that of men even though we do not immediately find so. The communication of God is stronger than that of men in the level of the foundation of our life.

The power that enlivens communication is love. The great love is great communication, and vice versa. This is the secret of the enduring quality of the Christian faith. God is love. God is communicating. Both of these go together even though it is ‘hidden’ from us.

for planning purposes, the image of the totally inhuman and totally malevolent adversary, but this image is reconjured daily, week after week, month after month, year after year, until it takes on every feature of flesh and blood and becomes the daily companion of those who cultivate it, so that any attempt on anyone’s part to deny its reality appears as an act of treason or frivolity. Thus the planner’s dummy of the Soviet political personality took the place of the real thing as the image on which a great deal of American policy, and of American military effort, came to be based.4 If Professor Kennan’s view is correct, it means that this global grip of fear caused by the two superpowers is a result of ‘not thinking well’; ‘… the planner’s dummy of the Soviet political personality took the place of the real thing …’ This situation does not represent a careful thinking. The superpowers have mutually created a totally malevolent image of each other. In support of that image both have engaged to build up an immense military arsenal. The cost of ‘not-thinking-well’ is astronomical. Some 200 billion dollars going to the production of military machines every year. This is immoral. The quality of 0.0125 mm of life is threatened. Our history is crippled. Our integrity is ruined. Perhaps our failure in thinking well comes from our failure to live in purity of heart. Careless thinking and impurity of heart can make a dreadfully destructive combination.

‘Seeing God’ – that is, the realization of the most satisfying peace (shalom) – takes place among us when the dignity of man in his thinking well is combined with the grace of purity in heart.

Technology is increasingly making us outsiders. It covers up all the confusing parts and presents to us only the attractive, simple side – shiny switches. We are prevented from seeing the process. We start the machine, then without doing anything we will have the result. The working part is hidden. Only the result is visible. This is what ‘straightness’ means. Think of the super-express train in Japan. It runs from Tokyo to Osaka (515 kilometres) in 3 hours 10 minutes. We who are passengers do not see the parts of the train where the ‘great work’ is going on. We see only the attractive side. We ride on it in comfort. So it is also with the colour television set. It looks so simple from the outside. The smallest child can operate it. The whole world in its many aspects, beautiful and ugly, enters our living room on its screen. Yet we receive it without effort. Technological life makes us ‘straight-minded’. It can maya us, if we use the Indian expression. Maya comes from mā meaning ‘to frame’. Technology can surround us with an attractive efficient world. But it is a technologically framed world. Maya is often translated as ‘illusion’.

When crisis hits the family, attractive appearances do not help. The truth must come out. Unattractive, inefficient, un-streamlined human truth must be faced. The monk looks happy. The father is doing his religious obligation willingly. The mother is happily married. But there is a poison hidden under these social cosmetics. We want to present an acceptable front to others. Of course, who among us wants other people to see inside of us? Truth (aletheia in Greek) means ‘non-concealment’. ‘It thus indicates a matter or state to the extent that it is seen, indicated or expressed, and that in such seeing, indication or expression it is disclosed, or discloses itself, as it really is, with the implication, of course, that it might be concealed, falsified, truncated, or suppressed.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ We have a secret which we do not want God to know. But God is the one who comes persistently with the question ‘Where are you?’ And being thus asked we realize that we do not and cannot see the whole of ourselves. We are perhaps looking at ourselves ‘technologically’ – ‘superficially’ – ‘efficiently’. When God comes with his question ‘Where are you?’ – we are placed in a crisis. Truth (non-concealment) will attack us.

I try to see the whole of Mexico City and the whole of Bangkok, then, by the power of truth the poison of ignorance will flow out of my head … God’s ‘Where are you?’ destroys our maya about ourselves. I am not implying that we should reject technology. I welcome the washing machine, telephone, automobile and electric blanket. The Xerox machine and the super-express train are useful to me. What I am saying is that a technologically comfortable life may maya us to see ourselves ‘streamlined’ and separate us from the truth (non-concealment) about ourselves.

There is no point in crying out: ‘I see myself. As long as I see myself, I am not lost!’ Precisely then I am lost. Strangely, ‘I see myself’ is a lost condition. I must see myself among others. Personality is not a static condition. Personality is an event. It takes place when there is meeting between myself and others. The porcupine personality is immobilized, imprisoned and fossilized.

Christ was crucified between the thieves. ‘Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.’ This verse is important because it indicates that Jesus Christ did not die alone. Even in this agonizing moment what the thieves did must be reported. They were reviling Jesus. But in doing so, still they kept ‘company’ with Jesus. They were remembered through the centuries with Jesus Christ. They were introduced. They were introduced when Christ was being crucified. The biblical God is the creator of relationship among people. He introduces us at all cost. God respects man. While we take the name of God in vain, he takes our names carefully … What the thieves did was incorporated in the story of salvation. The Bible says that God is love. Love is a far more fundamental concept than that of inhibition. Love is willingness to give oneself. Love must control inhibition.

‘I carried you as an eagle carries her young on her wings.’ This is the fundamental character of the reign of God. The reign of God begins with God’s initiative. God carries us. We do not carry God. No matter how resourceful we are, we are not to ‘carry God’. Genuine resourcefulness comes from the experience of ‘being carried by God’ instead of ‘carrying God’. This, however, is against our liking. We still want to identify resourcefulness with ‘carrying God’. ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny

We are so ‘resourceful’. We do not want to follow him. Jesus is too slow! We want to run before him. In evangelism? Yes. The way of Jesus is too slow, inefficient and painful. Jesus’ resourcefulness is love. Ours is money. We adjust Matthew 16.24 to the high-powered methodology of Madison Avenue. We feel obliged to carry Jesus. He is not as resourceful as we would like. He is not as spectacular as we had hoped. He is not as exciting as we expected. We have to carry him!

To be priest does not mean to be able to manoeuvre or manipulate God. It means to be appreciative of what God has done for man’s salvation. God carries us.

Watching the Russian women I saw Romans 5.3–5. In their wrinkled faces and rough hands I saw trouble that produced endurance. How hard they must have worked all through their lives with those hands. I thought of the hands of the Buddhist image, Bodhisattva, too beautiful as compared with these hands of the Russian women. Merciful hands must show themselves as hard, worn hands, not as beautiful, attractive hands. How eloquent are those rough, tired hands. They speak of severe Russian winters, of cooking meals and washing clothes, floors, cooking pots in poorly heated houses. They fended off despair by working, working on through intolerable situations. Endurance brings God’s approval. In endurance life is taken seriously. Trouble is not cheated or avoided. It is faced.

The old Russian women are ‘theologically’ beautiful. They make me think. They bring me to repentance. They show me the presence of the Holy Spirit in the world. The beauty of the New Zealand air hostesses is direct and immediate. The beauty of the Russian women is hidden. It is to be found only after much living. Why, then, do middle-aged wealthy women from Singapore, Manila and Bangkok fly to Japan to undergo expensive plastic surgery to take away the lines of life from their faces?

The Buddha suggests that we ‘must put forth extra desire, effort, endeavour, exertion, impulse, mindfulness and attention’ to extinguish it. Christ says, ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’. It seems to me that both Buddha and Christ cannot really help those who are ‘neither cold nor hot’.

In the Jodo Buddhism (Pure Land Buddhism) of Japan the Amida Buddha will come at the moment of his devotee’s death and take the soul to the world beyond, the bliss of Pure Land. There is something deeply religious about the bridge symbolism. Strangely, however, the New Testament does not impress us with the symbolism of the bridge. Jesus Christ is not a bridge from this world to that world upon which we safely walk over the danger. The central symbolism of the Christian faith, the cross, does not give us an image of bridge. It gives us, instead, the feeling of confrontation, encounter and conflict. It is the point at which people meet. It is an image of intersection. The main emphasis here is not of a safe passage from damnation to salvation or of connecting this world with that world or of bringing the heaven principle (male) together with the earth principle (female). The cross stands for encounter and conflict and painful solution. It points to the place where we must stop. Why stop? Because it is there that love is expressed. ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch.’ Jesus Christ does not walk over the sorrow on a bridge. He stays on in the tribulation and by staying there he reveals his love to us. The bridge brings a happy ending. Without the ‘bridge’, then, Christianity is not a happy-ending religion. It does not allow us to walk easily from this side to that side. It asks us to ‘remain here and watch’ and deepen our practice and understanding of love.

Promised life then means intersected life. It is not an isolated life. It is a life busily engaged in encounters. It is a life not at home on the museum shelf. It is on-the-street life. Christian faith is the heir to this promised-land life. It hears the Word of God at intersections since the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ, lived a promised-land life, an intersected life, and was crucified upon the intersected cross. He, the Promised One is, as it were, Mr Intersection. Jesus spoke the dialect called Galilean Aramaic and the New Testament was written in the koine Greek.

Young Christianity was challenged when she came into the powerful context of Hellenistic and Egyptian religious cultures. This ‘Mediterranean Encounter’ enriched Christian life and helped to clarify the fundamental nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet it was a time of genuine crisis, the description of which is beyond the scope of this present discussion. What I am bringing home is that perhaps the second critical encounter in the life of Christianity is now going on. It is her encounter with the Asian world, the world of great spiritual and religious heritages. I must be careful here lest I give you the impression

The theological meaning of the shrunken world is that the whole world is taking the shape of the geography of the promised land. Wherever you are today, you cannot but be ‘encounter people’ and ‘intersection people’. We are all now promised land people. The geography of the promised land and the psychology of intensified human relationship go together. The peoples of different living faiths and ideology are encountering each other and living together. It is no longer ‘elite-encounter’. It is becoming massive.

In spite of all sorts of serious problems caused by this massive global reorganization, I think this process of transition from the world of many tribes to the world of one humanity is a blessing of God. How are we to make this process a creative, reconciling and educational one? This is the question posed to us by our shrinking world. Today we are all standing at intersections. This means that we are all interdependent. Asia must learn theology from the West and the West must learn theology from Asia in order to make the life of the world church rich, enlightened and more obedient to the mind of Jesus Christ, the Promised One who died on the cross.

God speaks to us impartially as we live in this shrunken world today. Mankind are all neighbours to each other. We are in close contact with each other whether we like it or not. Even with a genius in Downing Street, Britain cannot solve its problems internally. China seeks United States technical help to modernize herself. Political upheaval in Iran has global repercussions. There are no longer such things as ‘internal problems’. We are living within an increasingly close network of human frustration, aspiration and spirituality. God speaks an impartial word to this small world.

The religion in which Jesus Christ is called ‘Lord, Lord’ is Christianity. But it is very possible that Christians, who call Jesus Christ, ‘Lord, Lord’, do not do ‘the will of my Father’. This observation should not shock us. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, which was written about AD 53 or 54, the apostle spoke about divisions within the church (1 Cor. 1.10–17). Division within the church is not ‘the will of my father’. If we think everything was fine in the primitive church but later degenerated, we are mistaken. Christianity is a historically developed religion

As a religion, Karl Barth says, Christianity with other religions must stand under the judgment of the gospel of Christ. ‘There

Christianity has been busy planning mission strategy – this campaign and that crusade. People have become the object of evangelism since it is understood by Christians that people are ‘automatically’ living in the darkness, untrustworthy, wicked, adulterous and unsaved, while the believers are ‘automatically’ living in the light, trustworthy, good, not lustful, and saved. The ‘teacher complex’ expresses itself in a ‘crusade complex’. What a comfortable arrangement for the believers! What an irresponsible and easy-going theology! Christianity has become a one-way-traffic religion. It is true that Christianity has done much to benefit mankind but it would have done much more if it had not suffered from this teacher complex. Let’s be critical about ourselves.

‘Crusade’ is a self-righteous pharisaic (holy war) military word. It does not belong to the language of the ‘Prince of Peace who died on the cross’. I am hesitant to sing ‘Stand up, stand up …’ because the hymn does not express the centre of the biblical message that ‘in dying he came to us’. It is therefore too cheap and too ‘ugly’ to sing. I hesitate to sing ‘Crown him, crown him …’. I believe there is no need to crown him. He has been crowned already by God. Otherwise, how is the gospel possible? Don’t crusade against Jesus Christ! Evangelism has not made any significant headway in Asia for the last 400 years because Christians crusaded against Asians. When did Christianity become a cheap military campaign? Who made it so? I submit that a good hundred million American dollars, a hundred years of crusading will not make Asia Christian. Christian faith does not and cannot be spread by crusading. It will spread without money, without bishops, without theologians, without plannings, if people see a crucified mind, not a crusading mind, in Christians.

What is this crucified mind? It is the mind of Jesus Christ. It is not a persecution complex. It is not a neurotic mind. It is not a stingy and condemning mind. It is not a paternalistic mind. It is a two-way-traffic mind. It is a mind of self-denial. It is a community-building mind. It is a mind saying, ‘in dying I come to you’. It is a mind obedient to the command, ‘go therefore’. If we have this mind people will see it. People are perceptive. They will ask the secret of this crucified mind. That is evangelism.

Today, in Hiroshima, many young people who were only embryos in their mother’s womb when the bomb fell, show the fatal seeds of leukaemia … Let’s remember that the Hiroshima bomb was a nuclear midget.’ By 1977 the number of nuclear warheads held by the United States and Soviet Union together reached 12,500. The total annihilating power of this supply surpasses that which devastated Hiroshima by 1.3 million times! The post-war Constitution of Japan expresses the self-understanding of the Japanese people, how they destroyed others and destroyed themselves by waging war.

They accepted it because they themselves thought that this article of peace must be in the new constitution. They were convinced of the great importance of this article not only for them but for the whole world. With full awareness of their responsibility and of ‘the high ideals’ expressed, the Japanese people consented to live their new life under this new Peace Constitution. It was promulgated on 3 November 1946 and came into effect on 3 May 1947. So it is not just a group of religious people who speak for total disarmament. One hundred million Japanese people did so in 1946! Article Nine does not refer to partial disarmament. It speaks for total disarmament.

He did indeed say a few words even on the cross. He was not silent. He was sincerely dedicated to communication. Yet … at times he remained silent. Then Pilate said to him, ‘Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?’ But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge; so that the governor wondered greatly. (Matt. 27.13–14) Jesus did not say one word for his own defence. Why did he remain silent? Was he himself not the Word and Communication? If I were there I would feel the same as the governor felt. Matthew 27.13–14 stands in the spiritual tradition of Isaiah 53.7: ‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.’ He did not open his mouth. But he spoke. He spoke not through his mouth. He spoke through his life. He spoke through his total personality, his total commitment, his total spiritual energy and his total love for others. He did not speak by his mouth. He remained silent and ‘the governor wondered greatly’. The verb here used connotes the sense of awe in the presence of the supernatural. He spoke through life – that is the language of love.

The head nurse represents the institution. She enjoys her responsible ‘institutional position’ by rigidly applying to the patients ‘institutionally formulated truth’ about them. ‘The truth will make you free’ (John 8.32). But in this film this ‘institutionally formulated truth’ has not made anyone free. Despair and suffering are the companions of all the people concerned. As important and helpful to us as institutions are, they can impoverish and even destroy our life. In the film, institutionally formulated truth was a parochial truth. It beats around the bushes in sophisticated, logical language but it has not been electrified by the truth which will make man free. Parochial truth destroys man. Truth which is parochial is a sick truth – more than that – it is a poisonous truth.

The temple was demolished by the truth that will make man free. In July 1976 seven New Zealanders who believed in white racial supremacy joined the Rhodesian army. They declared themselves to be racists. Racism is a violent parochialism. It is of demonically narrow scope. That there are races in one human species is a truth. But when this truth is made parochial it becomes racism.

But if we place the name of Jesus with any other name and say that there is really no difference between it and the other names we become syncretic. Bringing our religious customs and orientations to his presence is not syncretic. It is an ecumenical movement. Such

stranger. Are you a Methodist? The Methodist church is familiar to you. You feel at home in it. But the Lutheran church is unfamiliar to you. You may not feel at home in it. Will you, then, just sit down all your life in your familiar corner in comfort? We must move from hostility to hospitality. We must move from the familiar to the unfamiliar. There is no other way today. Only in this movement is there hope for the survival of humankind. ‘You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (Ex. 22.21).

The movement between the unfamiliar and the familiar is called the movement of love. If we just stay in our familiar zones, love becomes weak from lack of exercise. For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law I became as one under the law – though not being myself under the law – that I might win those under the law. To

Niebuhr writes in his preface to Beyond Tragedy: ‘It is the thesis of these pages that the biblical view of life is dialectical because it affirms the meaning of history and of man’s natural existence on the one hand, and on the other insists that the centre, source and fulfilment of history lie beyond history.’17 Niebuhr’s thesis would make no sense to the secularist. To be secularist, however, is not as easy as we may think. We sense, almost unconsciously, that the ‘here’ stands in the shadow of the ‘beyond’. This is suggested by the amazing Deuteronomy passage: ‘man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord’ (8.3). In this passage, ‘here’ (bread) and ‘beyond’ (the word of God) come together to man. They cannot be separated so easily.

The Pharisees are not ‘secular’. They are dedicated ‘religious’ people. But failing to see the presence of the ‘Grace from Beyond’ eating with the people ‘in the world’, they showed themselves to be secularists. They wanted to see a separation, a distance between Jesus and the tax collectors and sinners. This is a hidden ‘secularist’ sentiment.

Egocentric self-denial is sickly. Other-centred self-denial is creative. The huge gong is quiet for the sake of a small butterfly. A mother walks slowly for the sake of her child. God becomes ‘weak’ for the sake of man (1 Cor. 1.25). Through the one who was crucified, God embraces man.

‘Judge not’ does not mean ‘do not take history seriously’. On the contrary, we must take history seriously to the extent that we realize our own blindness. How embarrassing! The Japanese people will misunderstand this passage. They are tempted to think that ‘judge not’ means ‘be easy with history’ – for instance, the history of imperial absolutism, brutal execution of war in Asia and finally the utter destruction of the nation. Rather, ‘Judge not …’ must mean ‘Cultivate your faculty of discernment on what is happening in history. Take history seriously, as serious as you find “the log” in your own eye.’

All these express the messianic excitement. Do we live in this excitement? ‘He sells everything he has, and then goes back and buys that field …’ ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ The father died and must be buried. There is urgency. Jesus says that this urgency must be interpreted in the light of the urgency of the kingdom of God. Important as it is, the burial of the father must

In repentance Japan cannot allow the past to bury the past. It must be buried meaningfully and intelligently. It must be buried in the living engagement with the present.

‘We, the Japanese people, pledge our national honour to accomplish these high ideals and purposes with all resources.’ In this resolution I see the violent past of Japan is brought captive to the mind of God in Jesus Christ.

But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.20 The concept of Moloch and of absolute power go together.

‘The Imperial Way’ (Kōdō) of Japan was a deceptive way. We lived in the disguised Moloch system until the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. In following the Imperial Way, 2,526 young men perished between 25 October 1944 and 15 August 1945 on the suicide plane strategy named after the kamikaze, ‘Divine Wind’, which crashed the Mongolian invading fleets in the thirteenth century. The high-ranking officers who planned this final desperate method manoeuvred to survive the war. The Moloch is deceptive and devouring.

The divine emperor in the Japanese manifestation was irresponsible to the world and to history at this moment. In three major wars Japan fought – against China (1894), against Russia (1904) and against United States, Great Britain and the Netherland (1941) – Japanese military actions occurred before the declaration of war. It seems to me that transcendental imperial divinity does not pay attention to the importance of human communication. The emperor stood outside the context of history. For a human being to stand above history ‘with divine dignity’ is pagan. It is irresponsibility called paganism. Irresponsible holiness is the characteristic of the Moloch holiness. The Moloch is irresponsible yet tries to be ‘holy’. Therefore he must seek human sacrifice. Holiness plus irresponsibility produces destruction.

All who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. Isaiah 44.9 The faith of Israel is against making God visible. A visible God is, in truth, not a God. It is an idol. Thus it stands opposed to one of the most fascinating preoccupations of man – making God visible!

Even to make a crocodile or hornbill visible is quite an exciting enterprise, as we see from the work of the people of Kalimantan, Indonesia. Crocodile we know and hornbill we can see. But to recreate them by carving a piece of wood is to make them doubly visible. A crocodile in the muddy water is naturally visible. Carved and curved in wood it is ‘religiously’ visible. The naturally visible crocodile is not as interesting as a crocodile religiously visible. In the art form it is spiritualized. It has a spiritual message for man. It speaks our human language. It is heavily influenced by man. One may say it is ‘anthropomorphized’. Such a crocodile is without a doubt much more interesting than a natural one. Indeed, many may even worship

The ‘spiritual crocodile’ is controlled by its creator. We might call it a theology of ventriloquism (venter the belly, loqui from locutus, to speak). The crocodile says what the carver wants it to say. This arrangement has high amusement value, because in ventriloquism the master can be carried away by his own enthusiasm. He may say something he might not have otherwise thought of! He may himself be surprised by what he sees in the carved crocodile! Yet, he must know that he himself has ‘spiritualized’ the crocodile.

Man makes idols because he is lonely. ‘When the people saw that Moses had not come down from the mountain but was staying there a long time, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “We do not know what has happened to this man Moses, who led us out of Egypt; so make us a god to lead us”’ (Ex. 32.1, GNB). They are on a journey. Their leader is gone. They feel precarious. They feel lost. Make us a god to lead us. We often make idols because of our loneliness.

Loneliness can be a moment of great spiritual creativity. Man who feels precarious is not lazy. He becomes alert. Yet, a misplaced sense of precariousness produces idolatry. We find quick remedy not in the deepening of self but in enlargement of self.

The true man is visible. Man, invisible, is a dangerous idol. For the first fifteen years of my life I lived in Japan ruled by the invisible emperor.

While he was invisible Japan engaged in the enforced emperor-worship cult. This history has made me suspicious of the invisible man.

‘Secular’ people, we think, do not fear God. ‘Religious’ people fear God. But is it really so? How do we draw the line between secular and religious people? If it is true that only religious people fear God, why do we often see that religious people are more arrogant towards God than secular people? Arrogant? Yes, in trying to domesticate God to suit their own religious taste. Instead of fearing God, they use God to their self-enhancement. ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get’ (Luke 18.11–12). God is adjusted to man’s religious taste. How often God is ‘theologically’ tamed! It often takes theology – what a tragedy – to adjust God to man’s liking.

With due reverence to the emperor, I must repeat what I said before. I believe the emperor needs the redemption by Jesus Christ as long as he is human. The Revd Sugeno feared God. He had a difficult life. He died in prison. When a human is elevated to the divine the storm comes. The majority of the people will not resist the storm. But some dare to resist. They will not ‘do as the king of Egypt commanded them’.

The idea of a holy and jealous God who is very much concerned about social justice is foreign to the Japanese people. According to the Japanese culture, ‘gods’ and man are continuous. And this continuity underlies a spirit of optimism among the people. Though history may judge them, they feel it will continue without much disruption, and will come to a happy end for the Japanese people. Yet it is undeniable that Japan has gone through a period of nightmare and destruction.

Uchimura’s faith was neither rigid, legalistic nor indiscriminately inclusive. In all he proclaimed the name of Jesus Christ. He did so fearlessly and most relevantly for his time. He was a keen observer of what was going on in the society of Japan at that time.

Often I wonder if the secret of this unity comes from his concentration on the message of Jesus Christ and his freedom from the organizational concerns – what he calls ‘church-system’. He firmly believed the simple promise of Jesus: ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.’

On 25 May 1945, I felt as though chronological time had come to a full stop. I felt as though I was swallowed up by an uncanny and meaningless timelessness. I felt so threatened. When Jesus said ‘My time is at hand’, the ordinary chronological time also stopped. It was deeply disturbed. But when chronos stopped, the new time of salvation, instead of a time of meaninglessness, came. Apart from this kairos of Jesus Christ, our busy booked-up life will most likely produce again and again a kind of world which makes every nation to budget enormous sums for military hardware. The Buddha directs our attention to the peace beyond time. Jesus Christ invites us to experience peace in time. The former values timelessness, the latter timefulness. Time is filled when the act of love fills it up. This ‘fullness of time’, this love which makes time meaningful – this opposes the 2.1 trillion yen military budget of Japan.

Even within the family Americans are unique in their feeling that each member should have a separate room, and even a separate telephone, television, and car, when economically possible. We seek more and more privacy, and feel more and more alienated and lonely when we get it.33 Our technological resourcefulness is making our life expensive and lonely. Technology is ambiguous. It can enrich and impoverish our life.

am sure that the 36 billion yen temple is very much visible. ‘Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house’ (Matt. 5.15). A 36 billion yen lamp! In contrast, the delicate movements of our mind are invisible. ‘Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like … But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.’ (Gal. 5.19–23). Our invisible life is simply overwhelmed by the impressive appearance of the visible religion. The 36 billion yen lamp does not illuminate the spiritual problems of man. It will, on the contrary, overshadow them.

Irresponsibility is profanity. Wild pursuit after private wealth and power is profane activity since it is irresponsible. Such irresponsibility produces alienation: ‘We seek more and more privacy, and feel more and more alienated and lonely when we get it.’

His attention is focused on the restoration of the covenant relationship between God and man, and man and man. This relationship is restored by him. He is the Living Temple. His name means: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.’ He is Responsible Life. This is the tradition we received from the apostles. The apostolic tradition is inexpensive in terms of hard cash. It is ‘expensive’ in terms of love and self-giving. Inexpensive yet resourceful apostolic style of life. Both technology and temple must be influenced by this great tradition. Profanity is expensive.

This babe – God incarnate – is the sign against human insensitivity to the need of others. When we do not provide room for others, we worship at the shrine of Baal who is the sign of insensitivity. Once we have got our rooms we forget the needs of those who have no room in the inn. That is self-glorification and self-enlargement. And that is sin.

Weapons are filling up every human space. They come in the order of ABC (Atomic, Biological, Chemical). And the more armed we are, the more threatened we feel. An outcome of our sin is insensitivity to the needs of others. Jesus Christ stands against our insensitivity. He not only stands against it; he also heals us. The sign of swaddling cloths and the manger extends to the events of the cross and resurrection. By loving us to the utmost, Jesus Christ heals us.

This is not cosmos. This is, indeed, Inferno-chaos. To ‘name’ such inhuman condition as ‘necessary for the sake of economic development’ is demonic ‘misnaming’ – mistreatment of the human person. Don’t we have many ‘lucifer match industries’ in South East Asia today? The infamous prison appropriately named the ‘tiger’s cage’ in the South Vietnam of Thieu was an iron bar box of 2.5 metres square and 1.5 metres high. In this iron cage were jammed ten to seventeen prisoners. Their

The man tragically thinks that he can produce cosmos again simply by changing a dhoti and shirt after he has himself engaged in such violent misnaming. He can. But that cosmos would be a false cosmos, far more insidious than an obvious chaos. The sense of the holy in us tells us so. The holy is an inspiration which demands full meaning for ‘I am human’.

Not in the holy city but in the unholy city of Sodom – in the Sodom context! – so the biblical writers show us both the forgiving mind of God and the spiritual stature of the father of many nations (Gen. 17.5). He conducts his negotiation from a position of weakness. In the tradition of biblical teaching this is wise. Abraham decides to walk right into the ‘secular’ problem. Strangely his self-identity as ‘dust and ashes’ provides him spiritual, psychological and intellectual energy to wrestle with the problem of the sinful city.

crisis. As he watched the city of Sodom he sensed that the time of judgment upon it was come. He was fully awake. He was the ‘awakened one’. In the context of the sinful city he became a buddha. In his awareness that he is ‘but dust and ashes’ he stands before the Lord. He has a healthy self-identity in the presence of the Creator. No one can bribe such a man. The man of ‘but dust and ashes’ is not interested in personal gain. No one can threaten him. Such a man is fearless. He is free. He can live for others.

The religious person must be free from the very need of having keys. Key represents attachment. It means self-protection and self-encirclement. It creates a barrier to prevent genuine religious communication with others. Here, Suzuki, in his own way, tells us the secret power of the religious person who is able to see himself as ‘but dust and ashes’. Abraham’s ‘dust and ashes’ self-identity is theological.

I may find it convenient to have ten telephones in my home, but then, again, I may find it simply too many. The convenience of not having to move when the telephone rings may be overcome by the persistent ringing which I could not escape. I should feel that I had planned poorly. If my telephones were to show off my status, I should soon be dissatisfied with their ineffectiveness. And I should feel within myself a touch of irresponsibility in terms of stewardship – a touch of greediness. Saturation culture can be a wild, uncontrolled, undisciplined culture. It can be … and it tends to be. Abundance is different from saturation, though the border between them may be indistinct and too easily crossed. As I see it, man possesses abundance with a disciplined mind and a sense of gratitude. It is a religious approach to plenty. Discipline makes it possible for him to enjoy plenty without becoming a slave to his things. Perhaps there will be two telephones, conveniently placed. Gratitude generates spiritual vitality and creativity.

Man does not and cannot get up and walk in the name of saturation. All kinds of products do not solve human problems. Nor do ‘how to’ pamphlets. The American people know this. The Japanese people know this. American anxiety arises out of the saturation culture. Yet the most idealistic of us must admit that we do need ‘silver and gold’ in order to live a humanly adequate life. Peter said, ‘I have no silver or gold.’ But the Good Samaritan, in the parable of the Lord, was able to pick up the medical bill for his neighbour. Obviously he had the ‘silver and gold’ he needed in order to be of help.

Paul says (Phil. 2.7–8, GNB): ‘of his own free will he gave up all he had, and took the nature of a servant. He became like man and appeared in human likeness. He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the way to death – his death on the cross.’ This is not an ordinary concept of ‘fullness’. Fullness is humility, or humility is fullness. The death – the death on the cross – is ‘fullness of his grace’. ‘In his name, walk!’ Peter says. In the name of this unusual fullness, walk.

But Jeremiah does not place the chariot at the beginning of the Lord’s command. It appears towards the end of the paragraph. First establish social justice. Practise justice and righteousness. ‘If you obey this word, then …’ technology – the chariot, and nature – the horse, will make a peaceful contribution to your community.

BC. Let ‘gentle behaviour, humane laws, limitations on war …’ come first. Then technological civilization will make a meaningful and peaceful contribution to humanity. The order is of critical importance. If we take the ‘chariot’ before ‘justice and righteousness’ technology will sooner or later begin to walk by itself. Humanity will be controlled by technology. Has

Asia has provided us with one of the most beautiful and meaningful symbols of mercy. The Bodhisattva (Kwan-Non in Japanese) are Enlightened Beings in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. They have attained the supreme bliss of salvation for themselves. Yet they turn aside from complete salvation (nirvana). They postpone their personal salvation for the sake of others. They have many hands. Some of them have even one thousand hands, each with an eye. These hands carry all kinds of objects which will be of help to man in need. The Bodhisattva are like well-equipped ambulances, ever ready to come and help. All technological devices are at the command of mercy and concern. Mercy uses technology. Is this not a beautiful image within the Buddhist tradition? It asks us to use our vast technical skills and powers in the service of mankind not in the destruction of mankind.