Books serve many purposes. Manuals provide data, pop novels provide escape, self-help books provide categories to understand one’s self, essays provide opinion and so on. We have looked at several types of books together; this time we are going to turn our attention to fiction. Fiction doesn’t provide as it provokes; good fiction provokes questions. You are left with a fuller orbed understanding of yourself and the world because you have been forced to ask hard questions.
Shusako Endo’s Silence provokes several difficult questions, but in this article we will examine two: 1) what does faithfulness look like? 2) is Christianity a universal religion?
If you have not been able to read Silence, what follows is a summary. If you have not read the book, please read on and perhaps this summary and the questions we discuss will whet your appetite for Endo’s work. While this summary will give away the entire plot, the great thing about good fiction is that it is equally wonderful even if you know the story.
In an effort to curb imperialism, Japan expelled missionaries from her land during the 17th century. The remaining Christians were persecuted in order to stamp out the “Western” religion. This book is a fictional look at this real time period. The story centers around Sebastian Rodrigues and his ministry, capture, and torture in Japan. Rodrigues came to Japan with Francisco Garrpe, a fellow Catholic priest, in order to continue the ministry of the church and, if possible, find their former professor Christovao Ferreira. According to sources in Japan, Ferreira – Rodrigues’s old teacher and a missionary to Japan for 20 years – had denied his faith at the hands of Inoue – the government official now in charge of the persecution of Christians.
Rodrigues and Garrpe arrive in Japan with the help of a lapsed Christian, Kichijiro. They remain hidden in small villages and continue to minister. In time they decide to separate in order to better serve the population. Rodrigues ministers in a few villages before Kichijiro betrays him for money. Rather than torturing Rodrigues, the officials torture Christian peasants in his presence in order to procure a denial of Christ. During the drowning of a trio of Christian peasants in the sea, Rodrigues again sees his old friend Garrpe who dies while attempting to rescue the peasants. Rodrigues is broken by his own unwillingness to either lose his life like Garrpe or to save the lives of these Christians by losing his faith. He prays in anger to God wondering about His silence in the face of such persecution – hence the title of the book.
Rodrigues continues to be interrogated until the dreaded Inoue comes. Rather than the expected fierce barbarian, Inoue is a kind gentlemen who takes pain to show Rodrigues every respect. In time Rodrigues refuses Inoue’s graciousness for fear he may become soft and deny the gospel when under pressure. Inoue sends him to Ferreira, his old teacher. Ferreira seeks to talk Rodrigues into denying his faith. He argues that the peasants are not dying as martyrs; rather, they are dying as Christo-pagans, that is pagans who have a veneer of Christianity. Ferreira argues that the Japanese Christians are really worshipping ancient pagan gods when they worship Christ. He argues that although the gospel seeds spread to Japan, the swamp of culture consumed it and turned it into something else. Hence, Rodrigues is not causing the death of martyrs, he is allowing unbelievers to march straight to hell by his own unwillingness to recant on his faith. Rodrigues also learns that Ferreira has taken a Japanese wife, a clear sign of a denial of his vows as a priest, and what is more it is the wife of a man who was executed so that Ferreira might assume the late man’s life. Since his apostasy, Ferreira has been working on a book in support of the Japanese government’s decisions and a theological work arguing against Christianity in Japan.
Rodrigues is put in solitary confinement to think over his fate and the fate of a group of Christians who will be killed if Rodrigues fails to give up his faith. While in solitary confinement he hears the voice of Kichijiro, the man who betrayed him. Although he despises Kichijiro, Rodrigues can’t help but seeing his own weakness in the man. Ferreira comes to Rodrigues telling him that Christians will be killed unless he gives up his faith. He argues, “certainly Christ would have apostatized for them” (169). Ferreira continues, “now you are going to perform the most painful act of love that has ever been performed… your brethren in the Church will judge you as they have judged me. But there is something more important than the Church, more important than missionary work: what you are now about to do” (170).
Ferreira argues that Rodrigues will be Christ-like in his denial of Christ. He will save others’ lives by giving up what matters most in his life. The priest agrees; he denies his faith. Endo writes, “dawn broke. And in the distance the cock crew” (171). Kichijiro comes to Rodrigues begging for forgiveness for betraying him. Rodrigues hears his confession and offers forgiveness. Endo writes, “the priest had administered that sacrament that only the priest can administer. No doubt his fellow priests would condemn his act as sacrilege; but even if he was betraying them, he was not betraying his Lord. He loved him now in a different way from before. Everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love. Even now I am the last priest in this land. But Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him” (191).
The reader is left to wonder about Rodrigues: was he faithful? This summary does not do the book justice – otherwise there would be no point to writing books, only summaries. In reading the book, we feel torn like Rodrigues – what would we do? Deny Christ to save others? Would it be Christ-like to lay down our faith so that others might live?
Although I will do violence by the book by answering so swiftly, I must. I believe Rodrigues’s actions were not faithful to the gospel’s call. This assessment is in no way meant as a comparison with myself – that is, implying I would have been any more faithful. Such a comparison is so speculative as to be meaningless.
The book sets up a false choice – it asks, ‘what is more important: expressing the love of Christ or expressing love for Christ?’ If you hang on to your Christian profession you are choosing love for Christ. If you save the lives of others through denying Christ you are expressing the love of Christ. Although Endo does a masterful job of telling the story, it is not a proper understanding of what is at stake.
The glory of God is the issue at stake. Attributing glory to God does not add anything to His character – implying we are giving him ‘thank you’ cards which He adds to His massive collection. Rather, giving glory to God is, at its root, truth-telling. We see this in the colloquial Israelite saying, ‘give glory to God,’ or in other words ‘tell the truth’ (see Joshua 7:19, John 9:24). We give God the glory by telling the truth about Him. Rodrigues is called upon to deny the validity of Christ’s claims.
Although the torturers said such a denial was a mere formality and he could love Christ in his heart, his apostasy was meant to be public so others might shun Christ. Despite what he wanted to believe, Rodrigues was not winking at Jesus during his apostasy – as if to say ‘we’re still cool,’ he was saying ‘Christ is a lie.’ The Japanese torturers wanted to pretend that Christ was a private truth – that is to say useful for me but irrelevant to reality outside of my own being. We confess and must confess that Christ is a public truth – that is to say relevant whether you believe it or not. (For more on public and private truths, read Leslie Newbigin Foolishness to the Greeks).
P
Although there is much more to explore regarding Rodrigues’s faithfulness, we must move on to our second and related question – is Christianity a universal religion? By this I mean, ‘can Christianity thrive in diverse cultures?’ Rodrigues’s former teacher, Ferreira, argues that Christianity could not take root in Japan because certain elements of the culture changed the faith beyond recognition. This is why Ferreira believes that Rodrigues’s unwillingness to deny his faith which results in the deaths of “Christians” is sending unbelievers to hell rather than sending martyrs to heaven.
Ferreira raises an important point. On a mission trip to Mexico, I witnessed a pilgrimage of Christo-pagans crawling miles on their knees to plead for forgiveness at the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. They confessed faith in Christ but thought their own self-inflicted wounds would be the grounds of their forgiveness. Clearly the gospel was lost on them. This is not merely a problem with other countries. America is no stranger to doctoring the gospel. Pastor Joel Osteen has transformed the message of the gospel into a pragmatic and psychological affirmation of your hidden potential. Just as a painful pilgrimage appeals to Mexican Christo-pagans so Osteen’s message appeals to American Christo-pagans.
While some would have us believe that the gospel is a liquid that changes shape given the container (read ‘culture’) into which it is poured, the fact remains that the gospel is a culture all its own. American culture screams self-actualization, appeal to experience and experts for authority, and the individual as the source of identity. The gospel demands self-denial, an appeal to God’s Word as authority, and the church as the source of identity. These two values will clash and where they are not the church has been co-opted by the culture. When the gospel encounters Russian culture, Japanese culture, Brazillian culture, and any other culture – including sub-cultures (such as Goth culture) – there will be such a conflict.
If, as Ferreira argues, the Japanese peasants had denied Christ by remaking Him in their own image, this was a cause for further discipleship not an abandonment of the mission just as the American doctoring of the gospel requires continual confrontation. As sinners we will continue to try to remake God in our image – that is the heart of idolatry.
This is not a new struggle. We see Peter wrestling with this same question in his encounter with Cornelius (Acts 10). We see the Jerusalem Council wrestling with this same question regarding the inclusion of Gentiles into the gospel as recorded in Acts 15. As Christians we must continuously wrestle with the relationship between our faith and the world (James 1:27). Although Silence raises this question in a provoking way, it is one the church has been confronting for two thousand years.
As we have seen with Silence, good fiction is able to raise difficult questions in an unexpected and emotionally charged manner. In two months we will look at emotions and the role they play in our spiritual life. The book will be The Cry of the Soul: How our Emotions Reveal our Deepest Questions about God by Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III.