Missionary Myth-Busting

Now that our special meetings and pastors' fellowship is over and our visitor is gone, I can continue with this thread.

I'd like to bust the myth that Buddhists are spiritual. First of all, here is a dictionary defiinition of "spiritual": "Of, relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material." (Excerpted from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company.)

Now by this definition, not only are Japanese Buddhists not spiritual, but very few Buddhists anywhere are spiritual. Buddhism in theory is spiritual, but it is not in practice, especially in Japan. In particular, people seem to think that Zen (Chan in Chinese) Buddhism is spiritual. But that's not so. It's all about the outward appearance (as are most things in Japan).

If you were to go live at a Zen temple in Japan and learn zazen (Zen meditation), first of all you would have to arise very early. Then you would have to meditate for hours in the zarei position, even before breakfast. A priest would walk around behind you with a bamboo sword, ready to swat you if you dozed, yawned, looked around, etc. It would be incredibly strict physical discipline, not spiritual. They wouldn't care what you meditated about, as long as you meditated! I read one account of a businessman who meditated on how to succeed in his business!

My wife taught English in Yokohama to a couple of ladies who befriended an American who came over to learn Zen. It wasn't at all what he thought, and he got all stressed out and had a nervous breakdown!

Another story: I have only been told the traditional "Yankee go home" once in Japan, but it's not what you think. We had a tall hill behind our house in Yokohama, and one day I went for a hike over the mountain and to the small lake. On the way I met a friendly Japanese man, then later I saw him fishing at the lake and we sat down together for a chat. As it turned out he was a JAL pilot and the son of a Buddhist priest.

When he found out we had a son, he told me, "Go back to America. You don't want to raise your son here." When I asked why, he told me the story of an old woman everyone in the neighborhood looked down on. However, as fate would have it, she came into a considerable fortune, and was suddenly rich. Whereupon, she was the pride of the neighborhood all of a sudden! So the priest's son said to me, "Take your son home and raise him in America. The people in this country wants nothing but money and fame." This man, being a priest's son, knew that almost no one in Japan practices true, spiritual (though completely wrong) Buddhism.

 

Glad to hear you're reading and thinking!

Yes, the way Buddhism is presented by its adherents and the way it is actually practiced can be quite different, depending on the society and the particular sect. Here in Japan, Buddhists priests are not respected at all by the general populace. They are considered to be money-grubbers. For just one example, think of them charging $5000 (in yen of course) for a kaimyo, a special Buddhist name for the afterlife for your deceased loved one!

Last year we had a Buddhist priest come to church once. He had run away from his responsibilities in his father's temple. He was sick of the hypocrisy. Unfortunately he went back, but he heard the Gospel and got a New Testament, which I later heard he was reading.

 

Another myth about the mission fields of the world is that Muslims are too difficult to reach for Christ. This is not true at all, though they are difficult to reach. As the title of a book I'm reading about a missionary to Algeria says, Too Hard For God? Of course the only answer possible is, No! And in the book the missionary tells of some wonderful things God did among the Muslims.

I once took a trip to a Muslim land (86%) and saw an amazing ministry. I can't tell you much about my trip, lest I endanger believers, but I will say that I saw 46 baptized who had finished the baptismal course, including two Muslims! And they have a three month Bible correspondence course which rarely has less than 1500 Hindus and Muslims taking it at a time! Too hard for God? No way!! :jesus:

 

There is a very ignorant myth out there that Christian countries start wars but Buddhists don't. Some years back I actually heard this from a Christian young man! The truth is that there have been many wars started by Buddhists. Just think for starters of the violence that has recently been going on in Thailand, a strict Buddhist country where a devout young man is required to spend a year as a Buddhist priest.

Some would say that Japanese Buddhists did not start WW2 with Pearl Harbor, but "state Shintoists" did. The truth is more complicated, though. The average Japanese considers himself both Buddhist and Shintoist. Thinking of it that way, who slaughtered 200,000 Chinese civilian men, women and children at the "rape of Nanking" in WW2? Buddhists! Who perpetrated th "Bataan Death March?" Buddhists! Who conquered and oppressed the Koreans so much that they were no longer even allowed their own religion, customs or language? Buddhists!

Consider the history of various Buddhists countries. In Japanese history, Buddhists priests were often known to take up arms, as when Buddhism was newly arrived in Japan in about the 7th-10th centuries, and there were many armed conflicts between Shintoists and Buddhists.

Then there are the famous Shaolin Temples of China. There were historically at least two, one in Honan and one in Fukien. Both were famous (still are) for their martial arts. In particular, the Fukien one was well known for harboring fugitive rebels against the central government, and was said to have been burned down more than once in retaliation.

In the 1950s and well into the 1960s the Tibetans fought for their independence against the Chinese. During that struggle, many a Tibetan Buddhist priest took up arms also. This is documented in a scholarly book about the conflice, The Secret War in Tibet. by Michael Peissel: "Alongside the nomads and brigands, the monks also joined in the rebellion. Many of these red-robed priests had been among the first to unearth their arms, weapons put away from the times of bloody Chao and General Lin, or kept since the not-too-distant days when the monasteries had fought among themselves. In those sanctuaries without weapons it was to the sacred chapels that the monks went to take the long swords and pointed daggers from the hands of masked divinities" (p. 69).

So much for the myth of spiritual Tibetan Buddhism. The Tibetans have always been violent people (for good or bad reasons). And don't get me started on the Dalai Lama, who is nothing more than a politician with platitudes.

 

"Brother John," I presume you mean?

Thanks for the encouragement. In truth, we do miss the homeland sometimes. But when we go on furlough we miss Japan. Can't find good ramen in America! But all in all, we miss Heaven most, where our true citizenship is, amen? :godisgood:

 

If you add some butter, Chinese veggies, and corn or peas to that supermarket ramen it's edible. Otherwise, it's nowhere near good Japanese ramen!

Our home church is Murfreesboro TN. So we might get in your area next furlough, who knows. God bless!