Real Men and Christianity

Allen Brill remarked that based on Kim du Toit's essay, "The Pussification of the American Male", Kim didn't understand Christianity because Jesus was certainly not a misogynist. Jeanne at Body and Soul added an amen by noting how those closest to Jesus were women. Yet the radical right wants a muscular Christainity, one that smits its enemies in order to identify and associate with strength and not weakness. Reading these thoughtful posts by Allen and Jeanne reminded me of an incredibly moving book by Shusaku Endo that discussed Christianity from an early seventeenth century Japanese perspective.

Japan is a country that has a very patriarchial society. It is a society where strong men are honored and respected and one's place in the society is set by the class and gender in which one is born. Endo, Japan's only writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an ardent Catholic, wrote much on why Christianity has not been more successful in Japan. The Samurai is an incredibly compelling story about the first Japanese, four samurais, who were selected to meet with the pope and thus were the first Japanese to visit Europe.

Endo wrote that Christianity was a tremendously hard sell to the patriarchial Japanese because they could not understand how a criminal (Jesus was excecuted by the state) could have any honor or status. They were unable to see the crucifixion as anything more than a sign of great weakness, and as such, one with which no one would willing associate themselves. Just as the target of a bully in school is avoided, in the seventeen century, the Christian in Japan was shunned and despised. The Samurai in Endo's book becomes a Christian during his journey and had to navigate the distrust of not only his peers, but also the racism and arrogance of the Europeans who believed they were better than the alien traveler. In the journey from Japan, across Mexico and to Europe and back, the Samurai discovers a side of Christianity that was connected to the outsider. The Samurai discovered his real strength in his faith and acceptance of Jesus' love. Endo believed the soft side of Christianity was its real face and this was what attracted him.

Why is Christianity virtually the only Western practice that has failed to take root in Japan? Endo traces its failure to misunderstandings, especially regarding the Western concept of the Fatherhood of God. Therapist Erich Fromm says that a child from a balanced family receives two kinds of love. Mother love tends to be unconditional, accepting the child no matter what, regardless of behavior. Father love tends to be more provisional, bestowing approval as the child meets certain standards of behavior. Ideally, says Fromm, a child should receive and internalize both kinds of love.

According to Endo, Japan, a nation of authoritarian fathers, has understood the father love of God but not the mother love. An old Japanese saying lists the four most awful things on earth as "fires, earthquakes, thunderbolts, and fathers." For Christianity to have any appeal to the Japanese, Endo concludes, it must stress instead the mother love of God, the love that forgives wrongs and binds wounds and draws, rather than forces, others to itself. ("O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!")

"In 'maternal religion' Christ comes to prostitutes, worthless people, misshapen people and forgives them," says Endo. "God is not a punishing God, but a God who asks that children be forgiven." As he sees it, Jesus brought the message of mother love to balance the father love of the Old Testament. A mother's love will not desert even those who commit crimes; it forgives any weakness, even apostasy.

The Jesus that Endo loved and honored was not the hard, muscular savior, but the one who identified with the weak, the outcast and the rejected, the Jesus who espoused genuine love (agape).

The battle between the warrior culture vs a "feminized" culture is one that humans have had throughout the ages. Yet humans societies do better when the warriors are not in charge and when the society values empathy and acceptance.

Posted by Mary at November 9, 2003 12:48 PM | TrackBack