September 20, 2009

On the morning of September 20, 2009, on the second floor of a small administrative building located in Mitaka-shi, Tokyo, three men, one young, one middle aged, and one old, sat in a triangle and awkwardly shuffled through the pages of three small, black bibles. Skimming through line after line of tiny print, their search continued until all three of them had located the same text: The First Letter of John.

Clearing his throat, the young man offered a sincere, if somewhat stumbling, prayer, asking for blessings and offering thanksgivings for the Christian fellowship that the three of them were about to experience. The stumbling was not the result of being unprepared; the young man had attended church his entire life and had grown used to offering spontaneous prayers in front of large groups of people. No, the stumbling was the symptom of a fever of nerves. Not a fever, mind you, of the body, but a fever of the mind and spirit. The young man was about to lead his first bible study. But it was not any ordinary bible story. It was a bible study done in English led by an American transfer student for two native Japanese men. Needless to say, the thought of misrepresenting the gospel due to a communication breakdown weighed heavy on his mind. However the study went on as the young man looked down at a sheet of paper covered in scribbles written the night before that contained his talking points.

`One of the biggest problems facing modern Christians concerns taking passages from the Bible our of context. Verses that may have been directed to one person or for only one situation can be taken out of context and lead to drastic misinterpretations. Therefore, whenever you read the Bible, it is always important to understand the context in which it was written, such as who the author was, who the audience was, and why it was written in the first place. This is especially important for readers of the New Testament, since the majority of its books are letters or messages sent to individual people, groups, and churches during the early history of the Church. Today we are reading from the First Letter of John.`

From there the young man summarized the history of 1 John. He explained how it was not a letter, but a sermon sent to the Christian churches in Ephesus around 100-110 AD. He explained how it was written for two main reasons:

1) To warn against those who were spreading heterodox teachings such as the belief that Jesus never was a human, but just a spirit, and that he did not die for our sins.

2) To serve as a manual for how to live as Christians, how to identify other Christians, and how to protect oneself from false prophets and teachings.

The middle-aged man and the old man listened respectfully as he carefully laid out his lesson. They turned in their Bibles so they could read along with him, they waited patiently as he lost his place halfway through the lesson and scrambled to recover, and they asked him questions.

The middle-aged man, named Yuji, asked the young man about the concept of love.

`Should we love God the same way we love our families? Is it the same kind of love or a different one?`

The young man blinked, looked at his notes, looked back up, blinked again, and, with the aid of some linguistic gymnastics, tried to explain his view on the subject.

`Yes, and no. The love we feel for God is a fatherly love, but it is also a strong love that we reserve for Him alone.`

He then tried to explain that this was his view and not the official view of the Church. Yuji nodded, sat back in his chair, and crossed his legs. At this point the old man, Todeki, chimed in and said that Japanese and English both only have one word for love, but Greek has three. Each one applies to a different kind of love.

He then stopped talking and looked at the young man. Expecting some kind of a follow-up question, the young man stared at Todeki for about twenty seconds, laughed, and explained that he had no idea which one it was.

Todeki then mentioned how the concept of `love` in a Western sense had only been recently introduced to Japan about two hundred or so years ago. The young man asked what term they used before that. Todeki struggled for a minute and said, `Jihi.`

An avid kanji enthusiast, the young man excitedly asked for him to write it out so he could learn it. What followed was a heart-warming spectacle as Yuji and Todeki leaned over a sheet of paper and argued as to how the kanji was properly written. The debate led to laughter, the laughter to friendship, and the friendship to fellowship.

After the study had ended, the three men lingered for a bit, sipped paper cups of hot (black) coffee, and talked. Todeki pulled out a journal and explained that he is currently reading Victor Hugo`s `Les Miserables.` He talked about how he cried when he first read it in English and how he now spends his days in the library trying to read it in French. Opening the journal he showed how he had written the text down in French and compared it to the English translation. The young man quipped that he had only seen the musical on Broadway. Yuji mentioned how it was actually performed on campus last year.

The conversation continued until 10:30 when they threw the paper cups away, shook each others hands, and walked to church for Sunday services. The young man sighed in relief that he had survived his first lesson. As he walked to church, he wondered if he had done a good job. Happy that it was over, yet anxious for next week`s lesson, the young man settled down into the church pews, stuck a translator in his right ear canal, and joined in with the congregation for the opening lines of `For the Beauty of the Earth.`