Why Are the Japanese So Slow in Understanding the Gospel?
A lonely lost Japanese woman who needs Jesus
The question in the title of this article is something I wondered about since I first came to Japan in 1972. I was serving in the US Air Force then and was interested in sharing my faith in Jesus Christ with the Japanese when I would meet them outside the military base. I heard from long-time American missionaries in Japan that Japan is known as, “the missionaries graveyard”, meaning most missionaries see very few converts to Christ in spite of years of preaching the Gospel.
In the Philippines, it’s a different story. Filipinos with their Catholic background understand the Gospel quickly. Churches have multiplied in the Philippines.
In October of 1973, I met a group of Christians who invited me to work with them to share the Gospel of Christ with the Japanese. I accepted their offer and became a full-time missionary in February 1974 when I was honorably discharged from my 4-year contract of military service. I continued to live in Japan for 38 more years. Throughout that time, I saw many souls come to Christ and lives changed into active service for the Lord, but the vast majority of the nation had not changed in spite of the millions of Gospel tracts I and other missionaries distributed on the street.
Only yesterday, May 9th, 2022, I heard something that cast light on why the Japanese are resistant to the Gospel. It was from an interview with Bhumibol Adulyadej who was the King of Thailand from June 9, 1946 to October 13, 2016, the date of his death in his 80s. In the interview, Bhumibol appeared to be yet in his 30s. Thailand is a Buddhist nation, perhaps even more so than Japan, and the King of Thailand is of course a practicing Buddhist. The interviewer asked the King about the concept of sin as understood among the three Abrahamic religions of Judism, Christianity, and Islam. The King replied, “in Buddhism there is no sin. There is only a striving towards purity.”
This is confirmed by a quote on https://classroom.synonym.com/buddhist-belief-of-sin-12085556.html
Buddhism follows a different conceptual framework from the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As a result, many of the ideas and definitions found in Buddhism differ from those found in other religions. The monotheistic idea of sin found in the Abrahamic religions is a foreign concept to the Buddhist belief system.
It then dawned on me why there is no specific word for “sin” in the Japanese language! Language is always a reflection of the culture. Japanese are slow to understand their need for salvation because their language lacks a specific word for sin! And without understanding all men are sinners, there is no need for a Savior from sin.
The Gospel is summarized in 1 Corinthians 15:3.
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
How can anyone understand why Christ would die for our sins if they don’t know what “sin” is? Buddhists say there is no sin! This in my opinion is the crux of the problem: Buddhist culture that influenced the language has robbed the people of a key concept of the Gospel!
I now understand why one of my friends doesn’t believe mankind is flawed or sinful. Though his mother is a Catholic, his wife is a Buddhist! I’m sure she influenced his thinking.
In the Japanese translation of the Bible, the word for sin is translated as tsumi. It seems contradictory for me to say there is no specific word meaning sin in Japanese and yet there is a word translated for sin in the Japanese Bible. Let me elaborate.
Here’s how the Japanese word for sin in the Bible looks in the ideograph.
Tsumi
But this word doesn’t have the nuance of breaking God’s moral laws. It’s actually the same meaning as the word for crime in English. Don’t believe me? Check this out:
This is the Chinese-Japanese character for the word to be / is:
Aru or yuu
The two characters in combination:
Yuuzai
Yuuzai is what a Japanese judge says when he convicts a suspect of a crime. It means guilty! Yuuzai literally says, “there is crime”. The Japanese language is so easy to understand when you know the Chinese ideographs that depict the words. There is no Japanese person, not even an academic scholar who would disagree with my explanation of the word yuuzai. The meaning is crystal clear to any Japanese person raised in Japan.
The Japanese Bible nevertheless uses the word tsumi and also translates the word for sinners as “tsumibito” which literally means “a person who sins.” But the word also has the meaning of “criminal”. To call a law-abiding Japanese person a criminal is, of course, offensive!
Once I tried to pray the “sinners prayer” of salvation with a man to lead him to receive Christ. I asked him to repeat the prayer after me but he stopped when I got to the part, “Lord, please forgive all my sins.” He then said, “Wait! I’m not a sinner!” What he really meant by that is to say he’s not a criminal but a law-abiding citizen. I learned a lesson not to ask a person to pray that prayer with me unless they understood what they were praying about. From then I defined what I meant by sin to all the Japanese people I shared the Gospel with.
When a Japanese takes time to read and study the Bible, the meaning of sin as breaking God’s moral law becomes clear. I once met a man who came to a true saving knowledge of Jesus Christ by reading the Book of Matthew from a Bible at his bedside in the hospital when he was sick for a month. And all Japanese Christians including Roman Catholics understand the biblical meaning of sin. But there are so few of them that they have no impact on the Japanese culture.
So what did I do? I had to start with Genesis 1:1 to explain the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Japanese. I had to explain that God is the creator of the universe and all life. I had to explain the account of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. I had to explain the biblical definition of sin as breaking God’s moral law. I told them that God’s laws and man’s law agree on many points such as the crimes of murder, stealing, and lying under oath, but God’s laws are stricter and deeper and call hatred, and any type of lie a sin. And if that is so we are all guilty of sin. And then I had to explain the concept of animal sacrifice and the blood of sheep and goats as a cleansing of sins and that Jesus’ death on the Cross is the ultimate sacrifice and His blood which was shed is the final cleansing of our sins.
Do you see what preachers of the Gospel in Japan are up against? It’s teaching concepts that are totally foreign to their culture.
Japanese who live in other countries are much more open to the Gospel. Many get saved. I know twin sisters one of whom when to Canada and lived with a Christian family who brought her to church. She received the Gospel and Jesus as her savior but after she returned to Japan she admitted that sin is still a nebulous concept for her. She was still young in the Lord and probably hadn’t read or done much personal study of the Bible.
You might ask, “Well, what about the Koreans? Wasn’t Korea also a Buddhist nation before Christian missionaries came?” That’s an excellent question and one I cannot answer for sure. The same can be said for China as well. Why Christianity took hold in those nations faster than in Japan is still a mystery to me. One reason may be because Japan was isolated from the rest of the world for 200 years. People from other countries were not permitted to enter Japan.
By the way, if you are a foreigner living in Japan, you don’t want to offend the police. They will consider you guilty even if you are innocent of a crime. There is a word for “suspect” in Japanese but it seems to mean nothing to law enforcement. People are guilty till proven innocent. Once I got stopped by a policewoman for hitchhiking. She told me it was illegal to hitchhike in Japan. I knew she was dead wrong but I also knew better not to argue with her. I told that story to an off-duty cop who picked me up hitchhiking, and he smiled. He knew if I argued with her she would arrest me and make my life miserable for the next 48 hours! That’s how long they can hold you without charging you with a crime.
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