A similar issue of ancestral worship exists here. The eldest son has the role of maintaining the family grave site (where they point the ashes of the family), so there is some of that “double portion” notion that we see in the old testament. (Indeed, the collective blame aspect of OT goes as far as when a Japanese jumps in front of a train, the laws are such that the family is held responsible and a very big fine is imposed on the family.) So a major issue for Japanese is how the Japanese traditions will be addressed if one becomes Christian. Moreover, for family members who refuse to follow Jesus (at least actively confessing Jesus as savior), what is in store for them? Since family often plays a central role to image of self within Asian cultures, it would not be wise to take the Western individualism tack of bluntly saying “they’re going to hell” (not that most missionaries would actually say that).
In China, since a lot of this tradition was demolished by communism (at the very hands of Chinese), perhaps this is why there is less resistance to Christianity in China. Communism is also “foreign”. In some ways, Marx’s humanistic views read something akin to a peculiar Christianity without the Christ. These abstractions don’t exist in Japan.
However, rather than even delving into these dicey matters of family etc, a bigger problem is expressing the Christian faith in a practical sense to Japanese. The language and culture is built around Buddhist and Shinto traditions, So there is a whole language that has to be learned and absorbed in the process of really accepting the Christian faith over their traditions. How Japanese come to understand that is a different journey from our Western traditions. The worst thing about the West is the tendency to think that we just cart in our theological framework, and everyone understands it just as we do. We don’t appreciate the thousands of years of traditions that built that framework and foundation. People in Asian have to discover that framework and foundation largely from scratch.
I guess one of the things that is over emphasized with YEC (in my opinion) is a bit related to “accommodation”, which I read to some extent in Samurai’s comments. We might call it something like learning to see God somewhere in the science, but much like cultural accommodation is often treated as a dirty word within some Christian circles, Samurai’s problems are both cross cultural in the sense of culture and in the sense of science, including YEC. Our own tradition of Christmas is probably an accommodation of the pagan traditions of a winter solstice celebration. It has become some powerful in a reverse way, that Jews basically came up with Hanukkah to help overcome the pressure within their families. So it seems like we should respect a culture’s traditions and let the people of that culture find a satisfying way of their own to express and blend that into their faith. So, for example, Obon in Japan – where the family goes to clean the family grave site, etc – could maybe find some connection with the Festival of Booths (mentioned in Leviticus) or something of the sort.
I don’t quite know it is so easy to work with the ancestral things though. I guess Rebekah brought the household gods with her when Jacob fled Laban. For all Jacob’s scheming to get the blessing and the birthright, it doesn’t seem he got anything other than thorns and thistles, but on his way back from Laban, he remembered the Lord in his furious outburst at Laban and he struggles with God and there in Peniel, reveals his name to God (unlike his earthly father Isaac) and receives the real blessing. But from there, Jacob also sees that he has to clean house. At any rate, it surely wouldn’t hurt for those of us from Western traditions to have a little more understanding of the difficulties Japanese and other deeply developed and ancient cultures of Asia go through in their own faith journeys.
by Grace we proceed