July 29, 2008

• Book Review: Deep River

  I recently finished reading this book, and although it sounds really cool that the Ganges is deep enough for everybody and for God to be present in all religions, I found these ideas very troubling.  The following reviewer sums up the book pretty well, and I my part in the discussion will be in red.  I have my reasons for reading and reviewing this book.  It is not to condemn, only to clarify my thoughts on a personal matter.  I know that this is long, but this book gave me much to think about.

  Deep River by Shusaku Endo  review by Robert A. Jonas

  1996

  Shusaku Endo is a Japanese, Christian novelist. His most famous book, Silence, originally published in 1969, prepares the reader for this book. He continues the core theme of Silence in his Deep River. The Christian God is a God of Mystery who will not be boxed in by familiar doctrinal concepts, nor will God be tied down to the 2,000-year-old revelations of Christian Scripture. In fact, this Christian God is not owned by Christians! Christ is quietly present in the sufferings of our contemporary world, and even within non-Christian cultures such as India.

  Although unfathomable to our minds, the Christian God is not a "God of Mystery."  He delights in revealing Himself, and He tells us all that we need to know about Himself in the Bible.  He IS, and He IS unchanging, and so is His Word.  In terms of eternity, 2000 years is meaningless.  The passage of time does nothing to alter the actuality of truth or historical events.  He will certainly not be boxed in by our finite minds, bound in time and cultural milieu.  Christ may be present with all who suffer and sorrow with them.  Everyone suffers in some form.  This is a part of the fallen world.  Perhaps Christ suffers doubly in such cases, in that the sufferers are victims of the fallenness of the world, and because they refuse to recognize their fallenness and nullify the meaning of His death on the cross, refusing the way that God has made for them to come to Him.
  
  In Deep River, we are introduced to several Japanese characters who are identified as “cases.” One soon realizes that the use of this sociological term is Endo’s open declaration that his novel is about Japanese culture, the social types which arise there, and their continuing struggle to define a particularly Asian-Christian spirituality. And, of course, there are also human archetypes, with whom we can all identify. Isobe is a middle-class manager whose wife, Keiko, dies of cancer. On her deathbed she implores him to look for her in a future incarnation. This surprising instruction finally drives Isobe to the banks of the Ganges in search of his wife in another form.
  
  Endo is not afraid to put before us many of the Western prejudices about the Japanese and also the spiritual failings and stereotypes in the European Christian Church. Through the beloved, universalistic Catholic priest, Otsu, Endo expresses the view that Western Christianity is too rationalistic, compartmentalized and autocratic. He thinks it unfortunate that Westerners do not see the spiritual gifts in chaos, but rather suppress the disorderly and surprisingly creative at every turn. For Endo, the sad and humble priest represents a contemporary Christ-figure. Fr. Otsu is rejected by the Roman Catholic superiors who want to control him. One is reminded of Dostoevski’s “Grand Inquisitor” in The Brothers Karamazov. Otsu’s “heresy” is also Jesus’ heresy—bringing ever-fresh hope, forgiveness, mercy and blessings to the outcasts, especially those of other classes and faiths.

  Perhaps Endo had a problem with Catholicism, which could be viewed as autocratic.  I am of Protestant persuasion, and think that Catholicism has many teachings that are not Biblical, but based on false tradition.  There have also been many historical abuses of religion in Catholicism which Endo might have found disturbing.  But this is another can of worms.

  I did not really see any Western prejudices about the Japanese in this book.  What I am clearly seeing is that everyone is firmly enmeshed in their own cultural milieu that influences the conscience as to the nature of morality.  Some ancient cultures informed the conscience that human sacrifice was right, and others that sex and drunkenness was part of worshipping gods.  Some cultures thought it was all right to combine religion and politics for material gain.  Some cultures think that it is a holy act to blow themselves up and murder as many as possible while doing so.  We must always be careful to be sure that our consciences are properly informed by a universal standard that God reveals in the Bible. 

  God is not a God of chaos, God is a God of order.  If one is disorderly it usually causes problems.  Has anyone ever truthfully heard of beneficial disorder?  If "creativity" takes us across the border of truth into untruth, then this also cannot be called beneficial, but a waste of time at best, damaging at worst.

  Otsu is not Jesus.  He could point to Jesus, who is the source of hope, forgiveness, mercy and blessings.  He can even imitate Jesus in these respects, but he cannot become or present an imitation Jesus.  Otsu's heresy is that he wants only the loving side of God while thinking that he can ignore God's holiness that must punish sin, of which all are guilty.  It is good that he serves the suffering, dying poor, but Otsu also deceives them terribly if he conveys the message that the poor are redeemed through their own suffering, or that anyone is redeemed because of his own acts of kindness.  We receive forgiveness of sin and are imputed righteousness through the acts of Christ on the cross, and nothing else.  There is nothing that we can do to add to Christ's work.  Jesus offers Himself and his presence to everyone in all classes and in all faiths, but we must come the way that He says we must come.  "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No man comes to the Father but by me."

  Had there been another way, I am sure that God would have been creative enough to find something that was easier on Himself. 
  
  Endo also take a straight-on look at the indigenous Japanese spirituality of Buddhism. In Europe and the U.S., the teachings and meditative practices of Buddhism are enjoying an unprecedented growth, especially among young people. But most observers of Japanese culture agree that young people there don’t care at all about spirituality—Shinto, Buddhist or Christian.

  No debate here.  Most people just don't think on this level at all, and do what the culture demands - Pray to Shinto gods for health and wealth, get married in a nice Christian ceremony and be buried according to Buddhism.  These are all merely done out of cultural custom and have no real bearing on any kind of spiritual life.
  
  Endo’s vision of Christian discipleship may never be popular in Japan or in the West. It is a deep and demanding spirituality, calling us to dive beneath the taken-for-granted facades of our personal and religious identities. Endo’s implication, that all the great world religions are entry-points into a loving, servant-God that transcends them all, may never catch on, primarily because people everywhere like to believe that their particular religious dogma and practice is right and that others must be wrong. The Ego-It is always hungry for control, whether in the individual or the institution. Ego-It is terrified of God’s real freedom, and will be merciful only when it is convenient.

  I find the thought of a world where contradictory belief systems are all considered true pretty terrifying.  It would be more logical to say that all are wrong rather than to say that all are right.  All cannot be right.  That is clearly not logical.  What is the definition of "God's real freedom?"  Even God does not allow Himself the freedom to concoct contradictions and confusion.  Yes, the ego is always hungry for control, to the point where it even wants to control God and decide eternal matters on the basis of its own limited, self-centered observation.  Yes, the ego is indeed merciful only when convenient, which is why it needs to be brought under the rein of God.  Perhaps it is rather the idea of submission that terrifies the ego more than any notion of a false freedom.

  All religions may be entry-points for some kind of culturally defined morality, but not into God.  He will not be made in our image.  Culture defines morality to some degree, but morality is not a way to God.  Admitting our immorality is the beginning of the path, no matter what the culture.
  
  By contrast, Endo’s Jesus operates at the margins of his religious institution, and goes directly to the suffering ones within us and among us. He does not waste time, standing aside to judge others for their sins and heresies, as some religious leaders are accustomed to do. Obsessive concerns about others’ sinfulness distract us from knowing that our original nature, God’s blessed, inward image, is God’s own Beloved.

  Jesus did not begin by operating at the margins, he was rejected and pushed out to the margins and finally murdered.  And to think that His mission was only to relieve suffering in this life is to misunderstand it.  He came to deal with much more than mere suffering.  He came to deal with sin and death.  By miraculously dealing with physical suffering he displayed his authority to, as God, forgive sin.  He won this forgiveness of sin by bearing it all Himself on the cross, dying and then rising again, conquering death.

  God does indeed judge sin, and to think that He does not is to misunderstand and ignore His holiness.  But God's love provides a final sacrifice for our sins.  He dies Himself to satisfy His own holiness, and now only his love is directed to us.  If one is humble enough to admit one's sinful state and accept the gift of imputed holiness offered through Christ,  we can then bask in God's eternal love.

  Unfortunately, the religious leaders of Jesus' time were more concerned with maintaining the religions system that they had created for themselves than with God's heart.  In his parable of the Prodigal Son, love and forgiveness is offered to the one who humbles himself and realizes that he needs it.  The Pharisees, represented by the legalistic older son who claimed that he had no need of forgiveness were roundly judged and condemned by Jesus, and urged to repent.  We cannot say that Jesus did not waste time judging for sins or heresies.

  Yes, obsessive concern with the sins of others is distracting.  It distracts us from our own sin if we think we can find someone worse than we are.  We are made in the image of God, but the Bible teaches that this image has been marred by disobedience.  We are not beloved, we are in rebellion, spitting in God's face as we tell him that we are qualified to decided what is right and what is wrong and that we have the freedom to create our own convenient beliefs.  It always soothes our fallen egos to find those worse than ourselves, and we use them to add another layer of pride under the thrones on which we elevate ourselves.
  
  Christians believe that the holy, suffering one of Isaiah 53 which comes and goes throughout the novel is Christ, and it is this particular image of Christ that unifies the whole book, as it unifies the inner life of Otsu.

  I believe that Isaiah 53 refers to Christ's sufferings for our sins when He bore them for us in His body on the cross.  This is about sin, not poverty.  This is not about Otsu's suffering to help the poor, admirable as that may be.  Otsu is a fictional character, so it is difficult to surmise about the motives of a person who never actually existed.  Why did he go to India to help dying people to the Ganges River?  Because he wanted to help the poor?  In a search for truth?  The door is also open here for a debate regarding faith vs. works and a social Gospel, which is also another can of worms.
  
  I hope that many Christians read Deep River. What if, as Endo through Otsu suggests, all beings everywhere are really children of God, even the dirty outcasts? What if all people, of whatever religion, were to practice kindness and love immediately, ignoring their ego’s insistent desire to separate the good from the bad? We must thank Endo for looking into the spiritual mirror for all of us, East and West, and finding that God, like the Ganges, accepts all of him (and us)—the light and the dark, the Brahmin and the outcast, the Buddhist and the Christian, the Hindu and the atheist, the bird and the tree, the creative and the destructive, male and female, life and death. Love and mercy reconcile what the ego and mind divide.
  
  All beings everywhere are sinful and damned to hell by their own choice, regardless of their economic state.  (And is it not the Hindu religion that created the class of outcasts?)  It is not about "practicing kindness and love."  The Bible teaches that all of our acts of "kindness and love" are as filthy menstrual rags if we try to used these to establish a basis for approaching God.  I am not saying that kindness and love are bad, only that we cannot depend on them if we want to approach God, because even good works add to the layers of pride under the thrones of our ego.  We cannot approach God on the basis of what we have done.  We can only approach Him on the basis of what Christ has done.  God accepts all who repent of their sin and come to Him by "the way" that He has provided through Christ.  Christians must take care, however, to remember that as they warn others of the dangers of God's coming judgement and wrath towards sinners that they are only messengers commanded to speakand act in love, and that God and God alone is indeed the final judge.

  Not separate good and bad?  Does this mean that I must enjoy eating doggie doo as much as I enjoy eating chocolate?  Hello?

  In conversation Otsu has about God with a girl who toyed with and jilted him, the girl states that she doesn't want to hear any more about his "Christian God" so Otsu switches to referring to God as an "Onion," and this title continues to the end of the book.  God is the Eternal Creator, King of Kings, and I AM.  Is this an attempt to define God down so He doesn't bother us, or to universalize Him to the point where He will fit neatly into any pot of soup in which we wish to throw Him?

  The Ganges is deep enough to accept anything thrown into it, light and dark, good and bad.  It all looks grey and relativistic to me.   "Silence" which was about Christians undergoing persecution in Nagasaki was disturbing, because it appeared that God did nothing about those who were suffering in His name.  At least they clung to their beliefs.  "Deep River" may be more disturbing to me, because everything is thrown into the river and is washed away, and nothing remains.

  The exclusivistic message of the Bible is truly a disturbling one, but I am not allowed to change it for something that I personally find more palatable.  God does not desire the damnation of anyone, and if anyone is sincerely seeking the truth and asks God for light, it will be generously given.  There is a cost though, that most do not want to pay.  A true seeker must be willing to admit, repent of  and turn from sin, and then allow Christ to take command and set up His Kingdom in the throne of our hearts.

  A further thought:  In this book Endo does not mention salvation through Christ.  He does not even really mention salvation or the afterlife clearly.  He spends more energy on dealing with reincarnation.  I can't believe he is assuming that his Japanese audience knows the Christian plan of salvation.  They clearly do not.  Not only is he not sharing the message of Christ as presented in the Bible, he is encouraging people to accept a seemingly believable universally damning non-truth.  I am rather disappointed in him.

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