More Acts of the Apostles

 

There were12 apostles but only Phillip and Peter, James and John are somewhat covered in the Acts of the Apostles.  Paul gets most of the story from Acts 8 on.  Phillip converts a lot of people in Samaria, then an Ethopian Eunuch.  The church in Jerusalem gets organized in previous chapters and then in Acts 10 Peter converts a family of Greco-Romans.  But there are huge gaps of time.  In Galations, Paul tells about how there was a 17-year period from the time he saw the light and his first missionary journey. His trusted doctor, Luke records his journeys.  What were the other disciples doing?

            They were traveling.  Few or no written records were left behind.  Yet substantial Christian communities seemed to spring up.  However, there are 3 travels in which we have true historic records from royal scribes who dutifully recorded events—Armenia, Ethiopia and Kerala.

Jude Thaddeus and Nathaniel Bartholomew (full names. Gospels often use only first or last names in narrative) struck off north and made it to the country of Edessa where they healed the king of leprosy.  The story goes that the king had sent a messenger to Jesus during his ministry and begged the Healer from Galilee to come stay with him but Jesus replied negatively, sending the messenger back with a message that after his death he would send someone to heal the king.  When this exactly happened the king converted and so did his family.  Jude and Nathaniel may have been brothers(scholars disagree). Edessa had connections to Armenia where they went next. They witnessed to the king and reportedly converted 60,000 people in a decade. But another Armenian king arose and killed  Jude who was flayed (skinned alive).  Later, another evangelist, Gregory converted King Tiridates III.  By 301, the Armenian nation, isolated in western modern Turkey and the Caucasus mountains, became the first country with a Christian majority.

  Matthew Levi, perhaps the son of a priest who had rebelled and colluded with Romans and became a tax collector wrote the most Jewish of the gospels.  It is speculated that he was rather impulsive, perhaps joining the Romans first and then Jesus suddenly.  Matthew had a somewhat tarnished reputation having been a tax-collector.  After writing his gospel, he headed south to Ethiopia where he found the eunuch Phillip had baptized. The Eunuch had spread the news among this nation which was partially Jewish (from Solomon’s era), part pagan. Matthew healed the king’s son and the family became believers.  But when the king died, the king’s brother disliked Christianity and lusted after one of the king’s daughters who had pledged herself to virginity in order to learn the faith.  He battled Matthew and had him killed by an assassin.  Then he pressured the girl into being his wife and queen.  When she refused, he set the compound where she lived on fire but a powerful wind drove the flames to the palace and nearly killed the king. When he died the son who had been healed from near death became king and Ethiopia gradually became Christian under royal encouragement.

Records of Armenia and Ethiopia are somewhat sketchy but not the amazing story of Thomas  “the twin” Didymus from Kerala, India. He was, as in the Gospel of John, reluctant to go anywhere and always seems a bit of a skeptic.  According to an apochrophyl book, he had a dream where Jesus told him to go to India and announce as an architect (which was perhaps his trade).  He arrived in Kerala province (SW India, south of Mumbai) in 52 AD, a firm date by royal records.  The prince was elated and wanted a palace built with Roman detailing.  He hired Thomas as a westerner to build it, then left for 2 years.  Thereupon,Thomas did a weird thing.  He took the money he was supposed to spend on the building and gave it away to the poor.  The prince came back, horrified and betrayed that he had no palace. Thomas told him it is in heaven The furious prince, was about to have Thomas executed. but suddenly the prince’s brother died.  At the funeral, just at the instant the pyre was to be lit to burn the body, the brother miraculously came back to life.  And he told the prince he has been to heaven and seen angels. In heaven is a palace that Thomas built for him and he must release the disciple at once.  The stunned prince converted when Thomas shared the gospel.   Thomas healed and preached then headed east to the Bay of Bengal coast.  He converted the wife of a raja who thereupon refused him sex until he converted also.  The raja had Thomas flayed and so he too died as a martyr.

Other stories of the apostles are just word of mouth and recorded later, thus are easy for scholars to pass off with skepticism. But these 3 incidents, all improbable by modern standards, were dutifully recorded by official palace scribes. And what is impossible to argue is that these 3 widely scattered nations had Christian believers from very early on—an astonishing occurance. Next week, His Story will consider the stories from other places which claim an apostle visited them.

Fukushima and Covid19

 USA has 9/11, Japan has 3/11.  3/11/11 was the date of the Fukushima earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that has had some earthquake political implications for Japan.  1606 people died from the disasters but another 2317 died from a chaotic evacuation amidst lack of public health, medical care and suicides.  A sizable area of Honshu Island was evacuated, not just for days but several years.  Now it is ten years later and people are refusing to return.  Formerly the government was trusted and now there is nationwide great distrust. And this could be a similar outcome if the COVID lockdowns continue in USA. 

            The Fukushima area has been rebuilt with roads, railways, and many tons of decontaminated soil. But the long limbo for residents has taken a toll on their spirits.  Families were separated, livelihoods lost.  And the government which had quickly signed onto the Paris Climate Agreement intended to use nuclear energy to meet the goals.  54 nuke plants pre-Fukushima produced 25% of the country’s energy.  Today only 6 plants have re-opened and they produce 6%.  What has gone up?  Coal.  In areas that have received an all-clear for return, only 25% have, mostly elderly. Rebuilding a community is far more difficult than repaving the roads.  We in OK have found this to be the case with Kaw City when Kaw Dam displaced the residents.

            The last elevated-isotope result agriculturally was 6 years ago in almost all areas of the disaster, though a few lands and a small town next to the plant are advisory not to return yet. Power companies nationwide have poured billions into new seawalls, filter systems, hardened emergency generators and other safety assurances.  Why aren’t the other plants allowed to reopen?  Voter sentiment.  Government trust has gone from 61% to 24%.  Japanese used to trust their leaders but have now frozen the nuclear means to which those leaders wanted to become carbon neutral. Azby Brown of Safecast, an NGO in Tokyo observes, “Trust is not a renewable resource.  Once you lose it, that’s it.” Now Gov is advancing renewables, i.e. wind and wave energy to become 60% of usage (solar doesn’t work in a country with 80” of rain a year).  Experience shows these are capable of topping off supplies but hardly of the majority of power.

            Could a similar politics happen in USA in the aftermath of COVID?  First lesson from Fukushima is that keeping people away from their homes was a disaster.  Some say Japan should have only kept restrictions and people from their homes for a month or so.  It was too much disruption with many businesses closed forever.  Will the restaurants come back strong in NYC and the hospital in Slippery Rock?  What if studies show post-mortem that masks didn’t work that well, lockdowns for healthy people only killed lifestyles, that vast numbers of people were treated for depression (as per Fukushima), and statistics were much in error by the fault of people in government who had an agenda?  Trust will fall and particularly trust in government officials.

Sakoku

 

Sakoku was the Japanese policy of shutting out foreign influence beginning in 1636.  The Tokugawa shogun (Emperors were divine figureheads; Shoguns were warriors who ran the government.) grew fearful of Christianity and was intent on control of all foreign trade.  Portuguese and Spanish traders arrived in the mid 1500s and brought Jesuit missionaries and began missions in the southern island of Kyushu.  But Shinto religion controls all Japanese life. The Nipponese became alarmed when these traders tied their faith to their commerce.  Protestant English and Dutch traders reinforced this perception by accusing the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries of spreading religion systematically, as part of a  policy of cultural domination. Worse, the empress had heard of their roughshod treatment of natives in the Americas and feared Japan might be in for the same.  The Dutch and English were generally seen by the Japanese to be able to somewhat  separate religion and trade. The Dutch, eager to take over the business, had no problems reinforcing this view. The direct trigger which is said to have spurred the imposition of sakoku was the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–38, an uprising of 40,000 mostly Christian peasants. In the aftermath, the shogunate accused missionaries of instigating the rebellion and expelled them from the country. They strictly banned Christianity on penalty of death. The remaining Christians, mostly in Nagasaki, formed underground communities and came to be called Kakure Kirishitan.

            But there were other reasons for the closure.  Rivals of the shogun had used trade to enhance their power.  Much of this trade and cultural exchange took place in the generation prior to 1636.   Political fears resulted in closing down trade to selected ports for China (Nagasaki) and Korea (Ryukyu islands).  All contact with the outside world became strictly regulated by the shogunate, or by the domains (Tsushima, Matsumae, and Satsuma) assigned to the task. That meant strict tax control too.  Dutch traders were permitted to continue commerce only by agreeing not to engage in missionary activities. So how did the Japanese keep abreast of European developments in weapons and the like?  They learned Dutch and studied Dutch books which became a lively enterprise. 

            220 years of isolation were ended when Admiral Perry and his “black boats” sailed into Tokyo harbor, 1853, and set down treaty demands on the Japanese government. Among these was the safe return without fear of life of 17 Japanese seamen who were shipwrecked in international waters and rescued by Americans.  USA had experiences with this.  Years prior, a Japanese errant sailor, Sam Patch, had begged not to be sent back to Japan because death awaited any who traveled abroad.  Sam got to stay in America.  How did USA get involved in Japanese trade and why did they want the country open?  American ships had slyly sailed under the Dutch flag into Nagasaki to do trade, found good markets and wanted to make deals.

             Today, the Christian percentage of the population (1%) in Japan remains far lower than in other East Asian countries such as China (5%), Vietnam (7%), South Korea (29%) and the Philippines (over 90%). Yet out of that minority, one of the most influential Christian novelists arose. Shusaku Endo grew up Christian and bullied by other Japanese kids before the Second World War.  After the war he became a foreign exchange student who was persecuted in France for his race. Out of this experience, he began to identify with Jesus whose life was one of rejection too. For Jesus was rejected by neighbors and countrymen, his family questioned his sanity, and a friend betrayed him. Throughout his ministry, Jesus reached out to the poor and rejected ones.  This new insight hit Endo with the force of a revelation.  He’d dreamed of a home where one could live triumphantly, a Christian without disgrace. Instead, God is a Good Shepherd who prefers to leave the 99 to search the one lost.  God prefers the prayers of a lowly publican to a Pharisee. God, the Suffering Servant, Christ, seeks out the nobodies.  We matter infinitely to Him; are called to reflect Him.  In Silence, Endo tells the story of a bound Portuguese missionary as samurais tried to get him to renounce his faith. “He had come to this country to lay down his life for other men, but instead of that, Japanese Christians were laying down their lives one by one for him.” Endo’s novels have become widely read throughout the East giving courage to millions of persecuted Christians.

            What still holds Christianity back in Japan?  The country prides itself as being modern, secular, conformist and unaccepting of outsiders.  (A Japanese exchange student described Shintos as backslidden Methodists who sleep through the service.) But Japanese Christians want the Real Thing.  They desire to be different with worships and akin to Americans-- very ‘apart’ from the usual Buddhism and Shintoism of their culture.