Silence, sorry about mine. It has been a crazy year. No wonder moving is considered as stressful as a death in the family. I still am trying to figure out my grove. Life is full of new and the same challenges. It is just part of living in a broken world.
I just read a great historical fiction book, one that makes you think about God's supposed silence during hard trials. The book is called Silence by a Japanese author named Shusaku
Endo. My son is in 11th grade but taking college classes through Toccoa Falls College ( a Christian College in Ga). http://www.tfc.edu/about-tfc/what-we-believe/ This is one of the books he had to write about. This historical fiction is not God's word, but the fictionalized character is based upon what our Catholic brothers in Christ endured to know Christ, and for this reason, it is worth reading. He wrote this riveting novel, centered about an inexperienced Portuguese priest
named Rodrigues, whose faith is stretched and torn through his experiences while ministering to the people of Japan. In the 1500's, the Japanese leaders became fearful of what Christianity might do to their power, so they brutely attempt to stamp out Christianity. They march Christian families (including children) into the sea. They cut Christians and threw them into pits and let them slowly bleed to death. There was a chance to escape the martyrdom. If the believer would step on an image of the face of Christ, the person might be spared. Rodrigues ministers
to the Japanese peasants, gazes upon their martyrdom, and is later thrown into jail
for being a Christian. Throughout this time of his own suffering and the
anguish of others, he examines God’s heart as Rodrigues observes the suffering
of people around him and wonders why God remains silent through all of this
suffering. How many times do we feel God is silent. It's like Pricilla Shirer says, "Emotions have no Intellect.." That why in Proverbs we are told to trust the Lord with all of our hearts and not our own understanding. Yet, like us, God’s people in this book declared that God “remained silent. " Rodrigues felt that God ignored the suffering Rodrigues and the other believers around
him endured for His namesake. Therefore, the word silence not only reflects the
fact that he though God was silent, but it also represents his internal
struggle with his own pride, his own fears, and with God’s plan. This is so like many of us. Rodrigues pridefully declares that “Kichijiro
is not a Christian,” despite only God knowing a man’s heart, missing his own
prideful arrogance. Later,
Rodrigues “silently” looked into (Kichijiro’s } face, calling him a “whipped
dog” with “furtive eyes,” and in his pride and suspicion, Rodrigues “kept
staring at him in silence.” Rodrigues displays his arrogance when he “felt like shouting” to the
peasants that their vision of Heaven wasn’t true, even through he himself didn't know if it was true or not,for he had not been to heaven either, displaying his lack of
humility, a lack that God will fill up.
As
Rodrigues gazes upon the increased suffering of God’s people, he starts to
resent God, for he laments, “Why has our Lord imposed this torture and this
persecution on poor Japanese peasants?. Before answering own question, he alleges
something even more sickening to him than the actual suffering, “The silence of
God.”. I have to say that the hard times in life are so much harder when you feel God is silent. The author describes the scene where the sea “washed the dead bodies
of Mokichi and Ichizo…and like the sea God was silent. His silence continued.” Peering upon the anguish of God’s
people around him, and believing he observes the silence of God, for Rodrigues
didn’t detect His answer and the suffering continued, Rodrigues assumes God is
wrong for being silent. Therefore, God’s
assumed mute voice caused Rodrigues to grapple with his own faith, even to the
point where he was questioned God’s existence. However, as the story goes on,
Rodrigues begins to change and understand the silence, and consequently, the
meaning of the word changes. In the beginning, silence is the thing that weakens
and breaks down Rodrigues’s faith, but by the end of the novel, it is the thing
that repairs his faith, and makes it even more resilient than before. Rodrigues vouches that God’s silence is worse than martyrdom and agonizing, and
cries, “Lord. Why are you silent? Why are you always silent….?” God’s supposed silence is maintained
throughout Silence. Yet, God uses these things to test
Rodrigues’s faith and convictions, while purifying his character. Rodrigues’s pride blinds him, for Rodrigues
believes he is humble and right when we desires to repair Ferreira’s dishonor
by offering himself as an atonement for his mentor’s horrible apostasy. Rodrigues’s view of Christ was of Christ full
of glory, strength, honor, and majesty, but as the story progresses, Rodrigues views
Christ as “standing silent” Rodrigues wonders if Jesus had “felt the silence of God,” and described
God’s silence as “unrelenting,” hinting that God is wrong in His actions.
Rodrigues
seems to maintain that martyrdom is a magnificent accomplishment, filled with
pride in himself, not peace in the Lord. Yet, once many of his fellow Christians were
killed, and having been placed into a tiny cell where he could hear the
suffering of the other Christians as they were being tortured, God’s silence is
broken. Rodrigues’s eyes are open and
he inspects Kichijiro’s faith as genuine, and his repentance for being humanly
weak as true, and Rodrigues avows that we all are enable to master ourselves
and be fully what God wants in this life. Twice, Endo speaks of Christ’s
suffering beside the believers, for Christ seemed to assure Rodrigues that
“when you suffer, {he} suffers with {them}” and He is “close to {them,} not far
off, silent. The wording is repeated soon after the time when Rodrigues
steps on the image of Christ. Rodrigues
knew if he apostatized, he would become an outcast, rejected by the church, but
yet, Christ was the suffering servant, and his apostasy would end the suffering
of others, so Rodrigues trampled on a fumie. Consequently, by committing
apostasy, Rodrigues stepped into the rejection the act of stepping on the fumie
would bring, therefore, he could identify with Christ’s suffering so that
others could be freed from suffering, much like Christ did for us. After he has
been rejected by his beloved church, he fumes that he “resented {God’s} silence.”
Yet, God mercifully breaks His supposed silence
by telling him, “I was not silent. I suffered beside you .” This is Jesus as seen in Phillipains 2. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Christ- the suffering servant.
Rodrigues understood that God was not quiet, for He was with Rodrigues the
entire time. He now recognizes that God
wasn’t silent without a specific reason, for the silence was necessary, for now
Rodrigues can truly identify with Jesus in a new way, accurate servanthood and
humility. Rodrigues became an outcast just like Jesus was an outcast. When others questioned whether Rodrigues
truly loved God, he just listened to the “words of the magistrate in silence,”
just like God was silent. Rodrigues’s pride is dissolved and he
notes that “it is not man who judges. God knows our weakness more than anyone,”
for Rodrigues was truly transformed for the good and glory of Christ . In the end, Rodrigues’s faith becomes more resilient than
it ever was before, and provides him with Heavenly peace in his earthly
rejection, for Rodrigues knows that in suffering, God is ever present, enabling to have a supernatural joy in the midst of great difficulties. Subsequently, though Rodrigues’ felt alone,
he was never really without help, for Christ was always by his side
experiencing the same suffering he was facing. Furthermore, “we don’t have a high priest who is unable to
empathize with our weaknesses” nor one who can’t understand our pains, for He
has first faced them all, one of the main teaching points that Endo wanted us
to discover, a point that will help all of us persevere when we think God is
silent (Hebrews 4:15). As God allows hardships
in the lives of believers, including Job’s, we often question God’s goodness,
justice, or existence, so much so that God included it in the Bible. Job suffered and questioned God and God
replied, “Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?” (Job 40:8). When we don’t
understand what He is doing, we might default to one of these sinful actions. When Rodrigues identifies with Christ’s suffering and humility, he finds a
new closeness to God. Before we are glorified, we will not trust
one hundred percent of the time and there will be times we struggle with God. Yet, Rodrigues perseveres in his faith and
trials, a great example for us all, as he finally put others above himself. I am thankful that Endo wrote this book..... as encouragement to us all.
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