Japanese representations of Christianity.

I just feel like I should note that most missonary work does not equate to "become a Christian and I'll give you a bag of rice", and personally, I'm a little disheartened to hear that this is the stereotype that non-Christians (and a surprising number of Christians) actually believe.

With most misson work, and at least in my misson work experience (6 months in Haiti, 6 months in Nicaragua), the organizations tha I worked with were all operated and funded by a Christian church and had no explicit demands that anyone must come to church to recieve anything we were offering. The whole point of misson work is to improve the lives of those that you minister to. Most often, especially in third-world countries, the best way to improve the lives of those there is to offer food aid, medical aid and education. All of these things their populace is hungry for. We try to make them self-sustaining by helping bring permanent irrigation to their crops, and helping them build and repair their homes to a state that is more livable.

While we don't demand they come to church to recieve aid, they come nontheless, because outside of actual evangelical ministry, we also offer an opportunity for them to educate themselves. Many of the parents want to come to the services to meet the missionary workers so they can send their child there to learn at the mission schools. And once again, in these schools, we're not teaching them to become ministers, priests or nuns exclusively — In Haiti, we had a staff that was teaching basic first aid and preparing some to work as nurses, because Haiti so badly needs medical workers. In Nicaragua, the primary aim of our educational staff was to bring literacy to their village, where literacy was literally below 10%.

But, of course these schools also teach about our Christian faith as a part of the curriculum. Like I said before, the aim of missionaries is to improve the lives of the native populace, and as Christians, we see their spiritual health as vitally important as physical and mental health.

Anyway, I just wanted to dispel the idea that Christians merely try to get their mission field baptized, just to leave them in the same situation as we found them. The primary goal of mission work is to improve the population's quality of life.

To sum up that idea — someone once told me, "If a man comes to the a bread factory starving, he doesn't want the employees to have him learn how the baking machines work, he doesn't want to know the history of the bakery's founders or the story of how bread has changed the lives of those around the world. He merely wants to be fed. Perhaps later, he'll want to know the details, but for now, he is nearly dying from hunger."

If you reference the miracles of Jesus in the Bible, oftentimes, he focused on meeting the physical needs of those around him, rather than preaching salvation at them until they conceded.

That's how it is now, but for a long time it was "Convert and eat."

Which is about a thousand times better than "Convert or Die" as Spain and Portugal employed in the Americas.

I'm in favor of mission work, but as somebody who's not all that spiritual I'm more likely to give money to the Peace Corps and promote ideals that I think are more important to a stable long term society.

I would, however, love to hear about your time in Haiti.

The most respectful, accurate Japanese portrayl of Christian mythos(Angels, demons, and what not) is Digimon. Yes, the same series where Yggdrasil is a robot! It makes me weep! Devil Man is a close second, I cry more.

As for actually Christian people represented in Japanese media, I know there is one out their somewhere but for the life of me I can't think of when the Christian church didn't use cross shaped machine guns, faith based magic or nuns who shot eye beams that turned people into butterflies. Come to think of it, can anyone name an accurate portrayl of Buddihims in Japanese media? If they can't do their own why should they do someone else's.

Maria Sama Ga Miteru takes place at, of course, an all girls Catholic school. It certainly isn't a terribly realistic picture of such schools, but it is more sensible than most with its depiction of the two religions seen in the show, Buddhism (likely some sort of Shin) and Catholicism. Neither plays a very large role in the series and besides a few characters, typically side characters, no one devoutly follows either.

The nuns don't use guns and they dress traditionally. The Buddhist monk isn't trying to be a rock star. They're just nuns and a monk really. The two main characters with great interest in religion aren't super powered beings of awesome. They're just people. One who wants to be a nun and one who finds Buddhism fascinating.

Again it's not terribly realistic, but it's certainly better off in that regard than say Chrono Crusade.

edited 30th Dec '10 5:27:41 PM by Aondeug

Um... When were missions brought up, other than historically?