What does it mean to be faithful?

To do the right thing; to condemn evil; to be steadfast under hardship; to encourage those who falter; to work for justice; to work against oppression; all these come to mind when we think of faithfulness. And well they should.

But there is more to faithfulness than batting a thousand. Christianity is more than the art of not screwing up. It is the bone-shattering impact of the eternal Kingdom of God, with its white-hot truth and unyielding hope held forward, as it clashes with the temporal kingdom of this world, with its depths of deception and cunning pathways of despair. The force of that impact is the herald of war, of shouts and groans and battle lines drawn up and desperate retreats and crushing defeats and costly victories, and it draws us into a confusing labyrinth where it is not always easy to find our way.

That labyrinth, Shusaku Endo posits in his powerful book Silence, is more than just the landscape we move through or the enemy forces we encounter on our journey. It is to be found deep inside our own selves; and the decisions we have to make as we attempt to follow Jesus along that road will surely rend our hearts in two.

Silence is the story of a young Jesuit priest of the 1600s, Sebastiao Rodrigues, who along with his friend and fellow padre Francisco Garupe arrives in Japan on mission. They have received word that their forebear and father superior Ferreira has apostatized, and in disbelief they enter the Jesuit mission field to find it in complete turmoil. Christians are being actively persecuted and martyred by the thousands, and worship services are held only in hiding.

Sebastiao’s mission grows ever more hazardous until, betrayed by the wretched former apostate Kichijiro whom he had knowingly entrusted with his life, the priest falls into the hands of the shogun‘s shrewd, urbane governor Inoue. The cunning governor treats him with a disarmingly liberal hand, refusing to martyr him or to let him suffer in any way other than to be forced to watch the agony of the Japanese Christians he had come to minister to, as their lives are offered up one by one for the faith they so simply clung to.

The priest’s anguish grows ever greater, as he sees the Church he had dedicated his life to subjected to unbearable pain and then to death. Where is God in all this? Will He ever speak? Will He ever rescue those who cry out to Him? How can He possibly remain silent through suffering like this? These questions gnaw relentlessly at the young man as he wrestles with the question of what his own faithfulness means in all this; and, more poignantly for him, the question of whether his own faithfulness is more important to him than the sufferings of his flock.

The only words he has to guide him are the promise of Jesus to him in a vision: “I will not abandon you.” But the decision he has to make is not about whether Jesus has abandoned him, but whether he will join Kichijiro in abandoning Jesus, and whether he will trample on the fumie that would seal his failure as an apostate. As he agonizes over this, the unknown figure of his superior Father Ferreira looms ever nearer. Will their meeting confirm his attempts to remain steadfast? Or will Inoue’s calm assurance of the priest’s imminent defeat hold true?

As a Reformed Christian, I hold certain elements of this story apart from my conception of Biblical truth. An ordained Christian leader in the Catholic Church of the fifteenth century should have had more than just words from a vision to guide him; the truth of Scripture should have been foremost on his mind. And the Japanese Christians should have been taught more than veneration of icons to feed their faith. And the apostasy of trampling an icon is one thing, whereas the apostasy of an outright denial of one’s Christianity is quite another. But armchair generals have never held much sway in the helpful analysis of church history, and I will defer in much of my judgment to those who (as the writer of Hebrews would certainly remind us) have actually resisted to the point of shedding their blood.

For there is much real truth to wrestle with in this book, as I found in thinking through it from the vantage point of my own story. Faithfulness does not only mean doing the right thing (although it can never be less than that). It also means telling the raw, ugly truth about our hearts when we do fail. Endo portrays in his novel the honest internal struggle of one who sincerely sought to follow Jesus, and who discovered the first great truth that St. Peter did to his utter dismay when Jesus turned and looked at him in silence, once in a courtyard, deep in a war for people’s souls:

There is only One who has ever truly been faithful.

And in meditating on that first great truth, although we may find ourselves left with the same bitter tears the apostle wept when he realized this, we also find ourselves bestowed with the second great realization that Peter came to when Jesus restored his faith:

The silence of God is for our salvation.

Endo’s book portrays these truths vividly, with a necessarily human perspective. But as we experience them in the our lives, let us then – in all the weakness of our faithfulness – be diligent to be found by Him without spot or blemish, and at peace.

JV

Photo Credit: Hope 103.2

Author: Jeremy Vogan

My name is Jeremy Vogan. I live in Staunton, VA with my wife and four kids. I love to write, and seek to honestly explore the intellectual and emotional implications of following Jesus as a deeply broken person in a twisted, cruel world that is full of veiled beauty and meaning. Writing is part of how I faithfully look for Jesus Christ to someday make all things new. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback! JV