Eastern Bankruptcy by Dan Iverson
A Shinto priest kneeling before a shrine. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) A young boy came home from his Japanese baseball practice exclaiming, “Dad, coach is making us worship the ground.” The coach had required them to bow toward the ground in worship. We called a Japanese pastor who said that this was indeed false worship. He reminded me that Japan is pantheistic, like Eastern religions generally. Everything is “god.” There is no distinction between the Creator and creation. In that worldview, it is proper to worship your playing field. This later became a problem for Danny at practice when he would not bow. The first error in Eastern religion is that there is no God with a big G. The gods are small and many, including ancestors, the emperor, statues, and thousands more. Atheists in the West do not believe in “God”; Japanese atheists do not believe in “the gods.” Islam has the opposite error —only a transcendent Allah with no immanence, no Emmanuel (“God with us”). In the West, ...