New Article about Honor, Discipleship, and Christian Identity

I am cautious.

The honor system in much of the Buddhist world is a hold over from the medieval period. Anselm developed his understanding of the Atonement to reflect ideas on honor. I am not sure if adapting to a worldview (whether Buddhism, Western worldview, Native American, etc.) can adequately represent the doctrines that were first written from an Ancient Near-Eastern point if view.

@John of Japan translated Scripture into Japanese so he may be able to articulate some of the obstacles.


The Silence was an interesting movie that addressed some of the issues.

I was not able to access the original article, but am very familiar with the subject of honor/shame cultures, having lived in one for 33 years and read quite a bit on the subject, and lectured on it. I've not run into Chris Flanders before, but he has an impressive CV--except that his PhD is from Fuller; hardly conservative nowadays. (https://acu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Chris-Flanders-Faculty-Profile.pdf)

Having said that, one thing in the linked review of the original article that I strongly disagree with is the statement at the end that "By doing so, local Christians can live faithfully 'in Christ' without losing their cultural rootedness—forming disciples who are both authentically Buddhist-world and authentically Christian." It is impossible to live "authentically" (a term from existentialism and neo-orthodoxy) as both Christian and Buddhist. The worldviews could not be more different.

Concerning the origin of the honor/shame culture of Japan (and probably China and Korea), I blame that on Confucianism. The Confucian classics were the source of Samurai education, producing the caste system that ruled Japan until the late 19th century.

P. S. I see that Dr. Flanders is Church of Christ, which means baptismal regeneration, so I would take anything he writes in a spiritual vein with a grain of salt, though he may know his stuff on honor/shame.

The statement about "authentically Buddhist-world and authentically Christian" smacks of a radical form of contextualization, which in its worst forms is compromise of the Christian message of salvation. “The goal of contextualization perhaps best defines what it is. That goal is to enable, insofar as it is humanly possible, an understanding of what it means that Jesus Christ, the Word, is authentically experienced in each and every human situation.” (Dean Gilliland, “Contextualization” in Evangelical Dictionary of Word Missions, ed. by A. Scott Moreau, 225.)

The problem with contextualizing in an honor/shame culture is that the missionary can go too far and compromise the Gospel. One example of this is in a book I have by a missionary to Muslims, where the author suggests that we should tell Muslims Christ died for their shame instead of saying that Christ died for their sins. That is an unacceptable compromise! Not only is there no biblical basis for such a Gospel presentation. it distorts the Gospel. It is our sin which keeps people out of Heaven and sends them to Hell, not their shame. I remember years ago there was a hit CCM song, "For Those Tears I died." No, a 1000 times no! We must never compromise the Gospel.