Love for Family, and a Question at the Altar
It often happens at a funeral. The family moves forward in a line. Each person takes a pinch of incense, bows before the photograph, and steps aside. Then your turn comes, and everyone you love is watching. You loved your grandfather. You love Jesus. What do you do?
If your family is Japanese, Okinawan, Chinese, or Korean, you may know this moment well. Millions of families across Asia and the Pacific live with these customs, including many in Hawaii whose people came in the plantation days. This study explains what Shinto and Confucianism teach, what families do at the altar and the grave, and what Scripture says. Then it turns to the practical question, gently and plainly.
The people at that altar are not being cruel or foolish. Most of them are showing love, gratitude, and loyalty, and Scripture values all three. We never mock a grandmother's offering. We ask what God has said about it, and we answer with the same love she is showing.
Two commands frame this whole study, and God spoke both of them from Sinai.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;”
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”
The same God said both, and He never asks us to choose between them. Paul repeats the second for the church (Ephesians 6:2–3), and John ends his first letter with the first: keep yourselves from idols (1 John 5:21). A believer can obey both at once.
How do I give my family all the honor God commands, without giving anyone the worship that belongs to God alone?
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For Deeper Study
- Neighboring Faiths: A Christian Introduction to World ReligionsAmazon Winfried CorduanFair, careful descriptions of religions as their followers practice them, including Shinto and the religions of China.
- Christian Alternatives to Ancestor PracticesAmazon Bong Rin Ro, editorAsian Christian leaders consider how believers can honor their families. Contributors differ on some practical questions.
- Shinto: The Kami WayAmazon Sokyo OnoA short explanation written by a Shinto scholar and priest. Read it to learn how Shinto describes itself.
- Ancestor Worship in Contemporary JapanAmazon Robert J. SmithAn anthropologist's study of what Japanese families actually do at the home altar. Not written from a Christian view.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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Buddhism
Buddhism teaches that suffering comes from craving and ends in nirvana through the path the Buddha taught, and some schools rely on Amida's compassion, but no Buddhist path offers what the Gospel offers: a holy Creator who paid for sin in His Son and gives rest to all who come to Him.
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