Sumo & Why Christians Fail at Conveying Their Message

When I lived in Japan I made a video to send home to some friends, to share my new digs with them. I gave a tour of my apartment, showed them places around my town, and included snippets of every day life in Japan. At the end of the video I tacked on a few minutes of a Sumo match.One friend told me she laughed like crazy at the Sumo wrestling.I asked why.“Because it’s so fake!” she answered. “And what was with the salt they were throwing all over the place?”Despite my assurances that Sumo was a serious business in Japan, with an ancient history and a lot of symbolism (including the salt), she refused to believe me.“Sumo is the national sport here,” I insisted. “It’s a big deal, like football or baseball in America.”“Maria,” she said in a patronizing voice. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is not a real thing.” And she likened it to WWF.No argument could convince my American friend that I, who lived in Japan, spoke Japanese, had Japanese friends and colleagues, and had actually seen a Sumo wrestler in person, knew what I was talking about. To her I had either been deceived, or was trying to deceive her.In attempting to figure out how to convince her to believe in Sumo, I realized that the problem lies not only in the believability of the subject, but also in the credibility of the witness: Have I in the past proven myself gullible or ignorant? Have I in the past proven myself untrustworthy?The first question speaks to my knowledge, the second to my character.I once worked for an apostate Catholic. One day when I mentioned my church she said, “When you get a little older you’ll stop believing in fairy tales.” At 31, I wondered how old she thought I had to be to shed my naiveté. A few weeks later we were talking about weddings and I mentioned that I was 30 when I got married. Her brow furrowed and she got that confused-puppy look on her face. Turns out she thought I was closer to 19. (My youthful complexion, or immature manner? I’m going with the former.) It was sweetly satisfying to see one of her arguments against my faith—chronological childishness—fall away.But while age-related bias is outside our control, our relationship to truth and the practice of integrity is entirely up to us.Twenty years ago, when I faced my Sumo skeptic, we hadn’t yet entered the fullness of the information age. I couldn’t tell my friend to look it up on Google, or to check Wikipedia or Snopes. Today, however, we have the sum total of the knowledge amassed throughout human history accessible to us via a rectangle we carry in our pockets.And I’ll bet at least a few folks reading this already dismissed at least one of the above sources (Google, Wikipedia, or Snopes) as unreliable. A disturbing number of people trust Kaytlyn the 26-year-old mom’s nutrition blog more than they do the FDA, not because they’ve researched Kaytlyn’s credentials or read the abstracts of studies carried out by actual trained nutritionists, but because they prefer what Kaytlyn says to what the FDA says.We’re fully in the thick of an assault on truth—spawned right from the bowels of the original Father of Lies himself—and as Christians, this should horrify us.If it doesn’t, we’re swimming in the problem and drinking it like the drowning.Our core message is pretty unbelievable. That there’s a God (or at least an intelligent power) who kick-started the universe and everything in it isn’t that much of a stretch for the thinking mind. But that he came down into creation and suffered torture and death in order to satisfy hell’s rightful claim on us is pretty incredible. Who does that? “Greater love hath no [one] than this: that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).So it is imperative that we be trustworthy and discerning bearers of that message—as well as every other message—if anyone is ever going to believe us. Or even listen to us.I’ll be frank—if I didn’t already know Christ myself, the things I’ve seen and read from certain Christians and their leaders in both the private and public arenas over the last couple of years would have catapulted me in the opposite direction before I ever listened to another word out of another arrogant and hypocritical mouth. I’m having a hard time not running for the door as it is.Full disclosure, I don’t get it all right, either. If I possessed all truth on every subject then I would share the mind of God, which I do not.But, by golly, I’m going to make sure I have the most well-informed, fact-supported, and truthful answer I can get before I lob my opinion at anybody. And when I’m shown to be wrong, I’m going to admit it. Because, as a follower of Jesus I claim to value both truth and humility.I don’t know if my friend ever changed her mind about the veracity of Sumo as a sport. But the experience of being unable to convince her about my Japanese culture competence has taught me one important lesson: if truth is that easy to disregard, I’ve got to be that much more invested in truth everywhere. We could all stand to throw some salt (and light) on that.
She is wise, this one. I click here in solidarity.