The Most Powerful God has no image

The most powerful God has no image!

This morning, I had a very interesting conversation with one of my students. She was telling me about her trip to a Shinto shrine in Ise. According to her, this shrine is the most powerful shrine in Japan. In other words, the god in this shrine is most powerful as compared to all the other thousands of shrines in Japan.

From this conversation, I learnt that there are approximately 8 million Shinto gods. Goodness! Just when I thought that the 3000 gods in Hinduism are more than enough! Now, from my previous conversations, I was told that they worship different gods in different shrines, and each shrine has its own “strengths”. For example, there is this shrine that worships the fox. So there will be the image of the fox in the shrine. Eh, I’m sorry, I can’t remember why they worship Mr. Fox. Then, there’s another shrine for matchmaking, another for getting good grades and so on.

So, the inquisitive me started to ask more questions. “So what is this shrine famous for? What is the image or idol for this shrine?” “Wha! 8 million gods? Means there are 8 million shrines in Japan? NO? Not all gods have their own shrine? Oh…so poor thing. They have no roofs over their heads?” We laughed together. Heheheheh….

My student, Yumi told me that the god in this shrine is the most powerful god of all the other gods in Japan. So there is no image or idol to worship him. No one can enter the shrine too. All they could do is to stay outside to pray and then leave. Nope. You can’t see the Shinto priests walking around, unlike the Buddhist monks. Nobody knows what’s inside the shrine. It’s mysterious.

Then, I took this opportunity to draw similarities with Yumi. Yumi’s family sells Buddha statues. They live in a 3 storey building. The first 2 storey is the shop and you can see the BIG Buddha statues outside. I told Yumi that in Christianity, our God has no image too. And our God is the MOST powerful God of all. So He doesn’t need any image. She agreed.

Next, I explained the tabernacle to her in simplified terms. The high priest could only go into the Holy of Holies once a year and he tied bells at his ankle in case he was struck dead by God and had to be dragged out. She was appalled. Then I explained that it was because of the glory of God which was so strong inside. Now, we don’t need to kill any animals and make everything so bloody when we come to God. We just enter straight in because Jesus was the sacrificial Lamb. His blood is enough for all of us. Now, we don’t need to wait once a year or ask any high priest to go to God on our behalf. Since our God is most powerful, there is no need for us to go all over to worship other gods. Jesus is enough.

Looking amused, Yumi revealed, “Japanese like to pray to many gods.”

May His light shine on us, that all can see the truth and be set free.