My visit to the local worshipping joints.

On Monday I went into Hakata, which is one of the main districts in Fukuoka city. I went with my language tutor, Ieshi Bashi Sensei. She was going to show me the Shinto shrine and the Buddhist temple. The Buddhist temple was impressive I have to say. There was a 23 meter tall wooden statue of the Buddha. And then there were hundred of little wooden Buddha statues on the wall behind the larger one. My eyes teared up from the burning incense as we walked in. They asked us to wash our hands before we entered; a Japanese tradition. In other countries that practice Buddhism we wouldn’t have to do this. But Japan took Buddhism centuries ago and really made it their own.
There were a few people in the temple who were praying. They burned incense and lit candles (kinda like a catholic) and then prayed. They bowed their heads and closed their eyes.
The Shinto shrine was not much different. People bought prayers and then tied them to strings for the spirits to hear them. There was a woman in the garden who was reverently praying to some spirit. It was pretty tragic to me.
“This is the first time that I have ever seen some people actually worshipping other false gods and doing it so passionately.” I thought to myself. Then God spoke to me right there. And it was such a clear message that I had to stop and think about it for a few moments.
I looked into a koi pond. There were big golden fish swimming around in it, used for decoration in Japanese gardens. They have whiskers like a catfish but I was told they didn’t taste good. (Cause I asked.) It was after a moment of meditation in that Shinto garden that I was able to continue on following Ieshi Bashi sensei with our tour.
You see it seemed to me at the time so sad and so sinful that these people were worshipping spirits and the Buddha. I felt sorry for the futility of their religion. But God changed my heart right there as he convicted me of my own false idol worship. There have been times, and probably will be even more times in the future, where I have begun to worship things other than God and I never thought of it as worship. Relationships with friends or family, a motorcycle, money, myself even—personal skills, or things that I have done “on my own”. If I’ve idolized anything or made anything in my life as important as God is to me, then I have worshipped these things in vain. I have done no better than the people who were worshipping the Buddha and the animistic spirits of Shinto.