- 2025年10月26日
The Dilemma of a God Too Great: Strange Things Happen When God is Overly Exalted
The Dilemma of a God Too Great: Strange Things Happen When God is Overly Exalted
When God is made transcendent to the extreme, He recedes from everyday touch, and the distance from believers widens. To bridge this distance, the Religions of the Book have layered “bridges” of covenants and laws, prayers and liturgies, communities and customs. In contrast, in Japan, gods (kami) are perceived as “dwelling” in places, things, and actions, and this tangibility itself became the mechanism for sustaining faith. The difference between the two is not one of good or evil, but a “difference in distance” designed by historical and geopolitical conditions.
The God of the Bible is Transcendent; the Gods of Japan are Immanent
“The greater the god, the better.” One would normally think so. And perhaps that is the case, but the good may come as a package deal with the bad. It is a relationship of opportunity cost or trade-offs, as they say in economics.
For a simple contrast, let’s consider the gods of Japan. The Japanese gods are incredibly close and personal. It’s not that one specific deity is close, but rather that the culture readily accepts the human act of feeling a god’s presence or sensing divinity and sanctity in something. In fact, doing so can even be seen as a sign of piety. The culture is not only accepting but actively positive about imbuing things with heart (kokoro), soul, and feeling for gods, Buddhas, or something else.
There is a theory that the Japanese are atheists, but while it may have diminished recently, it is rare to find a country so overflowing with things that could be considered religious—shrines, temples, small wayside altars, household altars, Jizō statues, and so on. Even today, Japan may rank high in the world in this regard. And the human heart itself values faith. While it is often unclear what that faith is directed towards, it is a national characteristic to cherish the feelings and sensibilities of faith.
However, there is also a very strong tradition of saying “NO” to fanaticism or the imposition of any single religion that makes one lose perspective. The fact that the Japanese are devout and the fact that they reject the absolutization of any one religion may be two sides of the same coin.
The God of the Bible
In contrast to Japanese religion, let’s consider the God of the Bible. Religions that hold the Bible as their sacred text are called the Religions of the Book. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are well-known examples; they are a group of religions that connect with God through scripture.
These religions, though with varying degrees of intensity, exalt God to the extreme. In these religions, there is only one deity. He is the absolute and transcendent God. There is a passage in the Bible that says, “to see Him is to die.” In fact, across the entire Old Testament (I will exclude the New Testament for this discussion), I believe only two to four people have ever directly seen or met God. The New Testament is excluded because the position of Jesus makes it complicated; if Jesus is God, then the characters in the Bible met God constantly. This is fine for Christianity, but for Judaism and Islam, while the New Testament is a valuable document, it is not their sacred text, and they do not hold the view that Jesus is God or the Son of God. Therefore, to take a general overview of the Biblical religions, the New Testament is excluded.
The Biblical religions exalt God to the max. The degree of transcendence and absoluteness, from the perspective of a people as faithlessly impious as the Japanese, is so extreme that it seems impossible to elevate Him any further. Seeing this, a Japanese person might have several questions. It’s human nature to want to praise one’s favorite. Why did we Japanese not exalt our gods to such an extent? Or, why did the Biblical religions exalt their God to the absolute limit? The latter may seem natural, but since many religions do not elevate their objects of faith to such a degree, it can be a point of inquiry.
Why Did the Japanese Not Exalt Their Objects of Faith So Much?
Why did the Japanese not elevate their objects of faith as much as the Biblical cultural sphere? While there are Buddhist sects like Jōdo Shinshū that highly exalt Amida Buddha, it doesn’t seem to be to the same extent. There are likely many reasons for this, and each may form part of the answer. But to put it simply, it’s possible that the Japanese did not need to elevate their objects of faith that much. Furthermore, the very idea of elevating an object of faith to such a degree may not have occurred to them.
Why Did the Biblical Cultural Sphere Exalt God to the Extreme?
In the Biblical cultural sphere, again with variations, immense effort is poured into how to elevate God. There are likely many reasons for this as well, and each may have its own merit. But let’s consider it in comparison to why the Japanese did not do so.
The Biblical Cultural Sphere Needed to Exalt God
Reading the Bible, especially the first half, reveals something of a battle between the common people who wanted to worship foreign gods and the conservative monotheists. From the Sinai Covenant to the Babylonian Exile, a large part of the history is a religious struggle—how the conservative faction tried to bring back the majority of the people who had little interest in their own religion and were attracted to others.
Palestine-Israel is geographically a crossroads of civilizations and peoples. The Kingdom of Judah was not inhabited by Jews alone. It was also influenced by various surrounding advanced cultures. As a geographic and geopolitical nexus, it was natural for various things to flow in, for trade to be active, and for Jews themselves to leave their homeland to do business in various regions. It would be strange to think they were not influenced by other countries and cultures in terms of religion, language, culture, artifacts, and immigration.
The ancient Kingdom of Judah, despite its ups and downs, was a minor power for much of its history. It was inevitably influenced by powerful surrounding nations and peoples such as Egypt, the Orient, the seafaring Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans. In a sense, it would have been difficult not to be influenced by other religions.
In such an environment, religions must compete. It’s a competition of how great one’s own religion is, and a competition to win believers. While the Jewish religion is an ethnic one, when documents are created, the subjectivity and intentions of the creators are embedded. Furthermore, it’s doubtful whether the Jewish people of that time had a modern sense of ethnicity. To survive religious competition and win back believers, it was necessary to elevate their own religion and God.
Let’s compare the fact that the Japanese had no concept of elevating their own religion with the situation of ancient Judaism. Elevating or making an object of faith transcendent has its good sides, but it’s conceivable that undesirable things can happen. For example, the distance between God and the believer widens. If “to see Him is to die,” then you cannot see Him. Uttering His name carelessly is forbidden, and in fact, the pronunciation of the Jewish God’s name was forgotten. Idolatry is also forbidden. Many people might think, “What’s wrong with simply not making pictures or statues?” But to make a statue of the great God is presumptuous. To think that God can be represented by a form is also presumptuous. God is the Creator, and all other things are His creations; for a mere creation to represent God is the height of presumption.
Furthermore, making pictures or statues can lead to emotional projection, and a faith in the object itself may arise. To represent God with a creation is already disrespectful, but to project emotions onto it and treat a mere object as if it were God is even more presumptuous. The Biblical religions, with variations, dislike and forbid feeling God in things. They are constantly on guard against not only feeling divinity or sanctity in things, but also against imbuing objects with human passions—heart, soul, passion, or whatever else. Such things are not only disrespectful to the God of the Bible but could also be a breeding ground for polytheism. History suggests that while God is supposed to be one, it is human nature to create several gods or objects of faith.
If God is Absolute, Transcendent, and Extreme, the Distance to Man is Infinite
Exalting God has its good sides, but let’s look at the demerits. The more transcendent God becomes, the greater the distance from humanity. If the distance becomes too great, there is a danger that He becomes effectively non-existent. There is a possibility of hollowing out. It’s not like a battle manga, but like Dragon Ball, it was often the case that if it wasn’t successful, it became uninteresting, the readers lost interest, and the series was cancelled. That might still be the case today.
To prevent this hollowing out and to connect God and man, the Biblical religions have devised dozens of ways to strengthen their religious power, with commonalities and differences among them. However, effective measures vary with the times and regions, and what was effective in one era or place could be a negative in another. Perhaps this is related to why Biblical religions have not spread widely in Japan.
What Concretely Happens When God is Elevated?
The basis of Biblical religions is the covenant. This is true for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For example, Christianity may seem very lenient with its covenants, but it adheres to what must be adhered to. In Christianity, the New Testament removed dietary restrictions, so unlike Jews and Muslims, they can eat anything—but they do so in accordance with the Bible. Thus, observing the covenant and the Law is the basis of being a believer.
Beyond that, there are many other customs, rites, rituals, commentaries, and non-Biblical texts. For Judaism, the Mishnah, and for Islam, the Quran and Hadith, influence the lives and faith of believers. Even if not adopted into the Bible, many documents from that time exist. In such a context, praying several times a day becomes a habit, and there is the Sabbath. However, to maintain monotheism and the transcendence of God, as times, regions, and cultures change, what was once necessary for religion can sometimes have strange effects or even become the foundation for anti-religious sentiment.
The Modern Era
God created the world, humanity, and the universe. On the final day, He will resurrect the dead and judge whether they properly kept the covenant during their lives. These are clear roles, but how God interacts with us in our daily lives is subtle. Research shows that in times of trouble, East and West, people tend to pray to God. However, the God of the Bible does not necessarily help suffering people easily, and there are passages in the Bible that warn against using God in such a way. If you can’t rely on Him when you’re in trouble, that’s a minus point for believers.
There is also deism, the idea that God created the world and its laws, and now the world just runs according to that system. This gives rise to the idea that as long as the system exists, it doesn’t really matter whether God is there or not. This is likely related to the formation of the modern West. Modern sociology, whether Weber or Sombart, is systemic in its thinking. It also rejects magical or superstitious thinking. In economics, classical economics developed in the direction of seeing things as things, without imbuing them with emotion. This is materialistic, and it’s true for both liberalism and Marxism. Whether Calvin, Leibniz, or Laplace’s demon, the worldview is pre-established or deterministic. It’s a worldview where an individual, no matter what they do, cannot connect with God.
From the Beginning, Contact Between God and Man Was Tenuous
Sometimes, one can feel God through mystical or transcendent experiences. Ayrton Senna reportedly felt God during a race. There is an astronaut who felt God and later became a clergyman. The famous mountaineer Reinhold Messner reportedly felt God in a critical situation during a climb. I heard that a free diver, during a time when records of over 100m were being contested, felt something like God. The dolphin researcher John C. Lilly reportedly observed transcendent experiences when he placed people in a sensory deprivation state and administered hallucinogens like LSD. Timothy Leary, a former Harvard professor and father of the psychedelic and hippie cultures, aimed to have mystical experiences through psychoactive drugs.
These are all experiences of God in special situations. They are not ways to feel God in daily life. It’s well-known that new religions and cults use special training to induce non-ordinary experiences. Orthodox religions also sometimes use progressivism, ecstatic states, or certain substances (like cannabis) to feel God. Islamic mysticism is famous. In Christianity, Gnosticism was once popular. The ultra-Orthodox Jews of today, who are ultra-right-wing or ultra-conservative (not to be confused with another group of ultra-conservative Jews), were a new sect born around Ukraine in the early modern period, considered cult-like at the time, who held gatherings where they would sing and dance into ecstatic states, and were looked upon strangely by other ordinary Jews of the time.
Europe seems strong in the Bible and Christianity, but depending on how you look at it, it has a history of only a few thousand years. There were powers like the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that resisted Christianization even in the Middle Ages. And in the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance began, and by the early second millennium, Christianity was shaken, and in the modern era, it’s quite shaky. A thousand years is both a long and a short time. In regions where various peoples, religions, trade, and cultures gathered, history is a jumble.
Japan, all things considered, was peaceful. In fact, Japan was incredibly peaceful. War can advance civilization, but it also makes the world more complicated. Peaceful times allow for maturation. It’s a gentle, sweet world where you can do what you like without rushing. You can often get by without doing anything too edgy or radical.
The Environments of the Biblical Cultural Sphere and Japan Were Completely Different
The Biblical religions are a group of religions that were born and maintained in a very messy environment. Japan is an island nation with a history of being able to view the continent as someone else’s problem for long periods. It would be strange if, with everything being so different, they ended up with similar religions.
There are good reasons why the Biblical religions became exclusively monotheistic, and that may have, in turn, become the matrix for modern secularism, deism, atheism, and agnosticism. It may have been useful for creating a materialistic society, economy, science, technology, and industry. Conversely, the reason Japan did not create such things may be that the relationship between gods and people was too close, and they have always had a close, not distant, relationship. I think this tendency still exists today. This sense of dissonance may be one of the reasons why the Biblical world and Japan are compared as completely different cultural spheres.