July 2008

Greetings from Nagoya, Japan.

Bill Geppert with one of his students at a graduation party in March 2008. Bill has been a long-term volunteer teaching in Japan since 1995.

My work with students here at Kinjo Gakuin University is going very well. The students are all females, and for the most part they’re excited to study English and international business and travel. The entire university has about 5,000 students. The university was founded in 1889 by a missionary from the Presbyterian Church of the United States, Annie Randolph. She was for a long time a missionary in China. On the way back to the States, she stopped off and discovered a need for education for Japanese females. The students numbered five that first year, but with great patience and long endurance the school was built up to what it is today. Is there value in education without the boys in attendance? I would say, “yes.” The more outspoken ladies could more than hold their own with male students. But there are a considerable number of soft-spoken, rather shy young ladies who need the extra time to gather their thoughts, and who need encouragement to think for themselves. They are disciplined and are rather strong within, which surprises many foreigners, who assume the very feminine exterior matches the interior. Given a chance, they are rather strong-minded and have definite ideas about life, education, and so on.

Presenting the gospel of Jesus and of promised salvation for believers must be done delicately and with a great deal of tact. To be sure, the materialism, which is ever-present in Japan, is beginning to leave a number of people asking questions about purpose and meaning in life. With the Japanese, there must be assurance of the value of Japanese culture within a Christian framework. Christianity and Jesus himself must offer more than Shinto and Buddhism if a person is going to convert. We, of course, believe this to be true. But it is not a Western value we are posing, but a value from God himself set down before this world was ever created. So, the conveying of the gospel must be a conveying of the truths that supersede all cultures, races, and creeds. In other words, if the Christian message is true, the foundations of any culture would have the love of God for humanity and the person of Jesus Christ as the cornerstone. We don’t need to replace cultural and religious foundations of countries with another foundation. We need to show how Christ is and has always been the one sure foundation. It absolutely must already be in place, though as in the case of Japan, it is buried deeply and covered over and very hard to see. This truth is often greeted with skepticism and even scorn. Evolution is accepted widely here in Japan, and is the antithesis of Christ as the foundation.

So there is a place in education for missionaries to teach another approach about how all this life happened to come about. I try to do it with reason, with questions, with little tidbits of facts to help sow the seeds of doubt in their minds that we are the result of evolution. For me, I believe creation alone accounts for the wonderful complexities of life, of feelings, of self-awareness and everything else that makes up a human being. It is not creation and evolution, but only creation. Surely Annie Randolph felt this, or else she would not have extended her mission to help educate young Japanese females. The chance roll of the dice ten to the 124th power times could never have produced a single acquisitive and curious mind that is self aware and seeking for something outside of itself to bring about fulfillment, purpose and meaning.

With the Peace of Christ,

Rev. Bill Geppert

P.S.  I’m doing fine financially and so are all other missionaries in Japan. So please be aware that some emails seeking cash by wire transfer are bogus and not to be trusted. World Mission in Louisville can help you determine the validity of any such messages.