Shusaku Endo is a Japanese, Christian novelist. His most famous book, Silence, originally published in 1969, prepares the reader for this book. He continues the core theme of Silence in his Deep River. The Christian God is a God of Mystery who will not be boxed in by familiar doctrinal concepts, nor will God be tied down to the 2,000-year-old revelations of Christian Scripture. In fact, this Christian God is not owned by Christians! Christ is quietly present in the sufferings of our contemporary world, and even within non-Christian cultures such as India.

In Deep River, we are introduced to several Japanese characters who are identified as “cases.” One soon realizes that the use of this sociological term is Endo’s open declaration that his novel is about Japanese culture, the social types which arise there, and their continuing struggle to define a particularly Asian-Christian spirituality. And, of course, there are also human archetypes, with whom we can all identify. Isobe is a middle-class manager whose wife, Kelko, dies of cancer. On her deathbed she implores him to look for her in a future incarnation. This surprising instruction finally drives Isobe to the banks of the Ganges in search of his wife in another form.

Endo is not afraid to put before us many of the Western prejudices about the Japanese and also the spiritual failings and stereotypes in the European Christian Church. Through the beloved, universalistic Catholic priest, Otsu, Endo expresses the view that Western Christianity is too rationalistic, compartmentalized and autocratic. He thinks it unfortunate that Westerners do not see the spiritual gifts in chaos, but rather suppress the disorderly and surprisingly creative at every turn. For Endo, the sad and humble priest represents a contemporary Christ-figure. Fr. Otsu is rejected by the Roman Catholic superiors who want to control him. One is reminded of Dostoevski’s “Grand Inquisitor” in The Brothers Karamazov. Otsu’s “heresy” is also Jesus’ heresy—bringing ever-fresh hope, forgiveness, mercy and blessings to the outcasts, especially those of other classes and faiths.

Endo also take a straight-on look at the indigenous Japanese spirituality of Buddhism. In Europe and the U.S., the teachings and meditative practices of Buddhism are enjoying an unprecedented growth, especially among young people. But most observers of Japanese culture agree that young people there don’t care at all about spirituality—Shinto, Buddhist or Christian.

Endo’s vision of Christian discipleship may never be popular in Japan or in the West. It is a deep and demanding spirituality, calling us to dive beneath the taken-for-granted facades of our personal and religious identities. Endo’s implication, that all the great world religions are entry-points into a loving, servant-God that transcends them all, may never catch on, primarily because people everywhere like to believe that their particular religious dogma and practice is right and that others must be wrong. The Ego-It is always hungry for control, whether in the individual or the institution. Ego-It is terrified of God’s real freedom, and will be merciful only when it is convenient

By contrast, Endo’s Jesus operates at the margins of his religious institution, and goes directly to the suffering ones within us and among us. He does not waste time, standing aside to judge others for their sins and heresies, as some religious leaders are accustomed to do. Obsessive concerns about others’ sinfulness distract us from knowing that our original nature, God’s blessed, inward image, is God’s own Beloved.

Christians believe that the holy, suffering one of Isaiah 53 which comes and goes throughout the novel is Christ, and it is this particular image of Christ that unifies the whole book, as it unifies the inner life of Otsu.

I hope that many Christians read Deep River. What if, as Endo through Otsu suggests, all beings everywhere are really children of God, even the dirty outcasts? What if all people, of whatever religion, were to practice kindness and love immediately, ignoring their ego’s insistent desire to separate the good from the bad? We must thank Endo for looking into the spiritual mirror for all of us, East and West, and finding that God, like the Ganges, accepts all of him (and us)—the light and the dark, the Brahmin and the outcast, the Buddhist and the Christian, the Hindu and the atheist, the bird and the tree, the creative and the destructive, male and female, life and death. Love and mercy reconcile what the ego and mind divide.

As a participant in the Buddhist–Christian dialogue, I am witness to many breakthroughs in mutual appreciation and understanding. Opportunities for sharing are many and growing. At the same time, it seems that the official hierarchies are dragging their feet, just as they do in Endo’s novel. The contemplative tradition of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches is, perhaps, closest to Endo’s ideal. There one finds the practice of mercy, forgiveness and love beyond words (the “apophatic” way as in Cassian, Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart, Simeon the New Theologian and the Carmelites St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila. But few modern Christians know about this tradition. Those Christian contemplatives who walk in the Western contemplative tradition must now reach out to their Eastern counterparts in spiritual friendship. There is much common ground—in fact it is infinite. The Buddhist Mahayana archetype of the bodhisattva and Japanese Zen Master Akizuki Ryomin’s “transindividual individual” are good Buddhist parallels for Endo’s Otsu.

As we near the 21st century, it is clear that religious wars are increasing in number, ferocity and firepower. Drawn by the fight of Otsu, we have an unparalleled opportunity to educate our young people in a spirituality which dives beneath hypocrisy and ego gratification, right into the River of Humanity which accepts all who come, living or dead, and carries them into the Heart of the Living God.