“To listen to” as “active passivity and deep activity” for the “Cross-cultural” Matrix for Mission

Megumi Yoshida

Introduction: “Doing Mission from the Underside”

The world situations are drastically changing from moment to moment. Last autumn, the American bubble economy collapsed, and it has caused a huge financial and economical crisis not only in the USA but also in the world. Suddenly, many people have lost their jobs and their sweet home.

Japan is not an exception. In Japan, before Christmas and the New Year, many people were suddenly fired and then had to leave their flats owned by their companies. Unexpectedly, they became jobless and homeless!! More than one thousand seven hundred volunteers distributed warm food for five hundred jobless-homeless people every day from New Year’s Eve to January 5, 2009, at the Hibiya Park in Tokyo. In spite of such urgent predicaments, many Japanese still enjoyed their family time at their warm homes during holidays of the New Year Eve and the New Year. Can you imagine such situations in Japan?

This is one of many examples of the global surroundings in the world. Many people live in affluence and some of them feel psychological emptiness in their affluent life, whereas the weak are easily abandoned without warning. Such influences of the global economic crises are limited not only to workers but also their family. Many children suddenly can not continue their study at school and can not go to a doctor because their parents can not continue to pay their children’s school expenses and a charge for their health insurance.

Nowadays, poverty is a social problem in Japan as well as other Asian developing countries. Such financial disparity is globally getting bigger and bigger on the world level. In the midst of such global world, where should we Asian stand for mission? In the CATS Congress VI, the theme “Doing Mission from the Underside” denotes the place, viz., “underside.” The ‘underside’ means “the bottom or lower side or surface of something” and “the side or surface of something that is underneath.” Further, the synonym of ‘underside’ is ‘bottom.’ Therefore, I would like to take a stance at the bottom, the weakest , the most marginalized...

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