Faith Theme Analysis

Rodrigues, a Portuguese missionary in Japan, is haunted by God’s refusal to speak or intervene when persecuted Christians suffer. Through an arduous journey of doubt and despair, Rodrigues still remains faithful to God as his source of peace, strength, and support. He discovers—and the novel thus argues—that God witnesses all human suffering even when he will not intervene, and that even in God’s silence, the endurance of his followers are proof of his presence and legitimacy.

At the outset of the story, Rodrigues and Garrpe’s faith embolden them to face suffering and death, suggesting that such faith in God’s presence can be a bastion of strength and support for Christians. Although Christianity was, for a time, allowed in Japan, the Roman Catholic Church has received word that in two decades, nearly all of their missionaries have been arrested and either exiled or tortured and martyred in horrific fashion: boiled and burned alive, beheaded, drowned, or hung upside down in “the pit” to suffer days of agony before death. With full knowledge of these events, Rodrigues and Garrpe hold no illusions about their chance of survival in Japan as priests. It is more than likely that they will be caught, tortured, and killed. Even so, both men’s’ faith in God’s provision and guidance gives them the courage to make their journey to Japan. When a traveling companion falls ill and they must leave him behind, Rodrigues reflects, “God bestows upon man a better fate than human knowledge could possibly think of or devise.” During their first weeks in Japan, while hiding amongst a small, covertly Christian village, Garrpe and Rodrigues the likelihood that they will be caught and tortured, and whether they will have the strength to remain loyal to Christianity. Both men agree that the only option is to rely upon “God’s grace” and trust that he will give them strength. Garrpe and Rodrigues’s boldness in the face of unknown dangers and likely pain demonstrates the strength of their faith and the bastion of support a belief in an all-powerful, providential God can be for Christians, emboldening them to take risks they might otherwise never have the courage to face.

However, in spite of Rodrigues’s faith, God is silent and refuses to intervene while he suffers. Japanese Christians are tortured to death, causing Rodrigues to doubt whether God exists at all, suggesting that God’s failure to speak or act against human suffering makes belief faith in God difficult to maintain. As the Japanese officials oppress the Christian villagers, Rodrigues, and Garrpe, Rodrigues realizes that he does not feel the assurance his faith once offered. After several Japanese villagers are tortured and executed, the villagers begin to ask Rodrigues, “Why has Our Lord imposed this suffering on poor Japanese peasants?” Rodrigues is haunted by the same question himself, wondering why, after 20 years of blood-soaked persecution, “in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent.” He is particularly bothered when, after a Japanese official casually beheads a Christian in front of Rodrigues, the world seems the same, unchanged except for one less life and the spurt of blood across the dirt. There is no justice for the martyr, no recognition from God that this man sacrificed his life for him. Rodrigues and the Japanese peasants’ confusion at God’s silence suggests that, as they understand it, if God were truly present, he would intervene on behalf of those who suffer—especially for their religious devotion. God’s apparent silence causes Rodrigues to doubt his very existence, which the priest has never done before in his life. After seeing two executed Christians’ bodies “swallowed” by the sea, Rodrigues reflects that “like the sea, God was silent” raising the possibility that perhaps God is not there at all. However, this though terrifies him and he will not allow himself to entertain it too far, since, “If God does not exist, how can man endure the monotony of the sea [representing the drudgery of life] and its cruel lack of emotion?” For Rodrigues, if God does not exist, then the pain and struggle of the peasants in missionaries is naught but an “absurd drama.” For Rodrigues, as for many, God’s silence in the midst of evil and suffering seems an unanswerable question. The seeming lack of God’s direct intervention suggests that, possibly, God’s silence means he is absent altogether, or at least apathetic to human suffering.

Ultimately, Rodrigues realizes that even when God is silent, Christ suffers alongside him and speaks through his own life, suggesting that the endurance of God’s followers through tremendous suffering testifies to His existence. When Rodrigues is about to apostatize and hovers his foot over the image of Christ’s face, he imagines that Christ, as God, finally breaks his silence to reassure him that he understands pain Rodrigues feels at the act, saying, “It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.” Although this does not take away the shame that Rodrigues suffers, Christ’s affirmation reveals to Rodrigues that even when it seemed God was silent, he was suffering alongside him, having known such pain himself when he was crucified. Although Rodrigues is ultimately forced to work as an agent of the Japanese government, left in a defeated position for the rest of his life, he feels that in all the suffering he saw and experienced, “Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him,” suggesting that even when God is or seems silent, the perseverance and devotion of his followers is evidence of his presence.

Although Rodrigues never meets God in the manner he hopes—in a shower of glory or protection—his persistent faith demonstrates that belief in God’s presence and sovereignty may still be held as a source of inner peace and support, even in the face of suffering, hardship, and failure.