Welcome to the Paul Tripp podcast, where pastor and bestselling author Dr. Paul David Tripp connects the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life.

In this week's connecting clip of the week, we'll hear a snippet from Paul's conversation with Brett Rail, executive director of Christ's

Bible Institute in Japan.

In this clip, Brett discusses how the Japanese people perceive truth and how it affects evangelism

in their culture.

To hear the full episode, check out the Paul Tripp podcast, Episode 371.

Here's Paul and Brett on this week's connecting clip of the week.

What is the Japanese concept of truth? And when you say the gospel is the truth, how is that received in Japanese culture?

Yeah, truth is more fluid in Japan.

And so the way that religions have kind of become part of, you know, Japan is really amazing at taking

something that's not Japanese and making it Japanese.

So kind of importing something and taking it apart and rebuilding it. So this is like how Toyota got started. It's like importing

American cars, taking them apart, rebuilding them, but making at least one improvement that

makes them better when they build them the next time. And so it's this idea of like Kaizen

or incremental progress, like making things a little bit better along next time. And so it's this idea of like kaizen or incremental

progress, like making things a little bit better along the way. And so there's a similar mindset for

like religion. So like Buddhism came in and one of the reasons that Buddhism was kind of successful

like was that it was integrated into the Shinto system that was already there. And and Confucianism came in and provided a philosophical backing for these things and philosophical structure.

And so, you know, your average person is heavily influenced by Confucian thought, but they don't know it.

They're, it's not like they're self-consciously Confucianist. It's just there. They take part in Shinto

and they take part in Buddhist rituals, but they're not religious. Because religion is kind of

a faux pa and it's kind of this absolute thing that you're supposed to do. And that really comes a

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