My thoughts

Warning: this blog is random pondering with no real conclusion.

While reading Silence, I had no issues with grasping or connecting with the idea of persecution itself. I plan to one day serve as a missionary, and persecution is something I have to seriously be aware of and consider. However, the picture of Jesus and the relevance of said picture honestly baffled me. I am aware that I am coming from a protestant mindset, but no matter what I do, I cannot wrap my mind around the significance it holds for these people. All my life, I have pretty much been told that no one really has a truly accurate depiction of Jesus, and although I am not 100% certain of this fact, this makes it even harder to understand why there is so much importance placed on a picture that kind of looks like what we think Jesus looked like. To me, it looks almost as if they are worshiping the image of Christ rather than Christ himself. So while I feel in some ways that stepping on the picture wouldn't be a big deal, I also feel that in the context of Silence, trampling the picture would be wrong because it is, in that scenario, denying Christ. On the other hand, I feel as if it could be equally as bad to NOT step on the picture for the wrong reasons.