Sasaki Agency Series, Vol. 02: Pitch-Black Infatuation by Rokakoen & Cal Hampton

Author:Rokakoen & Cal Hampton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yen On

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Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Matthew 5:3. One of the most famous of Jesus’s teachings. Aoyama wasn’t officially a minister yet and wasn’t used to being in the position of teaching anything to anyone. Somehow, though, he’d ended up running a Bible study-cum-English language class, and it was actually quite popular.

It had started as a course where children could learn basic grammar and vocabulary using the Bible as an aide. But soon, housewives with time on their hands during the day who wanted to better themselves and older people who’d retired and needed something to do also showed interest in it. The demand was great enough that Aoyama had established a class for adults on weekday afternoons.

His sister Shouko was a qualified minister and good at teaching to boot, but the congregants all insisted they wanted Aoyama to take charge. Apparently, the reason for this was just that he looked somewhat Caucasian. Mr. Toshioka, an old man who’d been coming to the church since his grandfather’s day, had said, “It’s better to learn from a native, if that’s the word I want.”

Obviously, Aoyama wasn’t a native speaker. Far from it. But he must have given off the impression he was one. Most microwave dinners were basically the same on the inside, but the ones with popular characters on them were bound to sell better. It was the same thing here. To have people select him but not necessarily because of his abilities gave him mixed feelings.

There probably weren’t any people coming to the class who really wanted to improve their English skills. What they actually wanted was a meaningful way to use their spare time. And that quest for meaning made them serious about it in their own way.

“Teacher, I have a question.”

“Oh, yes?”

He turned in the direction of the voice to see Emi Shimamoto raising her hand. The way several stray strands of her hair fell across her face made her look very delicate and pretty.

“It’s about this ‘the poor in spirit’ part. We’d say kokoro no mazushii hito in Japanese, I think. Doesn’t that mean someone who’s mean or stingy? Why should heaven belong to people like that?”

Her question wasn’t related to English per se, but it was a reasonable one. Aoyama had wondered the same thing when he was a boy. He’d only understood once he read a book called THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE by Eugene H. Peterson, an American minster. This was a new translation from the original Greek and Hebrew designed to be easier to understand for modern readers. In that translation, “the poor in spirit” had been rephrased to put more emphasis on people who lacked support for their spiritual convictions.

He knew he’d just be parroting Peterson’s words, but it seemed like the best answer.

“It might be better to think of this passage as ‘blessed are those who are persecuted because of their righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ That should make it easier to understand.

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