One of my favorite questions posed when talking to high school students here in Japan is "Why do we have to study English in high school?" ("Foreign language" here in Japan usually means "English.") The answer is, of course: because it is a compulsory subject, necessary for graduating high school and getting into a university. Quite a few students do enjoy studying English for reasons of personal interest, and there are always those who can connect the studying of English in high school with their future work or studies - but what about the rest? What about those just doing what is required? I have a special message for these poor students: studying English is a waste of time and money - it's only a matter of time before cellphones come with a program for simultaneous translation. Then, the only thing you will have to learn is how to operate a cellphone.

Needless to say, you don't have to go to a university to learn that. I also know that Nanzan University definitely does not teach some of the creative uses students have found for their cellphones. But at the same time, I don't really believe that learning languages will ever be made obsolete by computer programs and cellphones - you wouldn't expect such an outlook from somebody teaching at Nanzan University, a university with a very good reputation when it comes to teaching foreign languages. In fact, I offer this piece of tongue-in-cheek advice about technological solutions to international communication in order to encourage students think about the real value and meaning of studying a foreign language, to make them think beyond the monetary value attached to knowing and being able to use a foreign language, beyond any ideas they might have about what defines an "educated person." In other words, my aim is to alert them to something absolutely fundamental in education: knowledge isn't just something that accumulates in our heads for future use. Rather, the knowledge we acquire changes us because it contributes to our knowing ourselves.

This is something I've learned myself, time and again, ever since I was assigned to Japan by my religious order, the Divine Word Missionaries. Forty years of living in Japan and the United States has taught me that there are sides to myself that I can only express in accented English or broken Japanese. Studying a foreign language and, especially, living in a foreign country hasn't changed anything about me being "German" (at least, that's what I like to believe) but it has been a great opportunity, a real chance to learn and experience first hand the richness of our common human nature by discovering the stranger within myself. It has given me the opportunity to get a feel of the dazzling variety of words and actions used by human beings for communication. It has become an opportunity to get a deeper understanding of what connects us human beings across boundaries of language and culture.

 My personal experience, my encounter with the diversity of language and culture in Japan and in the United States, has helped me to see that the very differences that seem to separate us are also an expression of the richness of our common human nature. One language, one culture just isn't enough to capture and express all the rich diversity of human life on this earth. As much as I love it, German isn't enough. Nor is Latin is up to the job, even though it has been used for centuries as the common language of the Catholic Church. The Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Koine Greek text of the New Testament are points where we begin our search, but they are not where everything ends.

  Christian faith tradition will always need the diversity of languages and cultures in order to catch the fullness of what the Spirit wants to tell us. Things really worthwhile, I believe, cannot be caught and expressed in just one language