I was to Japanese visitors to Washington what the Mona Lisa is to Americans visiting Paris.

I think a lot of us share a fear that we and people we love will lose control of our own destinies at the end of life.

In the Middle East, Iraq, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland, and many other places in the world, religion has been so divisive that people have killed one another, believing they were doing the work of God.

We have a God-given commission, but it is not a commission to be self-righteous know-it-alls- quite the contrary. Our work in God's world begins with the acknowledgment that we are not God, and that our most bitter rivals are made in God's image.

The problem is not that Christians are conservative or liberal, but that some are so confident that their position is God's position that they become dismissive and intolerant toward others and divisive forces in our national life.

It is concern that precedes and inspires agendas, and survives when agendas fail, and it causes us to try again, always trying our best, never certain about our own judgment. It is knowing that God's purpose exceeds whatever we can put in an agenda.

Japan is a great nation. It should begin to act like one.