U.S. Christianity 'sparkling clean' of persecution,
torture
Perhaps you have always dreamed of being a missionary and traveling
to exotic lands to convert the pagan masses. When you were a child, the most exciting Sunday was when missionaries
on furlough would visit your congregation and talk about the ungodly
people they ministered to and the converts who were doing so well.
They would show you souvenirs from their outpost, and slides of
almost naked people. And when you went to bed that night, the
dreams curled around your brain and left you numb. By morning,
you were more pious and determined to give your life to Jesus
and the mission field. Of course, over the years other things have captured your attention,
such as getting an education and a good job. You forgot the mission
field when you bought that house and those cars. Every time you
fly off for a great vacation on a peaceful isle, the dream of
being a missionary fades into a deeper pit of corrupted dreams. Well, now we're hearing that it is OK that you forgot about
being a missionary because most of the people who get converted
and begin to live a Christian life are probably going to be captured,
tortured and killed. In the United States we can attend the church of our choice
and no one blinks an eye. But in some countries, every person
who worships Jesus Christ is followed, usually persecuted and
often martyred for the faith. Churches are closed and sometimes destroyed. Christian schools
and especially seminaries are special targets and have been shut
down in many countries. People who are prisoners for the faith
are often denied food and die from malnutrition. Many devout Christians
are tortured until they convert to the religion sanctioned by
the government. In North Korea, it is reported by international agencies that
the government has put thousands of Christians to death and closed
many of the nation's churches. In Pakistan, blasphemy laws are
used to suppress Christian teaching and preaching, according to
Faithworks magazine, a bimonthly publication of the Associated
Baptist Press. If you are a world traveler, it is possible to avoid these
places. Even if you visit some of the nations where believers
are persecuted, you may never know about the government's war
against faith. Even if you live in a nation where Christians are
persecuted you may not know about the suffering, because it is
a secretive system. It is not until those tortured souls escape
to a free world that their stories are broadcast for the world
to see. When I hear about these people who suffer day after day for
the faith, when I see their faces in church publications and read
their stories, I am absolutely astonished that the Christian faith
is so different depending upon where you live. Here in the United States, in Canada, nobody suffers for the
faith. Sure, there are preachers who are out looking for jobs
because they crossed the wrong deacon. But for the most part,
years go by and not one believer suffers for the faith. Nobody gets chased through the streets because they knelt in
prayer. No one gets beaten by police because they carried a Bible.
No one in the United States has been killed because they worshiped
in the wrong sanctuary. Do you know how unusual that is? The Christianity we embrace in this country is completely sanitized
and so clean that it is barely recognizable from that faith found
in the Bible. How has that happened - that we have allowed the
earthy and bloody story of God's salvation to become a story for
afternoon tea? We are all guilty because the real truth is so
hard to believe and so impossible to live. We sit in our sparkling clean sanctuaries and never think of
the people huddled in windowless rooms chanting softly the same
liturgies and praying the same prayers and reading the same scripture.
We never think of how dangerous, how utterly foolish it is for
a preacher to whisper his or her sermon to a tiny room full of
people. How could we ever understand how filled with danger that
activity might be or how stupid it would be to declare faith in
a public place? We simply cannot imagine what believers suffer around the world.
And, it would be my guess, in most congregations there would be
a terrible rumble, if some brave preacher tried to tell you about
the suffering and the martyrs who die for your right to worship.
Clark D. Morphew
Posted For July 17, 1999