Ethnic Cleansing

 

 

 

"In many parts of the world, to be caught with the Holy Bible can seal your fate..."

This past week we saw yet another massacre of innocent Christians in Africa. It was not done in Syria by ISIL, this time it was done in Kenya by al-Shabab. A bus was stopped and sixty people were taken off by armed zealots. Those from the bus who could not prove they were Muslim enough, were executed. Simple as that. Being a Christian in many parts of the world today is still a death sentence.

Yesterday at the Church Leadership Training I attended, the question was asked by the trainer how many of us owned one Bible. All the hands went up. Then how many owned two Bibles. Again, all the hands went up. The man conducting the training then told a story. He was at a leadership conference in another city and a pastor from Indonesia was there. Indonesia is way over 90% Muslim. This pastor could not believe how easy and safe it was in America to own a Bible. There is no risk in doing so. In many countries, not so much.

The trainer then went on to say that in some areas of Africa, it is very risky to own a Bible. So much so, that once a Bible is smuggled into a village, the pages are torn out and distributed to different people in the village. Each person is to memorize at least one page of the Bible and then destroy the page. Then during a worship service, if something from (for example) Ephesians 6 needed to be read, the person who has memorized that chapter would recite it.

I was reminded of when I was employed by a large church towards the end of my working career. One of the youth directors was going to resign and take his family to a country in the Baltics to do mission work. About six months before he left, he came into my office with a strange request. He asked me to go into the church's website and intentionally misspell his name. When I asked why, he told me it was for the safely of his family and the people he would be staying with. If his trail could be (electronically) tied back to a Christian church, he, his family, and his friends, could be in grave danger.

Max Lucado, a noted Christian author, has written about "dangerous Christianity". In America, many of us take our faith for granted. However in many areas of the world, being a Christian is not for the faint of heart. Max tells us our spiritual journey should be looked at more like a battleship and less like a cruise ship. The forces of darkness would like nothing better than to have Christians become totally insular and then to eschew the teachings of Matthew 28 (The Great Commission).

This morning my wife and I will go to the nine o'clock service at our church. As we worship, I will reflect back on what I learned yesterday. How blessed we are, that we can worship our God in safety. I will also reflect back on something else I learned yesterday - the teachings from Matthew 9:37: 

Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few".

Time for me to get moving - there is work to do.