The Insanity of God...

      There are a lot of issues on my mind today...any number of which I could blog about - good things, tough things, sad things - so I think I will tell you about something that has captured my thoughts (well, most of them anyway) in a way they haven't been captured in a long time.

     

      I just finished a book called The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken. I wasn't sure, originally, that it was a book I wanted to read, but I picked it up anyway and then could hardly put it down. Let me just start by saying...if you are a Christian, you need to read this book. Let me also start with a warning; some Christians I know will pick this book apart and say things like, "That can't happen in our dispensation," or "They're not doing that Biblically." I'm not going to argue with you; I could, but I won't. But before you jump on these things, let me encourage you to focus on the message of the book that Nik wrote and not get bogged down by some of the details that your denomination may or may not take issue with. Those things are not the point of his book. If you get bogged down there, you will miss the greater, beautiful, rebuking, challenging message that we - especially as Western Christians - need to hear.

      Nik Ripken (not his real name for security purposes) spent 10 years working in Somalia in the 1990's during the civil war there. Their main focus was to show the love of Christ by going into the toughest of the tough areas in order to supply much needed relief work. The stories he tells of his years there are some of the most difficult I have ever read. If any place could be termed "God forsaken," it would have been that place. After 10 years of emotionally brutal work - and the death of his son - he took his family back to the States. He also took with him deep and difficult questions about his faith in God and his faith in the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

      These questions led Nik and his wife on an amazing multi-year journey all across the globe to look for answers. Where is God in persecution? How can faith in Jesus be sustained, much less spread, in areas where persecution against followers of Jesus is terrible, brutal, inhumane, and barbarous? Does the Gospel really work? Nik's journey took him to Russia, China, South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa - areas where following Christ (or even being seen with a follower of Christ) can mean imprisonment, torture, and death. What he found shook him to the core.

      Anyone who knows me knows I can't summarize. I can summarize a 200 page book in 400 pages. So instead, I'd like to share with you three lesson I took away from this book; there could be many more. I will start with the lesson I learned, then give a quote from the book, then try to apply it to life in the West.

1. Persecution is not the end of the world. "...the way American believers see persecution is starkly different from the way that believers in Chinese house-church settings see persecution. The suggestion that imprisonment for the faith is equivalent to seminary training, for example, is a startling thought for most American believers....Chinese believers had learned something that Jesus plainly taught: that persecution can actually change a person's faith. Before persecution, a person's faith might look a certain way. After persecution and suffering, however, that faith might look very different. In fact, after persecution, the believer might not even look like the same person, And interestingly, the change might be cause for celebration." (pg. 272) 

       This is difficult for me to wrap my head around. I know it intellectually, but I have a great fear of learning it experientially. Why? Because I tend - like many Americans - to worship safety and security above all else...even above my Savior. But in light of the recent SCOTUS decision legalizing gay marriage in all fifty states, American Christians are going to need to rethink their gut-response to the possibility of persecution. Persecution is NOT the end of the world; in fact, it may do amazing things for the Kingdom. For example, when Mao Zedong declared the establishment of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, Christianity was "shut down" almost overnight. Churches were boarded up or turned into bars and brothels. Christians were imprisoned in labor camps and re-education programs. But today, there are actually over 100,000,000 followers of Jesus, despite 50 years of Communism and oppression. Churches have literally sprung up in prisons nation wide where "countless new converts are discipled." (pp 218-219) Once release, they return home to their own province taking the Gospel with them and either joining already established house churches, or starting new ones. 

       But hear the warning of one Chinese believer: "You can only grow in jail what you take to jail with you. You can only grown in persecutions what you take into it." (pg. 252) How well prepared are we, western Christians? How well do we know the Word? How well do we walk with Jesus? Time and time again, the testimonies shared with Dr. Ripken were that scriptures and songs memorized were the things that helped jailed and tortured believers keep their sanity...and even their joy.

2. The biggest need of persecuted Christians around the world is not an END to their persecution. "For decades now, many concerned western believers have sought to rescue their spiritual brothers and sisters around the world who suffer because they choose to follow Jesus. Yet our pilgrimage among house churches in persecution convinced us that God may actually want to use them to save us from the often debilitating, and sometimes spiritually fatal effects of our watered-down, powerless western faith." (pg. 304) 

       In fact, what Dr. Ripken and his wife learned was that there is a very simple way to end the persecution...that is to have people STOP sharing their faith. But believers in persecution refuse to do this. And so invariably, the things they ask their Western brothers and sisters to pray for on their behalf is faithfulness and obedience in the midst of their persecution. (pg. 306) What Dr. Ripken saw over and over again was that the power of the Holy Spirit was evident in the lives and circumstances of our persecuted brothers and sisters. One of the stories he tells is about a youth conference held in the early 1950's in Moscow. Attending this week-long conference were over 700 unmarried Christians between the ages of 18 and 31. They were encouraged to gather in small groups to work together and see how much of the four Gospels and how many Christian songs they could recreate. None of these individuals had ever owned a Bible, a song book, or any religious recordings of any kind. By the end of the week, when they put the work of all the groups together, they found the young people had totally recreated all of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with only a few mistakes. They had also, together, been able to remember the words to over 100 songs, choruses, and hymns. (Pg. 165). Later, the pastors who had arranged this were arrested and imprisoned. 

       Nik asked the grandchildren of the men who told this story how much of the Bible they could recreate from memory. "Not much," was the discouraging reply. Here, in the first 10 years of freedom in Russia, believers had lost much. They couldn't even name most of the books of the Bible. Here was Dr. Ripken's observation: "Under communism, the church had found a way to survive and often thrive. Scripture and holy song was its lifeblood. Now, in a much freer day for the church, Scripture and holy song did not seem nearly as important." (pg 165) 

       How important would you say Scripture and songs of faith are to us in the West? Yes, we memorize verses here and there in Sunday School, but how many of take for granted our numerous copies of the Bible? Can we say that the Word is truly hidden in our hearts so that it can be alive and active in our hearts? The old adage, "Familiarity breeds contempt" is true. Are we so comfortable in our freedom that we don't cherish and feed on the Word? Believers in persecution don't enjoy their persecution...but they recognize it for the purifying and maturing agent that it is.

3. Learn to see the miraculous that is around me every day...in the very fact that I can worship in public, we can baptize in public, we each have numerous copies of the Bible, we can share our faith openly. When Dr. Ripken was in China meeting with leaders of the house churches, he heard many miraculous stories...even stories of people being raised from the dead. He mentioned to his new friends how he so wished he could witness this miraculous power of the Holy Spirit with his own eyes. Their reply was astonishing to him. "You see how we are meeting with you here in secret, Dr. Ripken? We have told you how our house churches move from farm to farm, house to house, often at night. Yet you tell us that pastors can preach the Gospel publicly in your country and that believers in America are free to worship wherever and whenever they want. You have watched our leaders rip apart a Bible and divide up the pages, so that every house-church pastor can take home at least a portion of Scripture to share with his people. Yet you tell us that you personally have several different versions of the Bible on a shelf in your office and that you also own many Christian books and regularly read Christian magazines and newspapers. None of us has ever owned our own hymnbook or chorus book to sing from, yet you tell us that your churches have hymnbooks for everyone, that you can purchase them in bookstores or order them by the case from publishers....We have explained how so many of our leaders have been arrested that prisons have become the place where our pastors gain their most important theological education. But you tell us that in America you have special training schools just for Christian students. Yes, you have heard us tell about praying for sick people and how many of them have been miraculously healed. Yet maybe only one in a thousand of those who are healed will give any credit to God or will ever find Jesus as a result. However, you tell us that believers in your country can actually choose to go to Christian doctors and even Christian hospitals if they wish. So tell us, Dr. Ripken, which of these things do you think are the greatest miracles?"

      Oh, how much we take for granted. Because we have never experienced persecution, we forget that our experience is actually not the normal one! We long to see miracles, but God gives them to us every day! We long to see the power of God, but He displays it every day! In fact, it has become so common that we don't even recognize it anymore.

      I will leave you with this one challenge from a Russian follower of Jesus. "Don't ever give up in freedom what we would never have given up in persecution." (pg. 192) Don't give up your love of Scripture and your ability to KNOW it. Don't give up the joy of meeting together and being strengthened by other believers. Don't give up your responsibility and your privilege of sharing Jesus with those around you. "Don't give up in your freedom what we would never have given up in persecution." Ouch.