Love and Hate

I read a passage from Bonhoeffer's Discipleship and I was struck by the timeliness of his words. He was commenting on Matthew 5:43-48 from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus told His disciples to love their enemies.

Instead of trying to summarize his thoughts, I thought it would be best to simply quote the passage at length.

The prayers of neighborly love and of non-revenge will be especially important in the struggle fought by God toward which we are moving and in which to some extent we have already been engaged for years. On one side, hatred is fighting, and on the other, love. Every Christian soul must seriously prepare for this. The time is coming in which everyone who confesses the living God will become, for the sake of that confession, not only an object of hatred and fury. Indeed, already we are nearly that far along now. The time is coming when Christians, for the sake of their confession, will be excluded from 'human society,' as it is called, hounded from place to place, subjected to physical attack, abused, and under some circumstances killed. The time of widespread persecution of Christians is coming, and that is actually the real meaning of all the movements and struggles of our time. Those opponents intent upon destroying the Christian church and Christian faith cannot live together with us, because they see in all our words and all of our actions that their own words and deeds are condemned, even if ours are not directed against them. And they are not wrong in seeing this and feeling that we are indifferent to their condemnation of us. They have to admit that their condemnation is completely powerless and negligible. They sense that we do not relate to them at all, as would be quite all right with them, on the basis of mutual blaming and quarreling. And how are we supposed to fight this fight? The time is approaching when we - no longer as isolated individuals, but together as congregations, as the church - shall lift our hands in prayer. The time is coming when we - as crowds of people, even if they are relatively small crowds among the many thousands-times-thousands of people who have fallen away - will loudly confess and praise the crucified and resurrected Lord, and his coming again. And what prayer, what confession, what song of praise is this? It is a prayer of most intimate love for those who are lost, who stand around us and glare at us with eyes rolling with hatred, some of whom have already even conspired to kill us. It is a prayer for peace for these distraught and shaken, disturbed and destroyed souls, a prayer for the same love and peace that we ourselves enjoy. It is a prayer which will penetrate deeply into their souls and will tug at their hearts with a much stronger grip than they can manage to tug at our hearts, despite their strongest efforts to hate. Yes, the church which is truly waiting for its Lord, which really grasps the signs of the time of final separation, such a church must fling itself into this prayer of love, using all the powers of its soul and the total powers of its holy life.

Bonhoeffer wrote of the situation of the church in Germany under the Nazis. He could have just as well been describing the situation of the church in 21st century America. These words are timely and need to be heard. Persecution is coming, but our response to hate must be love, because love is our greatest weapon.

Grace and Drudgery

I read something this morning from Oswald Chambers that got me thinking.

BTW if you're not a reader (first of all you're probably not reading this) but if you're not a reader you should be. Through reading we can access the wisdom and counsel of a multitude of men and women both living and dead who can assist us in our pursuit of Jesus.

Sorry about the mini-rant, now we can move on. What was I saying? Oh right, I read something this morning from Oswald Chambers that got me thinking. He made the following observation:

Walking on water is easy to someone with impulsive boldness, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is something altogether different... We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises - human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus.

I read those words and thought, "Wow! He's right." When we experience crises we instinctively turn to God because we recognize that we cannot handle the situation. As the old saying goes, "There are no atheists in foxholes." Crises, dangers, and emergencies heighten our awareness of our need for God. But no one lives in a constant state of crisis or emergency. By their very nature these situations are exceptional.

So what happens to us when we are not in the midst of crisis. Let's take a look at scripture. In Deuteronomy 6, Moses told the people of Israel to be on their guard once they entered and conquered the land of Canaan and were at peace (Deuteronomy 6:10-12). He warned them that once the crisis of the conquest of the land had passed and they settled comfortably into their new life in Canaan that they would be susceptible to forgetting God. Crisis heightens our awareness of our need for God. Routine dulls that same awareness.

Thus Chambers' admonition that it requires the supernatural grace of God to live "an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus." We all understand that in the times of trial our devotion to Christ will be tested, but we must also see that a routine life of every day drudgery is often just as a big a test our faith as the times of crisis.

Most Christians will not have a life story that would make it into Foxe's Book of Martyrs or even warrant an article in The Voice of the Martyrs, but every Christian will experience the monotony of routine, every day life. Understand that it requires God's supernatural grace both to "walk on water" and to walk the every day paths of ordinary life.

Is It Wrong to Ask to Be Spared from Persecution?

As Americans, we are unfamiliar with most kinds of persecution, especially religious persecution. One of the driving motivations in the founding of our nation was the flight from religious persecution in the Old World. And the fact that Americans took possession of an "uninhabited" continent (conveniently ignoring the American Indians already here) meant that any time a group ran into religious persecution they could always pack up and move into the wilderness where they could practice their beliefs unmolested. This all adds up to a history of a people whose fight-or-flight reaction to religious persecution has always been flight.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw this is as a weakness of American Christianity. Because Americans had never been forced to stay put when religious persecution arose (they had always had the option to flee), they had never developed a theology of persecution. This was not the case in Germany and other parts of the world where Christians could not simply flee from persecution but had to stay, endure, and develop an understanding of how persecution related to being a follower of Christ. This in turn had led to the development of a dangerous belief among American Christians, namely, that Christians weren't supposed to endure persecution.

This belief flies in the face of centuries of Christian experience. In fact, the American Christian experience is the exception in regards to persecution, not the rule. The rule throughout the rest of the history of the church is that those who earnestly seek to follow Christ will invite the hostility and persecution of those opposed to God, and these individuals are usually in positions of worldly power. Furthermore, the American Christian experience runs counter to the teachings of scripture which consistently declare that commitment to the cause of Christ will invite opposition and persecution.

But a new day is dawning in America. Two unavoidable facts of history are going to dramatically change the American Christian experience. The first is, there is nowhere left to run. There are no "empty" places left in America (or anywhere else on the planet for that matter, unless you want to live in the uninhabitable polar regions) for Christians to flee to in order to avoid persecution. The days of fleeing instead and staying and facing persecution are over.

The second fact is, the culture is turning against Christianity. Although America hasn't been nearly as Christian as some would like to argue or believe, there is no denying that few nations in history have been as open and friendly to Christianity as America. That is changing. Christianity is losing its favored position in America and is increasingly being viewed with hostility and opposition by those in power.

The net result of these two historical truths? The American church is going to be forced to develop an understanding of persecution, whether it wants to or not. The American Christian experience will change into the common Christian experience throughout history in regards to persecution. In other words, persecution will become the norm for American Christians just like most other Christians around the globe.

I think most of us in America understand this, but what we don't seem to understand or want to accept is that God's hand is in this. Our reaction is to circle the wagons, petition the government, change the laws, and win elections to bring back the America of Ronald Reagan or Dwight Eisenhower. The reality is, that's not going to happen.

Now I'm not saying we should meekly submit to having our freedoms taken away. I believe we have a responsibility to ourselves and more importantly to our children and grandchildren to defend our freedoms, but the American church must see that the ultimate guarantor of our freedom is not the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights. No the ultimate guarantor of our freedom is Jesus Christ. And our ultimate freedom is not religious freedom or freedom of speech.  Our ultimate freedom is freedom from sin, self, and death. We must learn to put our hope not in a 200+ year old, man-made document, but in a 2000+ year old, God-made cross.

This then raises a question, "Should we pray to be spared from persecution or for persecution to stop?" I think it's always a good idea when we have a question to look to scripture. What did the early church do when it came under persecution? How did they pray? The first record that we have of persecution against the church is found in Acts 4. Peter and John had healed a crippled man in the name of Jesus and then had the Jewish leadership command them to no longer speak or teach in Jesus' name under threats of punishment if they did.

When these words were reported back to the church they immediately went into prayer. Here is what they prayed, "Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness" (Acts 4:29). They did not pray to be spared from persecution. They did not pray for the persecution to stop. No, they prayed for God to grant them boldness to continue in the face of persecution. They understood that persecution came with the territory, that it was unavoidable. They knew that they needed strength to endure.

Nik Ripken in his book, The Insanity of God, writes,

We seem to forget that Jesus Himself promised that the world would reject and mistreat His faithful followers just as it rejected Him. Could it be that the only way that Almighty God could actually answer prayers asking Him to end the persecution of believers... would be to stop people from accepting Christ as their Lord and Savior... persecution would end immediately. That would be the only way to completely end persecution.

It sounds like a ridiculous question, but should we really be asking God for the end of persecution? By doing that, we might unknowingly be asking that people not come to faith in Christ!

Ruth and I have seldom encountered a mature believer living in persecution who asked us to pray that their persecution would cease. We have never heard that request. Rather, believers in persecution ask us to pray that "they would be faithful and obedient through their persecution and suffering."

That is a radically different prayer.

American Christians need to stop praying to be shielded from persecution, that's the wrong prayer. We need to start praying that the millions of lost in our country would come to faith in Jesus, even at the cost of our freedom, our wealth, and our very lives. We need to start praying that rather than being spared from persecution, we would have the strength and courage to endure and to remain faithful in the midst of persecution.

We can no longer ignore the truth that persecution is coming. We must accept it and cry out to God to help us endure. We cannot pray for persecution to end AND for people to be saved. They are mutually exclusive. So the question for the American church is, "What's more important to you? The salvation of the lost, or the salvation of your freedom and comfort?" The first is the way of the cross, the second is the way of apostasy.