This year’s IDOP prayer video is a powerful one, but for me it raised a big question…
How Can We Tell Hard Stories?
By Shane Bennett
Can I invite you into my confusion? Here’s the story: This weekend at church we commemorated the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church by praying for believers in oppressive situations and watching a video produced by Voice of the Martyrs. Perhaps your church did something like this as well. I admit that the global persecuted church is not usually at the top of my agenda. In fact, I’d do well to give more thought and action to these issues. In the meantime, I’m grateful that God is raising up many from all over to pray and advocate for our sisters and brothers suffering for their faith.
Here’s my problem. The video we watched, Hannalie, was well done, intense, gripping, and heart-breaking. A lovely family moved from South Africa to minister in Afghanistan. The father and two teenage children were murdered by Afghans, leaving the mom a childless widow. The tragedy was palpable. The leader in our church who prayed after the video spoke to God through tears. The congregation was visibly moved.
Moved to pray? I hope so. But what else?
Moved to hate Muslims. Confirmed that our suspicions are valid, our anger justified. The logic is hard to escape. God called these dear people to this risky situation and they got killed. But as good Christians, we hesitate to blame God for their deaths. (Although if the children’s grandparents didn’t hesitate, we’d be hard pressed to blame them.) You can’t blame the dad; he’s dead. And who can blame a widow? So we blame the Muslims. And because we’re not too sophisticated in our understanding (and they are brown, after all) we blame all Muslims. It is desperately difficult not to extrapolate, to allow the actions of a few to characterize the attitudes and intentions of the rest.
I’m confused because honestly, Muslims did this terrible thing. And Muslims have lately done a number of terrible things, sometimes clearly in the name of Islam. Sometimes directly targeting Christians. So how do we tell those stories fairly? How can we tell them honestly, without contributing to growing fear and anger toward Muslims?
I don’t know. Do you have ideas? Good examples? Should we be balanced in our depiction of bad deeds? It seems absurd to give equal time to bad things Christians have done, although doing so might be less difficult than it first appears. I don’t think we should avoid telling such stories either. To be clear, I don’t wish to question the motivation of Voice of the Martyrs. I’m simply expressing concern about the results of telling the story in the way they did. Maybe there are better ways. I’d love your input.
In the meantime, words of Jesus ring in my ears:
“Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.”
“I’m sending you as sheep among wolves. Be as wise as serpents. As innocent as doves.”
“I’m sending you as the Father has sent me.”
And my prayer for dear believers risking their lives for Jesus is this:
Holy Father, give strength, courage, and hope to your dear children living in challenging situations. May the aroma of Christ emanate from them and the joy of Jesus permeate every molecule of their being. May their lives and deaths (should they happen) result in the purposes of God going forward mightily and the kingdom of God arriving fully.
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Thank you Shane for this thoughtful article. I agree with you. We need to learn to pray for both the persecuted church and the millions of Muslims who are even more victimized by terrorism, totalitarian regimes, and prejudice. If anything, those who share a common story of suffering violence should be more able to experience friendship which opens the door for sharing the life and peace of Jesus. We experienced this with our Muslim friends in Kenya after the US Embassy was bombed and thousands of people impacted in Kenya. I wrote about it in this article https://issuu.com/prismmagazine/docs/whats-so-radical-about-loving-mus
Thank you again for challenging us to reflect as we pray.
John: Thank you for the kind and thoughtful comment. I love when our common stories opens the door for conversations about Jesus. I look forward to reading your article. Thanks for mentioning it.
For Christians audiences to consider:
If someone claiming to be Christian bombs an abortion clinic in the name of Jesus, do we use them to characterise all Christians? If a ‘Christian’ commits mass murder of 77 people in Norway because he doesn’t like the liberal government policies, do we blame Christians? No, we call both of them crazy lone wolves, and not really Christians. What if it was a ‘Christian’ group… an armed group protesting on governmental land in Oregon? What if it was a ‘Christian’ militia acting against a ‘corrupt’ American government in the wake of the US presidential elections… which some were training for? In those case we have all sorts of excuses, to make it different from terrorism – even noble, or to say they weren’t really Christian, or weren’t acting in a way consistent with Christianity.
The militia issue was a pretty close-to-home possibility last week. How many Christians had mixed feelings about it? Even if we say that terrorism is unjustified in Christianity under any circumstances, we have a clear way of understanding the Bible and a reasonable way of explaining it. But most Muslims are not that clear on how to understand or explain the principles of interpreting the Qu’ran, leaving it to the scholars. They are like Christians before the Reformation, before the Bible was being read and interpreted by the average Christian – poorly literate enough to have trouble making a case to others. And the rules of interpretation seem not to be articulated, really, by Muslims for outsiders. If Muslim scholars explain the proper interpretation of Islam and a minority disagree, do we Christians assume we know the Islamic rules of interpretation better than they do and we can determine who represent true Islam and who doesn’t? Would we accept that sort of judgment about Christianity from non-Christians?
If people respond with upset or anger to the previous fairness exercise, it seems likely that they fall into one of two camps:
Behind this is fear. How can we name their fear, acknowledge it is real and valid, and then ask how God wants us to address our fear in a way that relies on his trustworthiness and loves our Muslim neighbour?
If they are not in touch with fear, then they may be the sort of person who habitually applies their mind to understand everything, be able to categorise it, and in some way therefore to ‘control’ it through the act of understanding. We need to acknowledge we are not in control, and may not be able to understand to our satisfaction, at least if we don’t access a balance of resources and approaches. Again, ask how God wants us to address our need to understand and control in a way that relies on his trustworthiness and loves our Muslim neighbour?