The “V” Word That Was Once Central To The Christian Life But Which Has Been Expunged (Hint: It’s Not “Victory”)

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Pastor Foley

Logo 071414

What distinguishes persecuted Christians from Christians in the rest of the world?

Why do reports of persecution of Christians in so-called “free” countries feel so much less compelling than reports emanating from countries like North Korea and Iraq?

Why do Christians in so-called “free” countries respond to reports of North Korean and Iraqi Christians with awe, respect, and pity but rarely emulation?

The answer begins with the letter “V”.

The Bible never uses the word “vulnerable,” but the word fairly well exudes from every page.

  • The Israelites march out of Egyptian slavery…and into desert-driven thirst and hunger.
  • David stands before the towering, menacing Goliath…with no armor and a few stones.
  • Jesus stands before Pilate as he asks, “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”

Because we have the benefit of reading these stories from outside the book, it is often our reflexive belief that of course the Israelites were safe in God’s provision (we can hardly believe they grumbled amidst God’s mighty miracles!), and of course Goliath was the vulnerable one, not David (we marvel that Saul and the Israelite army were such cowards!), and of course Jesus, not Pilate, had all the power (we chuckle at Pilate’s hubris!).

All of these reactions are correct, of course. And yet they overlook one very central truth:

God’s perfect provision is only discernible to us in these cases because the aforementioned figures entered into absolute vulnerability. 

And vulnerability is something that those of us in “free” nations–unbelievers as well as believers–are resolutely committed to avoiding. In Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, Scott Bader-Saye suggests that safety–defined as the absence of vulnerability–is implicitly accepted as life’s great good, goal, and inalienable right.

So completely do we embrace safety as life’s great good and goal, in fact, that our orientation toward persecuted Christians is to believe that their sacrifices are not the normal Christian life in action but are in fact either supererogatory (i.e., truly above and beyond the norm) or tragic (i.e., calling forth our deepest concern that these things are a violation of the norm). We embrace instinctively the idea that all Christians deserve a safe place to practice their faith in peace, and that political and even military power should of course be used to enforce this great good and goal.

But we would do well to stop and think deeply about whether the God who told the Apostle Paul “My power is made perfect in weakness” esteems safety and the absence of vulnerability in the same way and to the same degree as we do.

The story of the rich young ruler, for example, may be a story about something deeper than money. Christians often debate just how generalizable is Jesus’ command to “sell all you have, give it to the poor, and come and follow me.” We often comfort ourselves with the reality that Jesus did not repeat this call in this same way to anyone else. The moral of the story, we like to say, is not that money is bad but that we should not put our faith in it.

But what if the issue is not money but vulnerability? What if what Jesus is after is us moving from “safety”–which we define as freedom from vulnerability–to vulnerability itself, on the knowledge that Christian growth requires it? What if the reason why illness, poverty, job loss, and brokenness are such effective precursors to Christian growth is because as long as there is something or someone else for us to rely on, that is precisely what we’ll do?

To go a little further down the rabbit hole, what if Jesus’ calls for the rich to share with the poor aren’t designed to equitably redistribute wealth (toward a world from which vulnerability has been expunged) but rather to consign all of us to a life that eschews worldly standards of safety in favor of divine ones?

Jeffrey Tranzillo suggests that the opposite of voluntary vulnerability is moral vulnerability. In other words, the inevitable consequence of a life rooted in safety is a life that regularly sways into sin–whether fear, covetousness, lust, or any of the other concupiscent indiscretions in which we engage to comfort ourselves. Tranzillo goes on to make an equally remarkable insight, namely, that among those who have no choice whether to be vulnerable or not in a given situation, the ones who accept and embrace their vulnerability experience no diminishing of their personhood, in contrast to those who resent their vulnerability and would wish it away if given the slightest opportunity.

All of this leads us rather quickly back to the questions about persecuted Christians that rattle us so much. How are persecuted Christians different than the rest of us? They are different because not only are they vulnerable, but they accept and embrace their vulnerability rather than shedding it or seeking to shed it; i.e., they act with the conviction that God’s strength really is made perfect in weakness (even weakness unto death). Why do stories of persecution of “free” Christians not move us nearly so much? Because so little vulnerability is evident in their lives (despite their often insistent protestations of the magnitude of their victimhood). Why do we respond to persecuted believers in awe and pity but not emulation?

Because, just like the rich young ruler, the thought of voluntary movement from safety to profound comprehensive life vulnerability as a precursor to meaningful discipleship leaves us walking away, grieving.

Posted in persecution | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

How The Martyrs Awaken And Inspire Us

Posted on June 11, 2015 by tdillmuth

A Ransom For WurmbrandAnutza Moise was a close family friend of Rev. Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand.  Her short book, A Ransom for Wurmbrand, tells of her personal experience with them before, during and after their imprisonments. In the conclusion to her book, she wrote a simple, yet powerful ending:

We must work ceaselessly to help those oppressed by the communists, and at the same time to win the communists and atheists for Christ.  We must also awaken our fellow Christians and those of other religions (A Ransom for Wurmbrand, 126).

Even though this book was published over forty-years ago, Moise recognized that the church around the world was “sleeping” and that the answer was somehow related to sharing the stories of suffering and martyred Christians.  In other words, their faithfulness in the midst of persecution inspires and equips Christians to live out their own faith in whatever context they are living.  Martyrs’ stories are not a way to promote emotions of pity in the church but rather a way to inspire Christians to imitate those who have given their lives for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Moise went on to say,

There is only one way to do this: by allowing ourselves to be so filled with the Spirit of our Lord and Master in every part of our lives that we cannot fail to draw many after us (126).

The Holy Spirit that’s present in our own lives is just as important as the Holy Spirit’s presence in the lives of the martyrs.  We don’t awaken anyone with emotional stories, chic newsletters, or well-designed PowerPoints. Moise closed by saying that fulfilling this calling

Is the task of the many, the small, the weak, the insignificant, whose duty it is simply to get on with the job which lies to hand. God used me, one of His smallest, to ransom the Wurmbrands.  In their turn, they, two of His giants, have been used by Him to start a might work whose results cannot be calculated this side of Heaven (126).

The work of Voice of the Martyrs is not meant only for leaders like Rev. Wurmbrand or Rev. Foley, but it’s meant for you and me.  And the challenging and inspiring stories of the martyrs are not meant only to be read by folks like us, but they are meant to teach us obedience, faithfulness and boldness. That is true in both the lives of the giants and the small, the weak, and the insignificant.

Posted in persecution | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Mosul: A Call To Interfaith Reconnection

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Pastor Foley

Logo 071414The terror-laden flight of Christians and Yazidis from Mosul and, more broadly, from Iraq and Syria, is a tragedy of near inestimable loss. Their story of being driven from their ancestral lands due to their faith has been well chronicled. But another loss in Mosul has drawn much less notice internationally. It may ultimately prove to be the most grievous loss of all.

The name “Mosul” means “connecting place” in Arabic. Indeed, for more than a millennium Mosul has been a place where Christians, Muslims, Yazidis and others have connected peacefully. There have been periods of conflict, but there have also been more than a dozen centuries filled with small acts of neighbor love and Good Samaritanism. As Iraqi Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael I and others have noted, these acts have accreted to form a unique and shared mosaic of interfaith commerce, education, and art. It is why there were monasteries and libraries filled with thousands of books considered historic and important to Mosul as a whole, as well as jointly valued cultural landmarks for ISIS to burn down. It is also why—largely unreported—some of the Sunni Arab Muslim residents of Mosul continue to undertake dangerous acts of kindness on behalf of their few remaining (and even departed) neighbors from different ethnic and religious groups.

For centuries, the Christians of Mosul have in many ways been even more connected to their Muslim and Yazidi neighbors than to their Christian brothers and sisters worldwide. At a time when relations between Christians and Muslims are increasingly flaring into open hostility around the world, the people of Mosul—Christian, Yazidi, and Muslim together—stood as ancient and enduring testimony to the possibility of loving our neighbors of different faiths.

Alarmingly, this testament may be lost even before it is recognized outside Mosul. While in our global Christian communion we have decried the work of ISIS as a tragedy against Christians, we have not yet recognized the work of ISIS as a serious blow to interfaith peace globally. Were ISIS to be defeated and order restored, but were Christians and Yazidis only re-provisioned and resettled to safer lands, we would still have lost something precious beyond worth: A connecting place.

Reconnecting Mosul and other similar interfaith communities in Iraq and Syria will require all of us. First and foremost, it will require the people in these communities themselves—the displaced and those who have remained—to be willing to bear one another’s burdens and together work through their pain, uncertainties, and concerns on a path to repentance and reconciliation, with the full support of their global faith communities. It will require the global Christian communion to reconnect with Middle Eastern Christians—both those remaining in the region and those who have relocated—and affirm that their efforts to follow Christ and love their different-faith neighbors in the cradle of Christianity are of great importance to the wider church. Finally, it will require Christians and Muslims around the world to connect and cooperate in an unprecedented joint mobilization of resources in support of these reconnection efforts.

Creating a welcoming environment for Mosul’s Christians and Yazidis to return to their homes and reconnect with their Muslim neighbors may seem utopian. At present ISIS is formidable. Those who fled Mosul harbor deep distrust of their former neighbors and even of Kurds who came to their rescue, only to withdraw and leave them undefended in the face of the ISIS invasion. National security forces are notably weak. But as Rabbi Michael Lerner writes, “Sometimes the only truly ‘realistic’ position is precisely to be prophetic and utopian.”

Our moral imagination is always imperiled by acts of terror. We reject terror by thinking and acting in hope and love according to the full exercise of our faith, and by calling on others to do the same. We need connecting points like Mosul more than we yet realize, to guide us into a future where an increasing number of Christians will live as minorities in cities and countries around the world.

Therefore,

  • Let us commit to personally study and build upon the history of Christian/Muslim cooperation in connecting places like Mosul, which testify to the love of neighbor to which we are jointly called by the best of our faith traditions.
  • Let us ask Christians and Muslims in the Middle East and the diaspora to share their experiences of both cooperation and persecution so that the global Christian communion, the Muslim world, and the entire international community can learn how to sustain, support, and integrally restore minority faith populations to newly peaceful, vibrant, and cooperative interfaith communities.
  • Let us challenge Christian and Muslim congregations and aid organizations as well as international NGOs and government agencies to undertake initiatives of reconnection, not only refugee or resettlement or coexistence projects, on behalf of the entire population of Mosul and the many other places in Iraq and Syria that need this type of help, with the goal of learning how to act together as agents of reconnection and reconciliation in these and other seemingly intractable cases of displacement.

In sum, let us call upon all parties to uphold and promote the free exercise of faith in all the connecting places of the world.

Posted in interfaith, Louis Raphael I, Mosul, Muslim, Rabbi Michael Lerner, religious freedom, Sunni, Yazidi | Tagged | 1 Comment