Do the Word

Teaching the discipleship practices of the North Korean church (and other underground churches throughout history) to Christians in the rest of the world is central to our calling at Seoul USA/.W.  So anytime someone asks me, “How can we help North Korean Christians?” my response is always, “Help them? How about letting them help us?” This always puzzles inquirers quite a bit.

That’s because our tendency is to see Christians in persecuting countries as desperately needing the help of Christians in free countries. For example, Western Christians, when learning of oppression like in North Korea, naturally turn towards petitioning God to release North Koreans from their persecution. “Grant them the freedom to worship you openly,” we might ask. And even though we rarely pray it, our minds complete the sentence, “…just like us.”

But as is so often the case, when we are commanded to remember those who are suffering or in prison as if we were suffering or in prison also, Scripture turns our concepts completely upside down – or right side up, depending on how you look at it.

A careful reading of the verse reveals a call for us to imitate, rather than pity, Christians who are suffering for the sake of the Name. The idea is that they are the seniors and we the juniors in the call to imitate Christ. Our junior status and our need to learn from someone other than ourselves becomes increasingly clear these days given that:

• the average Christian household in the United States owns nine Bibles and is actively shopping for more, yet Biblical illiteracy continues to escalate among evangelical Christians;
• the average American church spends 97 cents of every dollar it takes in on those who give it;
• church attendance in many of the “free” countries of the West is now between two and five percent, and still slipping (as it also is in the United States, where we are now below twenty percent);
• The church is growing in many places where persecution is quite intense.

So it is with no disrespect at all to the churches in countries with freedom of religion that we recognize the importance of thinking deeply about which way the “help” arrow should be turned as we contemplate our relationship to Christians in countries without freedom of religion.

(For a comprehensive consideration of this question, let me point you to my stump speech on the subject, a message called How to be as Free as a North Korean Christian.)

But just as we should not lament the life of North Korean Christians, neither should we lionize them. If we lionize them, we will be tempted not to learn from them. We will find ourselves saying things like, “I could never survive persecution like that…”

And it would be a mistake to let the matter rest there, since the Apostle Paul promises that “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” When someone comes up to me after I speak at a Voice of the Martyrs regional conference and says, “Oh, I’m so thankful I don’t have to endure persecution,” I always ask, “When was the last time you proclaimed the gospel at work or to your neighbor?” And inevitably they respond, “Oh, I haven’t done that.” So persecution is not a possible future for American Christians; it is the present reality for Christians in every country throughout history who are seeking to live a godly life in Christ Jesus. And a good way to learn how to deal with it is to examine the liminal case: North Korea.

And that’s what this six-part series is all about: What can we learn about proclaiming the gospel from North Korean Christians? How, in other words, can they help us?

That is the topic of pre-eminent interest in my life, and I look forward to sharing about it with you more fully in the posts to come. Feel free to ask any question that would be helpful to you by leaving a comment below; I’ll be happy to reply. And in the meantime be sure to check out our Seoul USA website for more information about ministry in, to, from, and with North Korean Christians.

Most discipleship problems are the result of inadequate or anemic concepts of salvation. That is to say, one of the inherent problems with the Sinner’s Prayer is that it sets the stage for a very therapeutically-oriented, self-focused form of discipleship–a contradiction in terms since, as  Augustine, Luther, and Barth noted, “homo incurvatus” (the inwardly bent human) is the very essence of sin.

John Wesley described this self-oriented kind of salvation in a single word: vulgar.

By salvation I mean, not barely (according to the vulgar notion) deliverance from hell, or going to heaven, but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health … the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth

As you proclaim the Gospel, therefore, strenuously resist the temptation to feed the inward curvature of the hearer. That inward curvature will tempt you to define and describe salvation as God’s effort to meet their particular felt need.

Remember: Salvation is what the Scripture says it is, not what the hearer needs it to be. What the hearer needs more than anything, though he or she cannot realize it (and though often we don’t recognize it), is to be catapulted out of the fatal orbit-around-self and into the life giving orbit-around-God. That’s what proclaiming the Gospel is all about.

Salvation is big. Don’t introduce it to sinners by handing them the wrong end of the telescope. Otherwise, even if they say yes to what you offer, you can expect to soon see your  telescope tossed haphazardly into their inwardly-curved toy box right alongside all the other self-help therapies with which they dabbled and have grown bored and disenchanted.

A modest proposal for using the Lord’s Prayer rather than the Sinner’s Prayer when leading people to Christ:

• Of the two prayers, the Lord’s Prayer is the one that actually appears in Scripture as an actual prayer.
• Of the two prayers, the Lord’s Prayer is the one Jesus commands us to pray, especially as we are learning how to. That gives it the “Great Commission” edge, i.e., Jesus directs us to teach everything he commanded us, and the Lord’s Prayer, unlike the Sinner’s Prayer, is on that list.
• The Lord’s Prayer has all the important elements that people like in the Sinner’s Prayer–e.g., us addressing God as our Father; us ending our rebellion (“hallowed be your name”) and submitting to his rule and reign (“for thine is the kingdom”); us confessing our sins (“forgive us our sins”)–but without the individualism and egocentricity of the Sinner’s Prayer. That is to say, the Lord’s Prayer is far more focused on God. If you’re unconvinced, just count the number of times “I” and “you” appear in each prayer. Or, to say it a little differently,
• It is possible to pray the Sinner’s Prayer sincerely and remain entirely absorbed in your own life. It is, however, impossible to pray the Lord’s Prayer sincerely and remain entirely absorbed in your own life.
• Even the way forgiveness is addressed in the Lord’s Prayer reminds us that asking for God’s forgiveness when we are not willing to recognize our need to forgive others is a bit, you know, hypocritical, self-serving, and insincere.

So as you proclaim the Gospel this month, and as you lead people through the process of repentance, baptism, and discipleship, try replacing the Sinner’s Prayer with the Lord’s Prayer at the front end of the process. You’ll find that while the Sinner’s Prayer typically leads the one praying to a big sigh of relief and to lots of good intentions to check into this church stuff, the Lord’s Prayer is nothing less than the express on-ramp to a Christian life of Whole Life discipleship.

Of course, if you don’t like using the Lord’s Prayer for this purpose, you can always try the Tax Collector’s Prayer: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Unlike the Sinner’s Prayer, that one’s actually in the Scripture, too.