A Message to the West from the Persecuted Church
By Ziya Meral on 18 February 2005
"If I was a pure ""realist"" I suppose I wouldn't have chosen to follow Jesus in a predominantly Islamic Middle Eastern country as a young Muslim boy. Especially at the age of 17, the last thing I would have done would be to stand up for my faith in the presence of strong opposition from my family and from my society. But maybe I am a realist enough to realize that it is, and will always be, difficult to follow Jesus in a fallen world that stands in absolute contradiction to God's truth. I am a realist in the sense that, through traveling widely in countries where Christians are persecuted and having my own continual share of the cup, I have gained a perspective on the harsh realities of religious persecution that the Western church has yet to fully comprehend, let alone respond to with real solidarity.
The causes of religious persecution are complex. To start with, the Cross is in contradiction to the world. It challenges her goals, aspirations and systems. Societies continually develop mechanisms to punish those who break away from the values that form and sustain that particular society. The punishment, in most cases, is exclusion from the benefits of being part of the community, and, more importantly, being separated from the communal identity. For those of us in the East, this is the worst thing that can happen to us. We derive who we are not from our autonomous life style, but from where we are in relation to our societies and how we are perceived by them. In the Middle East this results in a strong paradigm of shame and honor. What is important is not doing right or wrong per se, or fulfilling one's own potential; it is having a good name, a good place in the eyes of people.
So when a Muslim becomes a follower of Jesus, the first reason he or she is persecuted is not the belief in Jesus or any other god. In most cases he or she is persecuted because they are perceived to be betraying their national identity by associating themselves with the West. This means that to be a Christian in the Middle East is seen as a shift — a detachment — from everything that makes a person ""a person."" Within the strong worldview of Islam that separates the world into two camps (""us"" versus ""them""), the convert is now often defined as one of ""them."" To the Islamic fundamentalist's mind, apostates deserve death. Even if they are allowed to dwell within the community, their characters are deemed untrustworthy, their testimonies and arguments invalid. For a single woman, finding an honorable husband becomes impossible, and no family will give their daughters to a disgraceful convert.
The local church is seen as a spy-recruiting centre for the CIA or MI5 that seeks to divide and destroy countries by converting them to a Western religion. Governments make lists of potential betrayers, which limit every aspect of life: studies, work, traveling abroad, and more. When the grave mistakes and ethnocentricism of foreign missionaries are added to this already-difficult context of separation, the convert becomes totally isolated from his or her heritage.
Physical persecution is temporary and heals, but this social persecution remains and takes deeper roots in the soul of the convert. A deep sense of loneliness develops with a deep-seated sense of shame. Families and old friends are now gone; the name of the convert is now an unspoken memory. A lot of converts suffer from depression, which regularly comes back, even if they emigrate to the West. Many of those who stay in the East live continually as social outcasts with a limited range of work and social interaction.
Most of them never experience a bold faith, but they do continue trusting their Lord despite their fear, insecurity and doubt. Most of the time their prayers seem to echo in an empty room and they feel the cold eternal space that never echoes back words of comfort. People go into prisons, never to escape miraculously. People are killed without any last-minute angelic visitations. In the middle of all of this, there is only one assurance, that Jesus is the Truth, even if his love and presence seems to be absent at times. With such assurance comes a longing for what will never find satisfaction in this side of life, a longing for the moment when we will all be at home and there will be no more pain and tears.
No wonder a good amount of converts give up their new faith within the first two years. No wonder we never hear the stories of those who deny Jesus and never associate with Christians again. For the most part, the Western church averts its eyes from these hard cases and instead focuses on stories of the heroic and the miraculous. A certain level of this is understandable; we do want to hear the encouraging works of God, and we should praise Him for these. However our interest in heroic testimonies only exposes us to a small portion of the way God works among the nations.
Those famous persecution stories are not the most common experiences of persecution. There are so many ""heroes"" whose names we will never know. Some persecuted Christians never even get a chance to share their faith with others, and all continually struggle with living pure and holy lives. There is nothing inherently ""otherworldly"" about the persecuted. What separates them from the Western Christians are the external factors that produce extremely difficult realities, which in turn often result in a genuine internalization of what they believe and increased faith, for which they are ready to sacrifice everything. There is no other chance but to trust purely in Christ, to pray and depend daily on his provision and care.
It is clear to me now that the worship that honors God most is not primarily the forty minutes of musical ecstasy, but the lives of his saints who choose to follow and trust in Him even though everything around them melts down. It is clear to me now that the typical Western notion of heroic Christian life — dream endings and feel-good Christianity — is really different than God's. To me, the greatest miracles are not those angelic stories, but those human lives that hold on and worship Christ, no matter what.
For years and years I wondered if it was logical to follow Jesus in such settings. For years and years I wondered what ""abundant life"" meant, since most of the global church was denied the spiritual and physical ""abundance"" that the Western church unreflectively lived in. For years and years I thanked God that I did not become a Christian in the West with a gospel message that offers me a problem-free, happy, middle class lifestyle, for there would be no chance of traveling this far in my own faith journey and in my calling to glorify His name in the most disturbed parts of the world.
With the changes in the global climate after 9/11, it became apparent that persecution of Christians in the non-Western world would likely increase. But when I turned to the pages of my New Testament to see what the word of God has to say about persecution, I did not find guarantees of a peaceful, stable, simple, successful life. Indeed, in some respects I found just the opposite. My Messiah had long ago guaranteed to me that persecution for His name's sake would happen, and that this was what was meant by following him.
I have come to realize that the persecuted Christian's calling is to be Christ in a dark and painful world. We are called to embrace, love, forgive and carry in our bodies the death of Jesus Christ with the assurance that we will also share his resurrection and glory. We are God's blessings to the nations. We pay this price so that life may be at work in others. The only way for the deaf world to truly hear the Gospel message is by seeing it — that is, by seeing it in us. His ministry has to be multiplied and re-enacted again and again every day. Not only his miracles, peace, and glory but also his humiliation, abandonment, tears and death.
This calling will always demand sacrifice, and its joy and delight will never be in what the world teaches us is joyful and delightful. This calling will continue to quench our thirst for the warm home that awaits us, in the place where our names are no more lying in mud in shame, but rather written on white stones in honor.
But in this calling, we in the persecuted Church cannot survive alone. What hurts a persecuted Christian the most is not the physical pain, or the cost of following Jesus. It is to feel forgotten and abandoned by other Christians. If the Western church does not hold our hands, hear our cries and hurt with us, this war and these outposts can't last. We, the persecuted, need you. Not only your financial support, or even the brief mention of our names in your busy prayer schedules. We need you to embrace us and we need to know that you care. We need to know that we are not alone, and that behind us are millions that pray and worry for us. Above all we need to be honored to be called Christians and to be identified with you as part of the global Body of Christ. We need you to make a difference in your country, in your foreign policies and TV programs, so that the world will see your light and truth, and then we will be there to tell them why."
Last updated 12 January 2009