I was once told that the definition of a “recession” is when
your neighbor has lost their job, while the definition of a “depression” is when
you have lost yours. Over the past week in the shadow of a horrific and brutal
attack on a Christian church in Pakistan, I have often felt as if a variation
on the above statement could well be used to describe the common sentiment
regarding Christian persecution as well: When Christians are harmed overseas it
is a “sad reality,” but when it happens to me and my community it is
“persecution.”
As pews emptied last Sunday at All Saints Church in
Peshawar, Pakistan Christians poured out into the courtyard hoping to receive
much needed food that was being distributed. Instead they were met by two suicide
bombers who detonated explosive vests taking the lives of over eighty people
while wounding another one hundred.
Later terrorists from a Taliban faction would take credit
for the attack vowing to continue the killing until the U.S. halted drone
strikes in the country. Their interesting assumption was that by targeting
Christians they would be attacking Americans, and that by way of some global
concern for one another, some mystic union, an attack on Christians anywhere is
an attack on Christians everywhere.
I wonder if, in this
case, the terrorist might give American Christians too much credit.
The Canadian organization International Christian Response has produced an online quiz that
tests basic knowledge about Christian persecution that can be taken here.
I took it, and I failed it.
The
truth of the matter is that many persecuted Christians feel isolated and alone,
and I fear that as long as the persecution is happening “over there” then many of
us are fairly content to say a quick prayer and move on with other daily
distractions.
In
a report produced by The Guardian
earlier this week, the bishop emeritus of Peshawar, Mano Rumalshah, stated
bluntly:
"It's
not safe for Christians in this country…Everyone is ignoring the growing danger
to Christians in Muslim-majority countries. The European countries don't give a
damn about us."
Christians
are called to be a people who are so intricately connected to one another that
the metaphor of a single body is the most apt image used to describe it. As
such, when one part of it - a hand, a foot, a leg, an eye - is wounded, the
whole body ceases to function properly. It doesn’t try to ignore it, and
instead it caters to it, it compensates for it, it helps it to heal so that the
body can return as quickly as possible to functioning in holistic harmony.
Eugene
Peterson captures the essence of Paul’s words to the Corinthians well when he
writes in The Message “If one part hurts, every other part is
involved in the hurt, and in the healing”
(1 Cor. 12:26 emphasis added).
We not only take
part in empathetic prayer and support for those that are being persecuted, but
also their healing. This means a commitment on our part of engaging our
legislators, officials and leaders who can fight on the global stage to ensure
that our brothers and sisters can worship Christ without the fear of being
murdered.
After all, if we
are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, we might ask how we might want
to be treated by our brothers and sisters around the world if it was a church
in New York that was bombed instead of one in Pakistan. Would you care more about
Christian persecution if you were the one being persecuted? And how might it
leave you feeling if a terrorist attacked your small group meeting, or your
child’s youth group, or if gunman charged your pastors pulpit this Sunday and
kidnapped your wife, and the response of the world seemed eerily silent. Would
you still believe you were an essential part of a body or just a less desirable
part that the rest of the body has learned to live without?
