Heroes (pt. 1)
I’ve recently been reading Jesus In Beijing by David Aikman as part of my research for my paper on the growth of Christianity in China. I’d highly recommend the book to anybody at all interested in Chinese culture, history, and missions. I’m halfway through with the book and it has already made a profound impact on me in many ways. One, in particular, is the impact of prolific, heroic Christian figures within the Chinese underground church.
Connected to this, my first year at Regent we had the Laing Lectures, which occur every two years. In 2004, the topic was The Meaning of Saints, which centered around Christian heroes. I distinctly remember comments being made to the effect that we have less and less of an attachment to Christian heroes in the west. It was not until today that I meditated on the truth of that. I personally have not held particular figures up in my life as heroic. Partly because of our current tendency to try and make heroic figures more “common” for the sake of protecting our own feelings of self-worth. In other words, heroes make us feel like we are not measuring up, rather than being inspired and following.
Tonight in my small group Bible study, we looked briefly at Hebrews 10:19-25 as we reflected on the year and sought to encourage one another to keep with a community over the summer break to stay spurred on in our faith.
In the moment that we read the passage, I was struck profoundly with the meaning of these words: assurance of faith. I thought to myself, “How much different must those words be to somebody that has spent 20 years of their life in prison because they chose not to belong to a state run church that implicitly bows its knee to the political powers of the country?” These amazing Chinese heroes of the underground church that only have just that: their assurance of faith, that Christ is their only strength for survival and only reason for existence.
In our highly therapeutic culture, we sit around discussing issues of identity, acceptance, and self-worth in relation to God, while the persecuted Christian seems to be sustained by their very need of God to survive the physical, mental, and emotional abuse of an oppressive government. A rather simplified generalization of reality, but I am only doing that to prove the point. Naturally, a romanticized view of the persecuted church may create a skewed perspective on the real struggles of the everyday believer in China and this combined with our implicitly negative view of ourselves as the western church can become a source for guilt, ultimately self-defeating.
It must be said though that we fool ourselves that our lives are sustained by our own efforts and ingenuity, though they really are not. This is, however, our persecution. We are not subjected to physical torture and political oppression, but rather we fight an intense battle between ourselves and the forces of complacency and lethargy. It is our lot and to sit and feel disabled as Christians because we do not live in a persecuted land is to fail to see what God would do with us here. It requires us though to become broken and to realize our deep fallenness and inability to care for ourselves.
God can just as well show His glory through those of us living in a society of comfort as He can through those that face possible death. The question is: Are we willing to succumb to the fact that He may make us uncomfortable? Attacking the very idol we cherish so?
Tuesday, April 8, 2008