Is our materialistic church asking the right questions?

by Alex Buchan

In one of London's posher districts, church leaders sat around a table in animated discussion. Above their heads stretched a banner that read, "No God, please. We're British!" Dismayed by the sheer hard work of finding a hearing for the gospel in a society where barely 2% of the population show up in church even once a year, they thrashed about for strategies to "make the church a relevant institution". They agonized over the question, "How may our churches grow?"

My job was to give the devotion at a later session. I told them that "How may our churches grow?" is a good question. But I also reminded them of the kind of questions their Asian counterparts are asking this very moment.

In Hubei province, China, Christians are asking, "How am I going to take in another homeless family when the floods mean I can no longer feed my own?"

In North Korea, a Christian farmer is asking, "Can I, in all conscience, obey the government and shoot hungry people who try to steal my crop?"

In Indonesia, Christian leaders are asking, "How can we build bridges with moderate Muslims lest society degenerate into moral chaos?"

In Thailand, a Christian couple is asking, "Is it right to let our government blame foreign refugees for our economic crisis, and stand by while they are sent back to possible persecution?"

In Burma, tribal Christians are asking, "Should we flee from our villages when troops approach to take us as forced labour, and trust God that the old people we leave behind will not be tortured? Or should we all stay behind and trust God to protect us?"

Somehow the question, "How can we find a hearing for the gospel in a materialistic society?" seems trivial by comparison, though it has to be asked, and answered.

My point to these leaders was simple: If you do not take the questions of these suffering churches as seriously as your own, if you do not make them your questions also, your faith and effectiveness will be badly diminished, and you will lose some of God.

What did that farmer in North Korea do who was given a gun to guard his field from desperate people? Sure enough, a beggar came in the night. The farmer raised the rifle, fitted with a night scope, and targeted the heart of the painfully thin man. As his finger hovered on the trigger, he again asked his question of God, "Can I, in all conscience, obey the government and shoot this hungry man who wants to steal my crop?" He sighed, got up, left the rifle in the dirt and walked over to the man. He said, "Let's gather all we can carry and flee across the border."

The farmer knew that by sparing the man's life, he would lose his own when the government found out--so he had to flee with him. As they fled, the thin man came to faith also. They made it to China two weeks later, swimming across the Yalu River.

It could have been so different. If the farmer hadn't been a Christian, he would have killed the beggar, adding to the 3.5 million-person death toll in North Korea. Instead, he chose a more hazardous course, and eternal life came to someone who would not have known it otherwise.

It is these small actions which, added together, form a culture of compassion, instead of harshness. North Korea will be a better society for that farmer's action. And it is the result of myriads of such small actions--over centuries--that we in the Western church do not have to agonize over life-and-death questions.

Thank God for our freedoms, but pray that God will also keep us in touch with those who do not yet enjoy them, for their questions teach us things about God that we need to know.

Chinese Christians always tell me, "It's God that brings persecution." I'm always uncomfortable when I hear them say this, but it is true. The Chinese know what we have largely forgotten in our attempt to stress the unconditional love of God. They remember a side of God--His chastising wrath and the frightening lengths He will go to to perfect His bride--that we have laid aside. It is in this sense that if we do not listen to the suffering church, we will truly be left with less of God.

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