God is not safe

Series: Why Should I Encounter Persecuted Christians?

I need to encounter persecuted Christians because – they stop me from making God safe!

"Don't let them make God safe!"
These words of send-off for me at the Bombay airport were from an Indian Christian evangelist.
He had a low opinion of Western churches. After visiting them, he confided, "They have managed to turn a dangerous God into a safe one. Instead of a God that burns with fury against hypocrisy, idolatry and injustice, they have a God that turns a blind eye to all our faults, just keeps on loving us with a disinterested air, and seems not to care whether we stand out for Him or not."
The persecuted never let us forget that knowing God should bring chaos, not safety, because God's Gospel is so subversive.
Jesus made this clear when he declared: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world. No, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. "I came to set sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers ... your worst enemies will be the members of your own family" (Matthew 10:34-36 GNB).
The life of the Indian evangelist proves this point. He used to work as a river guide in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. It was his job to row tourists around the river, especially at sunrise, so they could take pictures of the morning sun shining on the giant rows of temple steps called ghats that hugged the river bank.
But he was involved in a far more sinister trade at the same time. His employer insisted he provide sexual services for the tourists who hired the boat, and he soon had no choice but to become a male prostitute.

Choices
After a few years of this, he heard the Gospel through a chance encounter with a tourist. After becoming a Christian he said: "I felt relief that I did not have to behave that way again. Suddenly a whole new set of choices opened up for me. But I was apprehensive too - the choices that pleased God would not please anyone else."
His employer had him beaten by thugs, but he refused to return to work as a prostitute. So he was told: "You cannot even make any money as a guide."
He was sacked and immediately had to leave town.
At first he went back to his family, but they were not happy to see him as he could no longer provide them money from an income.
His mother wailed: "We sold you so you could look after us in our old age, and now you are following a bad god who has made you refuse to provide for us."
He became convicted that he must return to Varanasi and work to free all the other sex slaves.
He set up a bank so that low-paid workers could borrow at reasonable rates of interest and not have to go to loan sharks that kept them in financial slavery.

Looking for a fight
He said: "Jesus Christ has given me freedom, and now I have to fight for the freedom of other people just like me. I have to. Jesus makes us pure and sacred, and it is not right that his children should be bought and sold and used like cattle."
He still fights.
He has survived two assassination attempts. His wife had acid thrown over her by thugs employed by the leaders of the prostitution rackets. This man is driven by a love for a God that is determined to set His children free.
He added this important qualifier: "A person in India is not persecuted because they become a Christian; they are persecuted if they become a Christian who refuses to accept the caste system."
And that brings danger.
"Don't let them make God safe," he said, and his words often echo in my mind.
I wondered what he meant until I found myself visiting New York City on a Sunday. I heard two preachers on the same Sunday.
David Wilkerson said in one of the services: "Churches should be places were God is let loose, but all too often they have become places where God is tamed."
Then I attended a very posh church which had invited the American sociologist and Christian, Tony Campolo, to speak. While he was speaking, he used a short swear word.
There was a visible bristling in the audience. A woman behind me said audibly: "Disgraceful."
He looked back at them in the shocked silence and said: "You know what really sickens me? There are 24 poor beggars out on the streets outside your church, and on this very block, kids of 13 and 14 are being pimped by violent men, but most of you will be more offended by my use of that word than by the sin that surrounds you."
Truly, God has been made far too safe when the sin of the streets fails to move us, and we can attend churches and never be roused to do anything about the challenge of the poor, the needy, and the persecuted.
God wants us to stand up and stand out against sin. He promised us that following him would get us into a fight.
The fight will come to us if only we realize how subversive his Gospel really is. We can see this most vividly in the lives of persecuted Christians.
 
Other articles in this series:

• Achievement or Sacrifice?
• Stop Complaining
• Our Debt to Spiritual Ancestors
• Hope for Hard Times
• The Battle for Religious Freedom Never Ends
• Seeing the Bible through Persecuted Eyes
• Death Loses its Sting
• The Power of Song
• Simple Faith
• Key Ingredients in Hospitality
• The Beauty of Mystery
• Awakening to Struggle
• Obstacles to Instruments
• Deliverance Comes Through Endurance
• Imperfect People Do God's Will