What a week we are having in our world.

The Taliban’s total victory in Afghanistan; America’s total failure to keep promises to friends, allies, or even U.S. citizens there. 

The devastating earthquake and follow-on flooding in Haiti. 

The march of the Delta variant through the ranks of the young and healthy. 

Arrogance, ignorance, and pig-headed stubbornness on display in heads of state near and far. 

What a week we are having in our world!

Some thoughts about proper responses to all the above:

• Jesus was never petty, so Christians can’t be, either. 

Even when people are egregiously wrong and jaw-droppingly stupid, Christians are accountable for “speaking the truth in love.” Call moronic actions moronic, but don’t call people morons – that’s a good rule of thumb.

• Jesus was never cowardly, so Christians can’t be, either. 

Proverbs speaks some hard truth straight at situations like the one our nation is facing. What do these words mean for Christian citizens of our nation, today?

If you faint in the day of adversity,

    your strength being small;

 if you hold back from rescuing those taken away to death,

    those who go staggering to the slaughter;

if you say, “Look, we did not know this”—

    does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it?

    And will he not repay all according to their deeds? 

Proverbs 24:10 – 12

• Jesus was never stymied by large-scale need, so Christians can’t be, either. 

Rescuing citizens and allies from across the world? Assisting neighbors in our hemisphere who have lost everything through natural disasters? 

Paul calls it like this in Philippians 4:19: “God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” 

God WILL. 

Not, “God might.” 

Not, “God will meet some…” 

God WILL meet ALL our needs. 

Even those catastrophic needs crowding our screens and airwaves right now.

My girls and I are studying Acts. Have you read it recently? If not, run – don’t walk – and get started. Acts is the story of the early church, and Acts is the strong medicine the church of today needs. Right now.

In Acts chapter 5, Peter and John are arrested for the second time. (It won’t be the last time, for either of them.) They’ve been preaching the gospel and healing people and ignoring everything they were ordered to do / not do the first time they were arrested. The council is pretty much fed up with them. 

After a supernatural jail break, they are rounded back up for a dressing down. They don’t help their case much, basically telling their accusers to take things up with God. A wiser than average Pharisee, Gamaliel, intervenes on their behalf, deftly circumventing a nascent move to have them crucified like Christ. 

The apostles are flogged and released with another warning to sit down and shut up.

Here’s what happened next:

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.  – Acts 5:41

Sit with that a moment. 

They were rejoicing… not because their lives had been spared. 

Not because they were free to leave prison. 

Not because they got to return to the families who were scared to death they’d never see them again. 

They were rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.

Friends!!! When was the last time you heard an American Christian rejoicing because of being counted worthy of suffering, at all, for the Name? When was the last time you, personally, rejoiced because you were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus? 

I am so ashamed to look at my own track record. I have to acknowledge that I have NEVER suffered for Jesus. 

Oh, I have suffered, certainly; I have suffered and Jesus has been with me and helped me, certainly. But the kind of suffering faced by Peter and John – imprisonment, and beatings; bloodied backs, bruises and broken teeth – I have NEVER suffered for Jesus like that. 

Worse, I know myself well enough to state that if I were to suffer like that as a Christian, my first instinct would be outrage, not rejoicing… “How DARE you?” That’s the voice in my head, responding to an imaginary police action. “How DARE you lay a hand on me / infringe in any way on my rights / treat me like a second-class citizen?”

The tragic truth is that my “how dare you?” reflex points to a whole different kind of heart in me than the heart Peter and James had. It points to a heart which loves Jesus but trusts in things like due process and governmental accountability for my security. It points to a heart that embraces being a Christian, but only as a (safe, well-fed, empowered to work and drive and worship as and when I please) American.

I am in no way denigrating the privilege of American citizenship. I am in no way discounting the noble principles and biblically-sound concepts of virtue, duty, and honor on which America was founded. I am saying that, as a Christian, I shouldn’t be looking to my “American-ness” to save me.

I was jerked up short a few days ago by an email from the Voice of the Martyrs, outlining ways to pray for Christians in Afghanistan at this dreadful moment in their history. It was not the certainty of their plight that shocked me; everyone knows Christians will be in the cross-hairs of the Taliban immediately. Rather, it was the decision of many of them to remain in place ON PURPOSE. 

I’ll repeat that: many Afghan Christians are determined to stay where they are, to give Christianity a face and a presence in Afghanistan under the Taliban, to be the hands and feet of Christ where God has placed them. 

Knowing they will be targeted. Knowing their property will be confiscated. Knowing that their faith is a capital offense under sharia law. They are STAYING. 

They see their lives as Christ’s – not just in some mild, metaphorical, cheap-grace way, but in the same way Peter and John saw their own lives as Christ’s. And seeing life that way means rejoicing at being deemed worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus. Seeing life that way means being ready to pay it forward not just in tithes and offerings but in blood and tears. 

As American Christians, we have a sacred obligation to use the freedoms and privileges that are our lot to serve those for whom “freedom and privilege” are utterly absent. 

And as American Christians, we have a sacred obligation to be salt and light where we are… even if it’s inconvenient. Even if it makes people grumpy at us. Even if we enrage those whose narrative of American-ness necessitates shouting down (or cancelling) salt and light. 

We have to remember Peter and John, rejoicing. We have to remember the Christians, choosing to stay in Afghanistan. It is clear that they are remembering Jesus, and honoring Jesus, by rejoicing in the costliness of their loyalty to Him. 

Are we? 

Am I?

What a week we are having in our world, Friends. 

But we are “in the world, not of the world.” (John 17:16). 

We are “citizens of Heaven.” (Philippians 3:20). 

And if we are going to make any difference in this lifetime, we must be prepared to rejoice at being counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.