A weekly comment by our Rector, John Davies. For previous week's comments, click here.

Wake up call!

Writing in the Cathedral News, the new Dean, the Rev Philip Jensen has these challenging words to say:

"We live in abnormal times. We live in the world of sickness and death, yet we enjoy amazingly good health and prolonged life. We live in the world of persecution and hostility to the people of God, yet we enjoy an amazingly peaceful and tolerant society.

These abnormal times are so nice that they seduce us into thinking that health and peace are normal for the people of God in this world. And we are angry, even petulant when God seems to rob us of our rights to such pleasures.

But the  consistent expectation and promise of Scripture is hardship, suffering and difficulty for those who are to deny themselves, take up the cross and follow Jesus their Lord.

For yours ago World Books published a book by Paul Marshall entitled "Their Blood Cries Out". It as a wake up call to Western (especially American) Christians about the normal life of suffering that Christians in more than sixty countries are facing every day. Since then a slightly different wake up call has come to whole nations: both America on September 11th and Australia in the Bali bombing. Our nations, which enjoy the privilege of peaceful society, have discovered that there is no peace in our times. But Christians living outside of the nations that enjoy the Christian heritage have known all along that there is no peace in our times.

Paul Marshall's book did not whitewash Christianity or demonise any other group. He takes the reader for a tour of a wide diversity of Islamic relationships with their Christian citizens. But he did expose the horrors of the war in Sudan, and the discrimination against Christians that is experienced daily in other less violent Islamic countries. He then recounts the continuing persecution in the remaining Communist countries like China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea - as well as recounting the difficulties of Christians in the Buddhist and Hindu Asian Sub-continent. He does not ignore the persecution of Christians in nominally Christian countries where majority denominations get too close to Government and discriminate against minority expressions of Christianity.

All this may look like the secularists are correct in their claim that religion causes wars. Bu tthe great genocides of the twentieth century came from the minds of people like Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin who were thoroughly imbued with secularist and atheistic thinking.

So Paul Marshall devotes space to the failure of western secularist society. This is not a happy book to read. It is not a pleasant topic to write or speak about . But there is a naive and unhelpful ignorance in Western society about the suffering of people who name Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. Yet their suffering is what the New Testament predicted and expected while our peace and prosperity is unnatural.

One wonders sometimes when we read that "all who desire to live a Godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" - whether it is our failure to live such a life that has lead to our acceptability in our society, Could it be that the evil one does not need to persecute us for he has effectively seduced us?"

In a similar vein, I received notification this week oif a film to be screened by Open Doors at Frenchs Forest Baptist on Wednesday, 16 Sep called "Cry Indonesia". It tells the story of the "holy war" that has been waged against Christians in the Moluccas, Indonesia for over 4 years. This religious 'cleansing' has claimed up to 10,000 lives, and more than 860,000 were displaced from their homes at the peak of the crisis. Yet, in the midst of this, there are wonderfully moving testimonies of Christians who have experienced the grace and mercy of God.

While most of us recoil at the thought of physical suffering, the testimony of Christians down through the ages is that God is often closer during such times than at any other.

John Davies
17 August 2003