Maryam and Marzieh

I promised a year ago to write about persecuted Christians in 2009 but have failed to do so. There is just time to mention Maryam Rostampour and Marzieh Amirizadeh who were released from prison in November 2009. For almost nine months these two Iranian Christian women had been held in Evin prison in Tehran for refusing to deny their faith.

Originally arrested on 5 March 2009, Maryam and Marzieh were charged with anti-government activities. However, it became clear that apostasy (conversion from Islam to Christianity) was the reason for their arrest. Taken before a Revolutionary Court hearing on 9 August, Maryam and Marzieh were commanded to recant their faith in return for freedom, but refused to deny their Lord.

(Acknowledgements to Open Doors USA and Graham Weeks)

Well done Ireland!

It was certainly a thrilling finish to the match against Wales and a well deserved Grand Slam - as they all are. When the Five Nations became the Six Nations one might have expected that Grand Slams would become rarer, but that has not come to pass. My prediction last year of an Irish decline was certainly wide of the mark. Erin go brath!

Why not enforce the follow-on?

It was a thrilling but frustrating end to the match in Antigua. I find it difficult to understand why captains often don’t enforce the follow-on. The beauty of the follow-on is that it gives the side enforcing it two chances to win, either by bowling out the batting side cheaply enough to win by an innings or by leaving a modest target to get in the fourth innings. The reason in this match was supposed to have to do with the England bowlers being tired, but surely pressing home the advantage of bowling out West Indies cheaply would have left England in more control. England would have been pressing for runs in the fourth innings instead of trying to winkle out the West Indies tail.

Habakkuk

The recent conflict in Gaza has been interpreted by some as an invitation to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not only as individuals but even as churches or even nations. There are Christians who appear to register a sort of grim satisfaction in any rise in violence in the Middle East; some regard it as a sign of the last days, and others claim that God will judge those countries which fail to back the policies of Israel.

As Christians, we have been told to look for the signs of the Lord's coming. We expect that before that coming, things around us will get worse instead of better. So should we not hope for that deterioration? Should we not want to hear of wars and rumours of wars?

Should we want things around us to get better or worse? Lenin is supposed to have said “The worse things are, the better they are”. Lenin, of course, was living in hope of a violent revolution and from that perspective the last thing he wanted was for the situation in Russia to become stable, for reason and compromise to prevail and for the opposing factions to reach agreement. He wanted to see violence provoke more violence in retribution until the final collapse of the Tsarist regime.

Habakkuk lived at a time when the collapse of his nation was approaching. He wrote before the Exile to Babylon, and his prophecy foretells the invasion of the Babylonian army. His book opens, however, with his condemnation of the home-grown evil that surrounded him, for which his fellow-countrymen were responsible: “Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralysed, and justice never prevails.”[1] He poured out his heart before God, sickened at the injustice and wrongdoing around him, uncorrected by the public officials whose duty it was to administer justice.

Little is known about Habakkuk, but the reference to “my stringed instruments” may suggest that he was a Levite serving in the Temple. What is certain is that is that he was distraught at the injustice he saw around him. However, he found God's plan for correcting that injustice even more deplorable. God warned him that what was coming was, in plain truth, unbelievable. A foreign army would conquer the Israelites and occupy their land. It is perhaps difficult for us to appreciate the full force of the shock of this prospect. The land that had been promised to Abraham, that had been the final sight granted to Moses, that had been conquered by Joshua and ruled over by David - how could this promised land ever be taken from them?

Habakkuk could not understand how God could allow the Babylonians to devastate Israel: “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?”[2]

This is a complaint heard in Job and in several of the Psalms: why should the good suffer, especially at the hands of the unrighteous? What God is doing to His covenant people, however, is not recompensing them but rather forming them into what He wants them to be.

It is, sadly, all too possible to want a bad situation to be worse than it actually is; to want the darkness to be blacker. This is the crack in which the seed of hate takes root. C.S. Lewis invited us to imagine hearing a news report of some atrocity committed by an enemy in war-time, which is then contradicted by a later report: “Is one’s first feeling “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible?”[3] If we go down that road, succumbing to the pleasure of thinking people are worse than they really are, then we have welcomed hatred into our hearts.

In my view, the Christian looking around him at the state of the world should have the heart of Habakkuk. By that I mean a heart that recognises evil and grieves that it should be allowed to continue, but does not relish the catastrophes and the suffering that evil-doers ultimately bring on themselves.

Our Lord Jesus did not rejoice at the destruction he prophesied: there is a tone of compassion and regret in his words that clearly show his love for suffering humanity: “How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath.”[4] Christians who say that persecution would be good for us have, I think, lost sight of the fact that the Lord told us to pray that we might escape testing. Again, the Lord is able to bring good out of the evildoing of others, but that does not mean we should actively seek it in advance.

Habakkuk's words in 2:4, quoted by the Apostle Paul in Romans 1:17; “The just shall live by faith”, inspired Martin Luther to proclaim justification though faith. Reliance on God, rather than on the defences, evasions and tricks that men otherwise rely on to make their way through life's trials, is what the Lord has ordained as a rule for life. The lesson of Habakkuk is that God can turn wrongdoing to his purpose; but it remains wrongdoing and, except by the grace of God, is punishable as such. Instead of wondering why wrongdoers are not getting what they deserve, let us remember that what the Lord is doing for us is remaking us in His own likeness, a process which can hurt but will not be over until we see His face.

[1]Hab. 1:3-4, The New International Version - Anglicised, (London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.) 1984.
[2]Hab. 1:13 (NIV).
[3] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Fontana Books 1975, p. 103.
[4]Matt. 24:19-20 (NIV).

Paying the Price

In 2009 I intend to run an occasional series of postings about modern martyrs. In deference to the season of goodwill and peace this first posting will tell the story of someone who did not pay the ultimate price for his faith. Pastor Wally Magdangal was sentenced to death by hanging on 25 December 1992 for “blaspheming Islam”. A Filipino national, he had led a secret house church in Riyadh. He was kept in solitary confinement and tortured, but finally released and deported on the day he was due to be hanged. His release is a testimony to the effectiveness of international appeals.

I wish all readers the blessings of health and happiness in 2009.

Autumn celebrations

I was rather disturbed by local television news reports (I was in Derbyshire) during the past week dealing with arrangements for those not wishing to be disturbed at the doors of their homes by young persons demanding sweets as a reward for assuming costumes of what one might call a Gothic character, representing Death, ghosts or witches. The idea that the “celebration” of Hallowe’en is an established part of the cultural landscape of Britain is if I am not mistaken a recent development. The custom has apparently crossed the Atlantic in both directions, an American development of earlier Irish traditions. Meanwhile the celebration of Bonfire Night seems to be in decline. Fireworks are in evidence, but Guy Fawkes less so: the masks which were once on sale in newsagents next to the toffee are nowhere to be seen.

This development is without doubt partly attributable to economics: retailers can sell more costumes associated with Hallowe’en. There is little money to be made from a guy constructed from clothes no longer of any use. Safety concerns about fireworks may also play a part.

I wonder however if the Protestant nature of Bonfire Night, which is essentially a celebration of the failure of a Catholic coup, has meant that in some quarters at least its decline is little mourned.

Applause

I am rather puzzled by the ubiquity of applause nowadays - not, I hasten to add, applause directed at me. When I was a boy, applause in church was almost unknown. Certainly one might clap during choruses to mark the time, rather as with a tambourine or other percussion instrument, but not after a sing so as to applaud the performers. After a solo, there might be murmurs of "Hallelujah" or "Amen" but never applause. The idea was that the singer was performing to the glory of God, not for his or her own glory as performers in a secular theatre or cabaret did.

I do not mean to refer to the practice of a "clap offering" intended in itself to be a form of worship. What I am referring to is the practice of applauding in church in the same kind of way as in a theatre, as a congratulation on the quality of a performance. The loss of the old attitude with its consciousness that only God should be glorified in church does not seem to me to constitute progress.