Our Silence in the Face of Decapitated Heads

Why does the church remain silent in the face of genocide perpetrated against Christians in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and other Islamic nations? Such silence violates many biblical admonitions:

• Amos 5:14-15 Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts…

• Isaiah 1:16-17 …Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.

• Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. Ephes. 5:11

• "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'” (Matthew 25:40-43)

However, we find many excuses, even “biblical” ones, to justify our inactivity. We’ve all have heard it said,

• Well, I’m not going to look for a job. Instead, I’m trusting that God will find me one. After all, we do the works He has ordained for us to do (Eph. 2:10).

Dr. Joel McDormun presents several reasons why the Evangelical church has been silent in the face of this present genocide. Here’s one of those reasons:

• Believe the world will inevitably come under the grips of tyrannical one-world government, and the Middle East in fire and blood, and this is the God-ordained way it should be.

Well, this genocide might certainly be ordained by God, but everything that happens has also been ordained by Him (Eph. 1:11). This doesn’t mean that He has caused everything. But certainly, at the least, He has allowed them! This is an unavoidable conclusion in view of God’s attributes. If He is all-knowing, then He knew beforehand what would happen. If He is all-powerful – and He is – then He could have stopped it.

To illustrate this principle, God knew all about Hitler before He came to power, even before he was born. Also, He had the power to stop him, but He didn’t. However, troubling this conclusion might be, it is an unavoidable conclusion. Although we can’t understand this in its entirety, God has His reasons.

However, there are things that we do understand! Simply because God allowed (ordained) Hitler, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t resist him and other forms of evil. Even though God allows injustice, genocide, and other horrors, our role remains clear – to challenge and expose these evils!

What does it mean to trust God? To trust in His Word and to do what He tells us to do! Therefore, trusting isn’t a matter of sitting back and waiting for a job to magically come to us. Instead, trusting involves doing and taking full responsibility for the things we are instructed to do, trusting that our Lord will work through our efforts and intentions.

Trusting doesn’t mean giving up on the world because it is evil or because we are nearing the end. Instead, even more, it means shining the light of His wisdom and mercy through our lives.

Some pastors are afraid that taking “political” stances detracts from the presentation of the Gospel. Columnist Cal Thomas had wrongly taken issue with the late Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship regarding his activism:

• Real power doesn’t reside in Washington. Real power is Christ within you. Surely the Gospel is a more effective tool than the Republican or the Democratic Party. Just one example: More babies are being saved through pregnancy help centers than through anything Washington has done.

Yes, I agree that our main priority should be Gospel and saving souls. However, demonstrating our love for our brethren is central to the Gospel and evangelism:

• "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:34-35)

If we are concerned about transforming lives, we have to show the world our love for our brethren. How else can they take us seriously! Such love is not expressed through neglect:

• "My prayer is…that all of them may be one [in love], Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:20-21)

By failing to speak up for our persecuted brethren, the world will wonder about our love and doubt the Gospel message.  

Let us therefore pray that the Lord will use us accordingly. Also, we cannot close our ears to the cries of the brethren. We might want to familiarize ourselves with the issues. Raymond Ibrahim writes extensively on this subject.

You might also want to share these links and talk to your church leadership about promoting this issue.

The Arab Spring and the Persecution of Christians: A Open Letter to President Obama

While the Western Media is still celebrating the Arab Spring and promoting another Western intervention on behalf of Syria’s Arab Spring, there is a lot of victimization that it refuses to cover. Muslim-turned-atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, reports:

• We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.

• The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.

• The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia—and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression of a systematic and sinister derangement called “Islamophobia”—a term that is meant to elicit the same moral disapproval as xenophobia or homophobia.

• But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

• As Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, pointed out in an interview with Newsweek, Christian minorities in many majority-Muslim nations have “lost the protection of their societies.” This is especially so in countries with growing radical Islamist (Salafist) movements. In those nations, vigilantes often feel they can act with impunity—and government inaction often proves them right. The old idea of the Ottoman Turks—that non-Muslims in Muslim societies deserve protection (albeit as second-class citizens)—has all but vanished from wide swaths of the Islamic world, and increasingly the result is bloodshed and oppression. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/02/05/ayaan-hirsi-ali-the-global-war-on-christians-in-the-muslim-world.print.html

The Arab spring in Syria, through which the Sunni majority has been trying to wrestle the power away from the Shiite leadership, has proved to be a Winter for its Christian minority. The UK-based Barnabus Fund reports:

• “Christians in Syria targeted in series of kidnappings and killings: 100 dead.”

World Magazine reports that,

• If opposition forces take control of Syria, that aggression could grow worse and threaten one of the last sizable populations of Christians in the Middle East. (Feb. 25, 2012, 42-43)

In contrast to Western Media, Open Doors USA, via World, reports that,

• Syrian Christians are increasingly afraid to leave their homes…Several Muslim taxi drivers vowed to harm all women customers who are unveiled…[One worker stated that] “These women, mostly less orthodox Muslims and Christians, are being kidnapped, raped, or even killed.”

• Virginia-based Jubilee Campaign also reports that Syrian protesters are targeting Christians: “The culmination of these protests end in raids on Christian communities to take women from their homes and families and rape them.” Greg Treat of the Jubilee Campaign elaborated, saying that sources say extremists appear on Syrian television encouraging Muslims to kill Christian women.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has demanded Bashar al-Assad to step down in favor of a “democratic future for Syria” and possibly arming the “popular” uprising. However, the promised imposition of Shariah Law does not comport with a “democratic future” or even the “human rights” to which this administration has committed itself.