Faith and Doubts (May 17, 2009)
Faith and Doubt M5 2009 05 17
Title: How Can We Believe in Christ When Christianity Has Created So Much Oppression in the World?
Text: Micah 6:8, Matthew 5:43-45, James 2:1-17
Big Idea: Injustice has been done in “the name of Christ,” but not in the true Spirit of Christ.
Just over 2 ½ weeks ago Pope Benedict expressed remorse to Canadian First Nations Chief, Phil Fontaine, for the suffering that thousands of aboriginal Canadians experienced in residential schools at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope expressed his sorrow for the anguish that members of his church caused aboriginal children. There are many people who point to the abuse perpetrated by the Christian Church against aboriginal people in Canada, and ask, “How can I believe in Christianity when it has been responsible for so much injustice?”
Others point back to the Crusades where for two centuries Christians tried to violently expel Muslims from the Holy Land. Pope Innocent III in 1215 actually taught people that if they went to fight in the Crusades they could earn their salvation, the forgiveness of their sins.
I went to seminary just north of Boston, in a community not far from Salem. Salem is the town that is famous for the witch trials at the end of the 1600s. During the Salem witch trials, Christians were involved in seeing that some 20 twenty people--presumed to be witches--were executed.
A lot of evil has been done by people who profess to be Christians.
Perhaps you’ve been hurt in some way by a Christian. Perhaps you’ve been unfairly judged, excluded, or used in some way.
I am deeply sorry for that and I can imagine how Christ grieves when evil is done in his name.
I believe it is wholly appropriate for those of us who are Christians to apologize for the pain that has been inflicted by Christians.
Donald Miller in his book, Blue Like Jazz, talks about studying at a secular, liberal college in Portland.
Every year the college has a big party weekend where everyone gets drunk or high. Donald Miller and some of his Christian friends decided to set up a confessional booth in the midst of this bash. But rather than having the drunken college students confess their sins, Donald and a friend dressed in Monk Habits and confessed their personal failures and failure of Christianity over the years…
As a Japanese person, I have apologized for other Asians for the evil perpetrated by the Japanese prior to World War II, and I have also apologized as a Christian for the evil done in the name of Christ.
I would like to take a moment to lead those of us here who consider ourselves Christians in prayer of confession:
Merciful Father,
We confess to you and to others,
that we Christians have sinned against you--and people who are made in your image
by the things we have done,
and by things we have not done.
We have not loved you with our whole heart
and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We have often failed to act in way that is consistent with the Spirit of Christ.
By wandering from your ways, we have grieved you and hurt others
Forgive us and free us from our sins and empower by your Spirit to do justice--even when it is costly to do so—to love mercy, and to walk humbly before you our God. Amen.
Violence, oppression, done in the name of Christianity, is wrong and inexcusable… and must be addressed, and at times redressed…
Sins done in the name of Christ can’t be triumphantly overlooked.
But, a question I want to raise as part of this series on faith and doubt is whether these sins invalidate the way of Christ?
They would if these acts of violence and oppression truly represented the way of Christ.
There are many things that have been done in the name of Christ that cannot be attributed to Christ.
In a world where about a third of the human race professes to be a Christian, there are many people who are “Christians,” but who are Christians only in name and do not practice what Christianity believes.
There are atheists who claim to be Christians. The famous atheist, the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, told the BBC “I am a cultural Christian.” He loves to sing Christmas carols at Christmas, and he’s begun a movement called “Atheists for Jesus.” There are many people who describe themselves as Christian who don’t practice it, and some like Dawkins who don’t even believe in God. A great deal of violence and evil have been done by people who describe themselves as Christians in name, but clearly did not practice the way of Christ and in some cases did not even believe in the way of Christ.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are also Christian fanatics. Christian fanatics tend to over-emphasize and distort certain parts of scripture and can become hyper-judgmental with people they regard as evil: whether they are liberals, gay, evolutionists, members of other religions, or people with no religion at all.
But people who are simply nominally Christian or culturally Christian on the one hand, or so-called Christian fanatics on the other hand, are in both cases not practicing the true spirit of Christ. (This is why some people have bumper stickers saying, “Jesus save me from your followers.”)
Those who have truly followed the way of Christ and have been filled with His Spirit become people of genuine love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
Now, we all know people who have no connection with Christ, who seem kinder and gentler than certain Christians we know. Some people are born with the temperament of a Golden Retriever and others with the temperament of a Pitt Bull (or they have become like a Pitt Bull because a broken family environment). If the Pitt Bull receives the spirit of Christ, he or she will become more loving than he or she would otherwise be, but perhaps not as loving as the person who was born a Golden Retriever, but does not know Christ. But, if the Golden Retriever had a relationship with Christ… he or she would become even kinder.
Jesus said, “The mark of a person who truly follows me is not a cross around their neck or tattooed to their ankle (as I have), but rather love, humility, forgiveness of others.”
One of my history professors, Dr. Mark Noll, has pointed out that “one of the little-noted contributions of Christianity is gift of humility.”
Many have criticized the church for being power hungry, but as historian John Sommerville points out, “There have been many cultures where the drive for power is considered good.”
He says, “The pre-Christian northern European tribes like the Anglo-Saxons had societies based on the concept of honour. In these honour-based societies earning respect from others was considered paramount.” Sommerville points out how Christianity changed those honour-based societies where pride was valued over humility and revenge was valued over mercy.
In these older honored-based cultures if someone disrespected you by throwing a drink in your face—it is far more important in the culture to challenge the person to a duel and to kill that person rather than to forgive. In modern culture, this honor-based code is seen in urban gangs, where a youth may kill someone because so and so “disrespected them.”
Sommerville points out that it is ironic that the very people who criticize the violent injustices of the Christian church actually do so from a perspective that has itself been shaped by the principles of the Christian gospel which value love over honor and mercy over vengeance.
Tim Keller says, “The answer then to the fair and devastating criticism of the record of the Christian church’s oppression is not to abandon the Christian faith, because that would leave us with neither the standards nor the resources to make the correction. Instead we should move toward a fuller and deeper grasp of what true Christianity is.”
(It is interesting that the person who played the key role in the abolition of the Salem witch trials was a Christian. A Puritan leader, named Increase Mather, spoke up forcefully against what was happening, and that was the beginning of the end. It was a Christian voice that silenced the madness within so called “Christianity.”)
As Christians we need to go back to source texts like Micah 6:8:
8 He has shown all you people what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
We must go back to the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says,
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
We must go back to texts like James 2 where we are called specifically to not favor the rich over the poor, but to love the poor in action:
In James 2:14-17 we read:
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if people claim to have faith but have no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
Even those who are against the Christian faith often have an intuitive understanding of people who are truly following Christ and those who are not.
My grandfather was a corporate CEO--very proud, intimidating, and hostile toward Christianity. But I remember how he talked glowingly about one of the engineers in his company whom he really admired for the quality of his work and his outstanding integrity. My grandfather, who generally hated Christians, said with a gleam in his eye, “He is a true Christian.”
Professing Christians have perpetrated a lot inexcusable violence and injustice, but we also see signs of hope from people who were truly connected to Christ.
Let me give a few examples of people in history who expressed true spirit of Jesus.
A few weeks ago I quoted The Emperor Julian who in the first century wrote to a pagan priest friend asking him why was it that this Christian group was adding to its numbers so quickly when it had no money and no political power. The pagan priest said, with some contempt… “Hebrews helped Hebrews, Greeks helped Greeks, Romans helped Romans, but Christians helped everyone.”
In the second century, Christianity in Egypt spread. Why? According to Bishop Samuel of Cairo, the church provided mothers who were nursing in the public squares often under pagan statues while other women went up and down the streets to collect the unwanted, abandoned babies and raised them.
Jumping ahead to the nineteenth century, Lord Shaftesbury (VII) a Christian member of the British Parliament advocated labour laws for children. In his day, children as young as four years of age were working from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. (16 hours days). Lord Shaftesbury made proposals that resulted in the work day being limited to 8 hours for children and laws that widened the mine shaft which meant that men rather than children would be working in them.
William Wilberforce was a British Member of Parliament and in the 18th century was considered a rising star and a future Prime Minister of England. But he was troubled over the injustice of the British slave trade. As a young politician he wrote in his journal, knowing full well that walking on to the floor of the British Parliament and introducing a bill to abolish slavery would cost him the prime ministership of England: “My Christian conscience will not allow me to remain silent on this issue.” The next day Wilberforce began speaking out against the slave trade, knowing that it would cost him the opportunity to become Prime Minister. He fought against the slave trade for 50 years. When he was on his deathbed, the news reached him that the bill for abolition of the slave trade would be passed—that slavery would in fact be abolished in the British Empire.
Rodney Stark notes how historians have been desperately trying to figure out why Wilberforce and those who were working to abolish slavery were willing to sacrifice so much to end slavery. He says [quoting another historian] that the history of the abolition of slavery is puzzling because most historians believe that all political behavior is based on self-interest. Despite the fact that hundreds of scholars of the last 50 years have looked for ways to explain it, no one has succeeded in showing that those who campaigned for the end of the slave trade stood to gain in any tangible way or that these measures were other than economically costly to the country.
Followers of Christ have gone to people and places where others have refused to go.
A young woman named Cathy Ito from our community some years ago decided to go to the Sudan to serve as medical missionary with a leprosy mission called The Leprosy Mission International.
This mission which serves people with leprosy in 50 countries has been in existence for 130 years. It was founded by a man from Ireland named Wellesley Bailey. As a young man in the 1800s, he wanted to make a fortune and set sail for New Zealand. When he was unable to sail off the coast of Kent, England because of fog, he attended a church service instead and that night by his bed committed his life to Christ. He joined a Christian mission and went to Punjab, India as teacher. In India he met lepers for the first time and shuddered, but felt Christ calling him to bring love and the hope of the Christ to these suffering people and founded The Leprosy Mission International.
Christ leads to serve people who have been shunned by others.
Joseph D’Souza, who some of you heard at Missions Fest this past January, was an agnostic university student in India. Joseph had a Christian friend who gave him a New Testament and talked to him about the Jesus. Joseph became a follower of Jesus.
Joseph was a privileged Brahman, i.e., from the top of the social caste India, but he met and fell in love with a Christian woman named Maria from the “untouchable” class, the Dalits—someone who because of her social class he was not supposed to associate with at all.
She warned him, “Ok, if you want to marry me come and see what my life is like--you grew up in an upper class area, you’re an urban kid, you don’t know what this all about.”
He went and what he saw her neighborhood and it shook him up. He had never seen how the 250,000 Dalits in his country lived: no roads, no schools, no running water, no sanitation--utter poverty. He had not seen how their boys and girls were being sold as slaves and trafficked into the sex trade.
They got married, believing in Christ social class barriers fall away. Now they areworking together to help provide schools and education for the Dalits children, health care Dalits, economic development, and speaking before powerful legislatures of world of on behalf of the Dalits…
This week, I met with Mike Yankoski, a 26 year old Regent student.
When Mike was a teenager, he began asking questions about the meaning of life and why he was here on earth.
He asked his parents, but his dad as an atheist and his mother as an agnostic were not able to provide satisfying answers. He had some Christian friends in high school who introduced him to Jesus Christ.
In 2003, while a college student in Santa Barbara, California, Mike and his friend Sam voluntarily became homeless in order to experience what life is like for the poor and to be able to better love them. For five months, they traveled through six different cities with bare essentials and two acoustic guitars. Singing worship songs while panhandling, Mike and Sam got to know homeless people… They were on the streets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, sleeping alongside of convicted felons, drug dealers, and typical homeless.
I asked Mike, “Why did you do this?” (He knew God had said we are to love our neighbours as ourselves.) “ I wanted to know how I could better love the homeless and to see if my faith in God was real outside of my comfortable existence.”
A couple of weeks ago a small group led by Randy and Hannah Hamm from Tenth visited orphanages in China led by Internation China Concern.
One of the members, David Gotts, was on a short term Christian mission as young man and during a visit to Nanning, China when a mother placed a very sick baby girl in his hands and asked David to take care of her. David rushed her to the hospital, but she ended up dying. Out of experience, David felt God calling to establish orphanages for China’s abandoned and disabled children.
So there are signs of hope.
If you have been hurt by Christians—pray that you would meet some true followers of Christ and see where that leads you…
If you are a followers of Christ, remember that you may be the only “Bible” that some people will ever read. How you live may determine whether people follow Christ or not.
When I am in communities in the deep south where I am the only the Japanese person, the only Asian, I am conscious of wanting not wanting to harm the reputation of the Japanese and Asians in general, by being hostile or rude.
But, if we belong to Christ, we have a much higher call—to let our light so shine before people that they may see our good works and glorify God.
Back to the
Title: How Can We Believe in Christ When Christianity Has Created So Much Oppression in the World?
Text: Micah 6:8, Matthew 5:43-45, James 2:1-17
Big Idea: Injustice has been done in “the name of Christ,” but not in the true Spirit of Christ.
Just over 2 ½ weeks ago Pope Benedict expressed remorse to Canadian First Nations Chief, Phil Fontaine, for the suffering that thousands of aboriginal Canadians experienced in residential schools at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope expressed his sorrow for the anguish that members of his church caused aboriginal children. There are many people who point to the abuse perpetrated by the Christian Church against aboriginal people in Canada, and ask, “How can I believe in Christianity when it has been responsible for so much injustice?”
Others point back to the Crusades where for two centuries Christians tried to violently expel Muslims from the Holy Land. Pope Innocent III in 1215 actually taught people that if they went to fight in the Crusades they could earn their salvation, the forgiveness of their sins.
I went to seminary just north of Boston, in a community not far from Salem. Salem is the town that is famous for the witch trials at the end of the 1600s. During the Salem witch trials, Christians were involved in seeing that some 20 twenty people--presumed to be witches--were executed.
A lot of evil has been done by people who profess to be Christians.
Perhaps you’ve been hurt in some way by a Christian. Perhaps you’ve been unfairly judged, excluded, or used in some way.
I am deeply sorry for that and I can imagine how Christ grieves when evil is done in his name.
I believe it is wholly appropriate for those of us who are Christians to apologize for the pain that has been inflicted by Christians.
Donald Miller in his book, Blue Like Jazz, talks about studying at a secular, liberal college in Portland.
Every year the college has a big party weekend where everyone gets drunk or high. Donald Miller and some of his Christian friends decided to set up a confessional booth in the midst of this bash. But rather than having the drunken college students confess their sins, Donald and a friend dressed in Monk Habits and confessed their personal failures and failure of Christianity over the years…
As a Japanese person, I have apologized for other Asians for the evil perpetrated by the Japanese prior to World War II, and I have also apologized as a Christian for the evil done in the name of Christ.
I would like to take a moment to lead those of us here who consider ourselves Christians in prayer of confession:
Merciful Father,
We confess to you and to others,
that we Christians have sinned against you--and people who are made in your image
by the things we have done,
and by things we have not done.
We have not loved you with our whole heart
and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We have often failed to act in way that is consistent with the Spirit of Christ.
By wandering from your ways, we have grieved you and hurt others
Forgive us and free us from our sins and empower by your Spirit to do justice--even when it is costly to do so—to love mercy, and to walk humbly before you our God. Amen.
Violence, oppression, done in the name of Christianity, is wrong and inexcusable… and must be addressed, and at times redressed…
Sins done in the name of Christ can’t be triumphantly overlooked.
But, a question I want to raise as part of this series on faith and doubt is whether these sins invalidate the way of Christ?
They would if these acts of violence and oppression truly represented the way of Christ.
There are many things that have been done in the name of Christ that cannot be attributed to Christ.
In a world where about a third of the human race professes to be a Christian, there are many people who are “Christians,” but who are Christians only in name and do not practice what Christianity believes.
There are atheists who claim to be Christians. The famous atheist, the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, told the BBC “I am a cultural Christian.” He loves to sing Christmas carols at Christmas, and he’s begun a movement called “Atheists for Jesus.” There are many people who describe themselves as Christian who don’t practice it, and some like Dawkins who don’t even believe in God. A great deal of violence and evil have been done by people who describe themselves as Christians in name, but clearly did not practice the way of Christ and in some cases did not even believe in the way of Christ.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are also Christian fanatics. Christian fanatics tend to over-emphasize and distort certain parts of scripture and can become hyper-judgmental with people they regard as evil: whether they are liberals, gay, evolutionists, members of other religions, or people with no religion at all.
But people who are simply nominally Christian or culturally Christian on the one hand, or so-called Christian fanatics on the other hand, are in both cases not practicing the true spirit of Christ. (This is why some people have bumper stickers saying, “Jesus save me from your followers.”)
Those who have truly followed the way of Christ and have been filled with His Spirit become people of genuine love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
Now, we all know people who have no connection with Christ, who seem kinder and gentler than certain Christians we know. Some people are born with the temperament of a Golden Retriever and others with the temperament of a Pitt Bull (or they have become like a Pitt Bull because a broken family environment). If the Pitt Bull receives the spirit of Christ, he or she will become more loving than he or she would otherwise be, but perhaps not as loving as the person who was born a Golden Retriever, but does not know Christ. But, if the Golden Retriever had a relationship with Christ… he or she would become even kinder.
Jesus said, “The mark of a person who truly follows me is not a cross around their neck or tattooed to their ankle (as I have), but rather love, humility, forgiveness of others.”
One of my history professors, Dr. Mark Noll, has pointed out that “one of the little-noted contributions of Christianity is gift of humility.”
Many have criticized the church for being power hungry, but as historian John Sommerville points out, “There have been many cultures where the drive for power is considered good.”
He says, “The pre-Christian northern European tribes like the Anglo-Saxons had societies based on the concept of honour. In these honour-based societies earning respect from others was considered paramount.” Sommerville points out how Christianity changed those honour-based societies where pride was valued over humility and revenge was valued over mercy.
In these older honored-based cultures if someone disrespected you by throwing a drink in your face—it is far more important in the culture to challenge the person to a duel and to kill that person rather than to forgive. In modern culture, this honor-based code is seen in urban gangs, where a youth may kill someone because so and so “disrespected them.”
Sommerville points out that it is ironic that the very people who criticize the violent injustices of the Christian church actually do so from a perspective that has itself been shaped by the principles of the Christian gospel which value love over honor and mercy over vengeance.
Tim Keller says, “The answer then to the fair and devastating criticism of the record of the Christian church’s oppression is not to abandon the Christian faith, because that would leave us with neither the standards nor the resources to make the correction. Instead we should move toward a fuller and deeper grasp of what true Christianity is.”
(It is interesting that the person who played the key role in the abolition of the Salem witch trials was a Christian. A Puritan leader, named Increase Mather, spoke up forcefully against what was happening, and that was the beginning of the end. It was a Christian voice that silenced the madness within so called “Christianity.”)
As Christians we need to go back to source texts like Micah 6:8:
8 He has shown all you people what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
We must go back to the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says,
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
We must go back to texts like James 2 where we are called specifically to not favor the rich over the poor, but to love the poor in action:
In James 2:14-17 we read:
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if people claim to have faith but have no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
Even those who are against the Christian faith often have an intuitive understanding of people who are truly following Christ and those who are not.
My grandfather was a corporate CEO--very proud, intimidating, and hostile toward Christianity. But I remember how he talked glowingly about one of the engineers in his company whom he really admired for the quality of his work and his outstanding integrity. My grandfather, who generally hated Christians, said with a gleam in his eye, “He is a true Christian.”
Professing Christians have perpetrated a lot inexcusable violence and injustice, but we also see signs of hope from people who were truly connected to Christ.
Let me give a few examples of people in history who expressed true spirit of Jesus.
A few weeks ago I quoted The Emperor Julian who in the first century wrote to a pagan priest friend asking him why was it that this Christian group was adding to its numbers so quickly when it had no money and no political power. The pagan priest said, with some contempt… “Hebrews helped Hebrews, Greeks helped Greeks, Romans helped Romans, but Christians helped everyone.”
In the second century, Christianity in Egypt spread. Why? According to Bishop Samuel of Cairo, the church provided mothers who were nursing in the public squares often under pagan statues while other women went up and down the streets to collect the unwanted, abandoned babies and raised them.
Jumping ahead to the nineteenth century, Lord Shaftesbury (VII) a Christian member of the British Parliament advocated labour laws for children. In his day, children as young as four years of age were working from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. (16 hours days). Lord Shaftesbury made proposals that resulted in the work day being limited to 8 hours for children and laws that widened the mine shaft which meant that men rather than children would be working in them.
William Wilberforce was a British Member of Parliament and in the 18th century was considered a rising star and a future Prime Minister of England. But he was troubled over the injustice of the British slave trade. As a young politician he wrote in his journal, knowing full well that walking on to the floor of the British Parliament and introducing a bill to abolish slavery would cost him the prime ministership of England: “My Christian conscience will not allow me to remain silent on this issue.” The next day Wilberforce began speaking out against the slave trade, knowing that it would cost him the opportunity to become Prime Minister. He fought against the slave trade for 50 years. When he was on his deathbed, the news reached him that the bill for abolition of the slave trade would be passed—that slavery would in fact be abolished in the British Empire.
Rodney Stark notes how historians have been desperately trying to figure out why Wilberforce and those who were working to abolish slavery were willing to sacrifice so much to end slavery. He says [quoting another historian] that the history of the abolition of slavery is puzzling because most historians believe that all political behavior is based on self-interest. Despite the fact that hundreds of scholars of the last 50 years have looked for ways to explain it, no one has succeeded in showing that those who campaigned for the end of the slave trade stood to gain in any tangible way or that these measures were other than economically costly to the country.
Followers of Christ have gone to people and places where others have refused to go.
A young woman named Cathy Ito from our community some years ago decided to go to the Sudan to serve as medical missionary with a leprosy mission called The Leprosy Mission International.
This mission which serves people with leprosy in 50 countries has been in existence for 130 years. It was founded by a man from Ireland named Wellesley Bailey. As a young man in the 1800s, he wanted to make a fortune and set sail for New Zealand. When he was unable to sail off the coast of Kent, England because of fog, he attended a church service instead and that night by his bed committed his life to Christ. He joined a Christian mission and went to Punjab, India as teacher. In India he met lepers for the first time and shuddered, but felt Christ calling him to bring love and the hope of the Christ to these suffering people and founded The Leprosy Mission International.
Christ leads to serve people who have been shunned by others.
Joseph D’Souza, who some of you heard at Missions Fest this past January, was an agnostic university student in India. Joseph had a Christian friend who gave him a New Testament and talked to him about the Jesus. Joseph became a follower of Jesus.
Joseph was a privileged Brahman, i.e., from the top of the social caste India, but he met and fell in love with a Christian woman named Maria from the “untouchable” class, the Dalits—someone who because of her social class he was not supposed to associate with at all.
She warned him, “Ok, if you want to marry me come and see what my life is like--you grew up in an upper class area, you’re an urban kid, you don’t know what this all about.”
He went and what he saw her neighborhood and it shook him up. He had never seen how the 250,000 Dalits in his country lived: no roads, no schools, no running water, no sanitation--utter poverty. He had not seen how their boys and girls were being sold as slaves and trafficked into the sex trade.
They got married, believing in Christ social class barriers fall away. Now they areworking together to help provide schools and education for the Dalits children, health care Dalits, economic development, and speaking before powerful legislatures of world of on behalf of the Dalits…
This week, I met with Mike Yankoski, a 26 year old Regent student.
When Mike was a teenager, he began asking questions about the meaning of life and why he was here on earth.
He asked his parents, but his dad as an atheist and his mother as an agnostic were not able to provide satisfying answers. He had some Christian friends in high school who introduced him to Jesus Christ.
In 2003, while a college student in Santa Barbara, California, Mike and his friend Sam voluntarily became homeless in order to experience what life is like for the poor and to be able to better love them. For five months, they traveled through six different cities with bare essentials and two acoustic guitars. Singing worship songs while panhandling, Mike and Sam got to know homeless people… They were on the streets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, sleeping alongside of convicted felons, drug dealers, and typical homeless.
I asked Mike, “Why did you do this?” (He knew God had said we are to love our neighbours as ourselves.) “ I wanted to know how I could better love the homeless and to see if my faith in God was real outside of my comfortable existence.”
A couple of weeks ago a small group led by Randy and Hannah Hamm from Tenth visited orphanages in China led by Internation China Concern.
One of the members, David Gotts, was on a short term Christian mission as young man and during a visit to Nanning, China when a mother placed a very sick baby girl in his hands and asked David to take care of her. David rushed her to the hospital, but she ended up dying. Out of experience, David felt God calling to establish orphanages for China’s abandoned and disabled children.
So there are signs of hope.
If you have been hurt by Christians—pray that you would meet some true followers of Christ and see where that leads you…
If you are a followers of Christ, remember that you may be the only “Bible” that some people will ever read. How you live may determine whether people follow Christ or not.
When I am in communities in the deep south where I am the only the Japanese person, the only Asian, I am conscious of wanting not wanting to harm the reputation of the Japanese and Asians in general, by being hostile or rude.
But, if we belong to Christ, we have a much higher call—to let our light so shine before people that they may see our good works and glorify God.
Back to the
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