"45 million Christians were martyred in the twentieth century."
-- Oxford's World Christian Encyclopedia.
This week I got an email from someone I know in the Muslim world who reported something that the NY Times, almost exclusively, reported, because the mainstream media is busy with other things. There is a kind of genocide that is happening in India right now (a beautiful country that I visited two summers ago). There is presently a kind of religious genocide happening to our Christian brothers and sisters there. Here is the link.
Christians are forced to renounce their faith in exchange for safety, or else face marytrdom. This has been going on for weeks in India. This ought to be stunning to us since India is the world's largest democracy and officially a tolerant secular state. Hindus make up the majority of citizens in India, whilst Christians are only about 2% of the population or so.
The eastern state of Orissa, "in Kandhamal, the district that has seen the greatest violence, more than 30 people have been killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed, including the tin-roofed Baptist prayer hall where the Digals worshiped. Today it is a heap of rubble on an empty field, where cows blithely graze."
The private email I got speaks of dozens of Christians tribes being slaughtered.
"In a nearby Catholic orphanage, the mob locked up a Priest and a computer teacher in a house and burned them to death. Many believers have been killed and hacked into pieces and left on the road.... even women and children."
"More than 5000 Christian families have had their homes burned or destroyed. They have fled into the jungles and are living in great fear waiting for the authorities to bring about peace. But so far, no peace is foreseen."
"This will continue for another 10 days.... supposedly the 14 day mourning period for the slain Hindu priest. Many more Christians will die and their houses destroyed."We really do find it hard to connect with this as Western Christians whose biggest problems revolve around not being able to build 20 million dollar add ons to our massive church structures, and people not making us the center of attention and serving my needs. But we must try to reflect on these things. We must allow our hearts to break, to cry out on behalf of these amazingly beautiful people.
One potent and deep Scripture comes to mind when I think of these people facing persecution today, as I sit in my heated office complaining about my cough-due-to-cold.
Describing men and women in the past who suffered martyrdom for their faith, the writer of Hebrews says:
"They were stoned, sawn in two, put to death with the sword, being destitute, afflicted people of whom the world was not worthy" (Heb. 11.37-38).
That last line is important. People who get killed who remain faithful to Jesus, Scripture is saying, are more valuable then the world could ever understand. The world in all of its confusion, upside down values, and systems of thought and practice. It is no longer worthy to host the kinds of people God decided to take through martyrdom. They are that loved by God and valuable in his sight.
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