I Could Have Been Born in Yemen

I finished God’s Smuggler and started on Secret Believers today. The older I get, the more grateful I am that I live in America. And these books only reinforce the sensation.

Secret Believers is about real Christians living in Muslim countries. Some were born into Christian minorities, which is bad. Others are converted Muslims. That’s a whole lot worse.

One of these believers is a young man who piped up at a gathering of Muslim students. He asked the Imam why Muslims, who honor the prophets, did not honor the greatest prophet of all. And he was referring to Jesus. The others beat him, and the Imam turned him over to his father and told him to keep beating him until he recited the little prayer that supposedly makes you a Muslim. His own cousin told him, “God will be pleased when I kill you.”

Churches exist in many Muslim countries, but they suffer constant harassment and persecution. And Christians are divided, because the older churches resent the Protestants. It seems Protestants can’t convert Muslims very easily or safely, so they go after Catholics and Orthodox believers who are disenchanted with the less-lively spirit of their churches. And they succeed.

Here in the US, you can go to any church you want, you can get all the instructional materials you want, and people from different denominations get along very well. As long as they don’t talk to each other too much.

Atheists always say they don’t see how God can be good and allow suffering. That seems childish to me. If you want to ask a better question, ask why evangelism is allowed to fail. You would think God would assure the success of anyone who tries to spread the word. But there are very high barriers to evangelism, especially in Muslim countries, and progress is not exactly optimal.

It’s a curious thing. But I am not stupid enough to second-guess God. When I was younger, I was so smart I was able to do that, but it seems I have grown less intelligent with age, because I no longer feel qualified. I suppose there is a purpose to the multi-millennium human pageant, and if God forced everything to go right, it would all be over in about a week.

I think the most likely explanation is that God has some responsibilities, but He has put a lot of jobs–a lot of authority–in the hands of Man. And we screw up. There are a lot of things we could be doing to improve creation, and we fail, so the world is a mess. Now that I think about it, Jesus complained about it, saying the harvest was plentiful, but the workers were few.

I guess the question isn’t that hard to answer, after all.

God bless this country. I am happier than ever to be here.