Refreshing

Here are two sides of the same interesting coin.

First, Christians are facing growing persecution in the Muslim world. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews just wrote an op-ed about it in The New York Daily News.

Highlights:

* “Just this month, a Pakistani court upheld the kidnapping, conversion and ‘marriage’ to older Muslim men of two Christian sisters, aged 10 and 13.”

* “Although they comprise less than 4% of Iraq’s population, Iraqi Christians now account for 40% of its refugees.”

* “Thirty years ago, Lebanon was 60% Christian; today it is barely 25%. And the growing political power of Iran-backed Hezbollah is encouraging further departures.”

Evangelist Brother Andrew encourages ex-Muslim converts to stay in Muslim lands and work to strengthen the church and proselytize. That is hard advice to follow, in times when persecution is increasing. Would I stay in a country where I knew there was a good chance that I or my loved ones would be killed? Would I do that, to help the church? Not a chance. Sorry to say it. No way. Barring a supernatural experience proving to my satisfaction that God wanted me there, I would be looking for the fastest way out. I’ve read horror story after horror story. Maybe some day I’ll be committed enough to risk imprisonment, torture, maiming, and execution. At the moment, I am not feeling it. I could never advise another human being to stay. How could I ask someone else to face a risk I won’t face? I have nothing but admiration for people who put their lives on the line in this manner.

Here’s the other side of the coin. A Coptic priest named Zakaria Botros has become a celebrity in Muslim countries. He has a 90-minute television show aimed at Muslims, and he is converting them at a very high rate. So high, there is a bounty on his head. It is rumored to be as high as sixty million dollars.

You would think the figure would be certain; for a bounty to work, it has to be publicized clearly. But I have no reason to doubt that it’s real.

Father Botros is Egyptian, but he lives in the US. That makes sense. If he were in Egypt, he’d be dead. Egypt is not a safe place for Christians, and I’m sure that applies very heavily to Christians who proselytize via television.

He believes a thousand Muslims convert via his phone banks each month, and because the lines are jammed, he believes the actual conversion figure is much higher. And he has websites.

It looks like television and the Internet are highly effective. And considerably safer than face-to-face evangelism.

What’s the conclusion? Hard to say. I feel sure God never intended evangelism to be completely safe, or that it be performed purely by automated means. We’re expected to risk suffering, to some degree. And a TV set is no substitute for a church and a flesh-and-blood pastor. But should Christians risk their lives unnecessarily? Is that required, and is it even effective, compared with TV and the web? And if you decide both types of outreach are needed, how do you balance them? How many people should stay behind in Muslim countries and face violence and oppression?

You won’t get an answer from me. I don’t have a clue.

Here’s something very strange about this blog post. There are two links in the above text. One goes to a story about Muslim oppression of Christians, and the story was penned by an active Orthodox Rabbi who chairs an organization which steers Christian donations to Jewish needs. The other goes to a blog entry about a Christian priest who proselytizes Muslims, and whose life has been credibly threatened by them, and the story was written by a Messianic Jew, Joel Rosenberg. My head is spinning.

Assuming Father Botros checks out, I can’t imagine a better place to send donations. Think about it. You can directly sponsor a Christian outreach to Muslims. What could be better than that? When you drop a bomb on a jihadist, you reduce the enemy’s numbers by one, and our numbers remain steady, and a person dies in ignorance. When you convert a Muslim, the number of our potential enemies is reduced by one, the number of our allies is increased by one, and a person is rescued from darkness.

Please tell me Father Zakarias doesn’t have a yacht and an air-conditioned dog house with a jacuzzi.