Your Brother Daniel
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The
Culpable Silence of the Church
What is our
responsibility to our brethren internationally? The jacket of The Global War on Christians by CNN
writer John L. Allen Jr. states:
· From Iraq and Egypt to Sudan and Nigeria, from
Indonesia to the Indian subcontinent, Christians in the early twenty-first
century are the world’s most persecuted religious group. According to the
secular International Society for Human Rights, 80 percent of violations of
religious freedom in the world today are directed against Christians.
· The Open
Doors Estimate, based on decades of tracking the realities of persecution
in some of the darkest corners of the earth, is that roughly one hundred
million Christians today suffer interrogation, arrest, and even death for their
faith, with the bulk located in Asia and the Middle East. The overall total
makes Christians the most at-risk group for violations of religious freedom.
(37)
It is not simply a
matter of human rights violations. It’s also a matter of genocide. For instance:
· In 1991, Iraq boasted a flourishing Christian
population of at least 1.5 million. Today the high-end estimate for the number
of Christians left is around 500,000, and many believe it could be as low as
150,000. Most of these Iraqi Christians have gone into exile, but a staggering
number have been killed. (4)
Meanwhile, the church in
the West remains relatively silent. Allen laments:
· It’s probably a safe bet that one could visit a
variety of different Christian denominations over an extended period of time
before hearing a sermon devoted to the subject of the global war on Christians,
or finding an adult faith formation group studying it, or reading about it
while browsing the collection of literature in the back of a church. (17)
This is particularly
tragic since charity is mandated to begin at home, with our own family:
· Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do
good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
(Gal. 6:10)
And our Third World
family of believers is crying out, “Where are our brethren in the West.” In the
face of Islamic persecution, the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal,
pleaded in a conference in London in 2011:
· “Does anyone hear our cry? How many atrocities
must we endure before somebody, somewhere, comes to our aid?”
Often, we hear but close
our ears, but this is no excuse, according to Scripture:
· Rescue those being led away to death; hold back
those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about
this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards
your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?
(Proverbs 24:11-12)
Let us therefore ask our
Lord to forgive our sins of omission (James 4:17) and offer ourselves up for
His service (Hebrews 12:2).
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