What is Worth Dying For?

When a German diplomat warned H. to move his family out of Yemen's increasingly dangerous northern territories into the Sana'a, its Capital, he did not listen. When the brother of a man he shared Christ with threatened H.'s life if he did not remain silent about his Christianity, he did not listen. Neither did G. or S., a nurse and a worker in H's hospital, respectively. The bodies of both of them, women in their mid-twenties, were discovered in a riverbed. H. and his family are still missing. Last week's Spiegel gives its readers front row seats to modern martyrdom.

Der Spiegel, according to my German teacher at the now-defunct ABC Deutsch language school, is the magazine German university students carry around to look intelligent. It is as well circulated in Germany as say Time or Newsweek, though it uses more trees to go further in depth than any of these magazines. Like, say, the Economist, its covers are meant to be provocative, though I find them two steps less clever and three steps in the direction of the National Enquirer (the cover in the wake of the financial crisis was a picture of the Statue of Liberty's extinguished flame). In one issue, (speaking of the Enquirer) the weekly attempted to give credibility to some pretty wild conspiracy theories about 9/11.

Provocativeness aside, the articles are patient enough to go deep, to follow stories and people, and they are essential reading to anyone interested in exploring the intellectual left of Germany (any takers...? am I the only one?). Throughout this article runs an unsurprising perplexity with why anyone would risk their lives to talk openly about their religion in a hostile region of the world. Evangelical, fundamentalist, Bible-true, missionary - as the journalists journey from missionary hospitals to Bible-schools, there is no distinction between these words. The writers stand outside of the believing bubble, wondering how any belief could lead someone to lay down their life for anything.

Der Spiegel briefly contrasts this philosophy with a state-approved protestant pastor, himself bewildered by such extreme actions. We have a different interpretation of mission, he says. The article does not expound on his interpretation. Is it different than Jesus' interpretation? Jesus, who quoted Proverbs when I said that greater love has no man than he who gave his life for His friends? Jesus who died so that we may believe on Him, and in doing so overcome death? His immediate followers had the same interpretation. They immediately began preaching in a Roman world as hostile as northern Yemen. Powerful and dangerous men did not want to change their views of God, of imperial power, of religious morality, and Jesus' disciples laid down their lives for their friends. And they laid down their lives for Jesus.

One of those followers, Paul, wrote in Romans 10:9, "if you confess with your mouth, that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Growing up in a Christian home, I have always found this a comfortable verse, a beacon of evangelical simple salvation after nine chapters of heady theology. I even learned a childrens song about it. Not so for a Chinese lawyer who preached in my church recently. This lawyer represents those who are imprisoned, shamed, tortured and killed for confessing with their mouth that Jesus is Lord. He said in ancient Rome this verse was a death sentence. The Roman government sanctioned the early church, as long as they did not say this verse. Caesar was Lord, not Jesus, and to say differently was serdition. What was true in the face of Roman centurions is true in the face of Chinese policemen and Yemeni Islamists.

For those of us who live in the comfortable West, in Germany and America, we get to decide for ourselves, as individuals, who is Lord, without fear of death or violent persecution. We risk being unfashionable. We risk being mocked in respected magazines. More dangerous, we risk believing the fashions and the magazines. We risk falling for an interpretation of mission that does not ruffle feathers, that does not love our enemies, that does not risk laying our lives down for our friends, much less our Lord. We risk using professional politics to try to accomplish the Lord's work rather than spreading the Kingdom through words and deeds of kindness.

If the Spiegel article is to be believed, H. reported to his home church about the man he shared Jesus with. The same man whose brother threatened him with death. H. saw this man as a friend, someone worth giving his life for. I do not know if he is alive, but I pray he is, that he may further astonish us with the courage God gave him. If he is dead, then he, as the writer of Hebrews says, "was to good for this world," and he "placed his hope in the resurrection to a better life." The German diplomat who warned H. to leave northern Yemen reported that he appeared to be living in his own world. I disagree. The problem for many westerners, myself included, is that we live in our own worlds. It is too uncomfortable not to. H. lived, and perhaps died, because he, like his Creator, so loved this one.