Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 June 2007 16:55:29
Today started with my laughter but I'll leave FW to write about that; after all it's her that was responsible. Today also sees the return of my parents following their cruise around the Western Med. As I write we are not at war with Spain, France, Italy or Gibralter. I take it from this that dad behaved himself ;-)
Then I started reading my latest Open Doors update e-mail. In it was good news regarding the freeing of three Sunday School Teachers in Indonesia. They had been jailed for the heinous crime of "trying to convert muslim children".
Following this was the story of Pastor Laxmi Narayan Gowda, a preacher from the sububs of Bangalore. On Friday 8th he was attacked by a mob of vicious Hindu ultra-nationalists. They tried to set him on fire and paraded him, naked, through the streets.
Around 7:00 p.m. about 50 people braged into his house and threatened him with violence unless he moved out of the area. The group then left.
Shortly after they returned with about 10 other people and cornered him in his house. They then began assaulting him in front of his wife and two young children. One of his assailants threw kerosene on him and others started burning bibles. Someone threw a burning bible on the pastor but somehow it failed to set him alight.
They then stripped him and hung a board around his neck. It said, "I am the one who was converting people". Then they paraded him through the streets. Pastor Gowda had been ministering in the area for 12 years. He is now in hospital recovering from his injuries.
What really annoys me about this is that we in the West are constantly told that we have to be more tolerant of those from other races and religions. We enshrine the freedom of religion in our laws and there is no organised persecution of people for the faith they follow. It is right that we do this and allow them the freedom to follow their chosen religion.
Why is it that their co-religionists are so afraid of the word of Jesus? What is it about His message that scares them so much? Is it just a cry against their imperialist past?
Muslim, buddhist and hindu countries enact laws to prevent their people's from being coverted to Christianity. They welcome the aid and relief that Christian charities provide but try to stop us from supporting churches. Some even prevent their people from discovering who the aid comes from. This sounds very much like some Stalinist ploy from 70 years ago.
I suppose we should be glad that this sort of thing does not happen where we live. Such stories appear to be few and far between to us but they are a daily reality in the lives of many Christian people throughout the world.
Lets pray that they will be comforted and protected by our God for their witness. Yet less us give Him some assistance as well. Write to your politicians, pray for them, give help to organisations that try to begin their pliht to the attention of the world.
If this happened here then it would be on the news. If it was Christians perpetrating these acts then our media would be jumping over themselves to cover the story. Yet it seems that Christians are less important than others in this world.