Convert or die!

I never thought I would hear those words during my life time: convert or die!  The stories coming out of Iraq right now are fluid, but they are not changing much.  People--Christians and other ethnic minorities are being chased out of Iraq simply because they do not maintain the same beliefs as the militants that are chasing them.  Some of these people left with just the clothes on their backs.

But what I feel is the saddest story to date, something I have heard in the flurry of stories, was about the man who renounced his vow to Jesus, only to be killed anyway. I hope this story is not true, but if it is, I hope he had time to repent and that he his soul went to heaven.
These militants are so evil that people are running because they know whether or not they renounce their faith, they will most likely be killed.  Many of us have seen the images of the affected: fleeing, waiting on the top of a mountain, and burying family members in shallow graves.  Many of the Christians who ran for their lives are waiting in churches.  We have seen other images too difficult to watch, of Christians and others who have not renounced their faith, being shot in the head and pushed into some body of water.  The ground covered in the blood of the slain.

From the time I heard about these horrors, I posed the question: could we 'Western Christians' handle what is happening to the Christians in Iraq and other parts of the world? Could we drop everything and leave our homes with just the clothes on our backs?  Are we tough enough to stand up for our belief in Jesus with a gun held to our head, or the head of a family member?  Do we really believe? What do we believe?  Do we really believe in Jesus no matter what?

Christians have been killed since the beginning.  We have been fed to lions, boiled in oil, and run through with spears from the time Jesus rose from the dead.  What is happening now is just a continuation.  I believe people are shocked at the television images because as a human race we thought we had evolved, become more accepting of each other, more tolerant.  But that is not the case, indeed I do not believe it ever will be the case.  We are too beset with ourselves and with our causes.  We are not willing to live and let live. Actually, that includes we Christians.  When we become believers we are mandated to go and spread the good news.  The issue is that everyone thinks their religious belief is the good news.

We Christians however, believe we have the true good news.  Why? Because the one true God does not compel us to convert people by pointing a gun at their heads.  We do not shoot people in the head at point blank range while videotaping so that we can then show the murders on television around the world.  We live our lives by example, not by beating people over the head with our beliefs.  We believe in a God who lives forever.  We believe in I am that I am, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  His word does not change. We believe in a Jesus who died and rose from the dead and lives forever more.

When we become believers, our hearts and minds change.  We no longer give in to murderous rages, trying to control other human beings with the threat of death.  We believe in the one true God.  We believe.

What exactly is it?

I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  Many people dismiss it as 'religious', 'holy roller', 'old-school', and no longer relevant.  Even Christians in an effort to seem relevant, do not use the term.  What really bothers me is that some Christians believe we must stay away from certain terms and tenets of our Bible, to be relevant to people who view us as crazy for our beliefs anyway.  In fact, these very people want us to stop believing.  They think that we can just change our minds from believing in a book of ‘stories’ written 2000 years ago about a god that probably does not even exist.  For that very reason, the fact that our beliefs are 2000 years old, we should forget it and 'get into the 21st century'.  We should 'go along to get along', and 'live and let live'.  If we do not comply, we are 'narrow-minded', 'hateful', and anti-anything that is now openly accepted.  

I do not know what is more treacherous though, the belief that Christians should just stop believing, or the Christians who have indeed stopped believing.  If they ever believed at all.  Believe or not, The Word is The Word, and those of us who know The Word realize we cannot just stop believing.  There's a saying, 'stand for something or fall for anything'.  I do not know who said it, but I agree.  I agree not because I want to be stubborn and anti-establishment; but because there is something deep within me, deeper than an impression, that believes.  It is a living, breathing, confidence in someone bigger than me.  That someone created me, and when I worship Him, my heart and my spirit come into agreement with His.  How does one just walk away from that and stop believing?

Am I being asked to stop believing in my creator so that our new society of ‘go along to get along' feels less threatened? In America, it used to be that people were allowed to believe what they wanted.  Now when we believe, we can be accused of hate crimes.  It seems the reverse is happening.  It is the Christians who are being ostracized.  That however, has been the case since the beginning.  We are used to being ostracized.  

At the mention of the name Jesus or God, some people become quite angry.  They will probably become angrier when they realize that 'holiness' is a relevant term.  It is not a religious, old-school, or holy-roller term.  It is relevant to those of us who still believe.  You see, the Word says 'Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.' --Hebrews 12:14.  So for those of us who believe, we must be holy if we want to go to Heaven.  For believers, Heaven is what it is ultimately all about.  But while we are here, holiness means loving everyone, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, and it means not changing our minds or 'going along to get along'.

Nowhere in the Word does it tell Christians to hate people, but the Word does tell us to hate sin. Furthermore, the word is quite clear on what sin is.  For those, Christian and non-Christians, who believe we can just interchange, add a little here, take away there; it does not work like that. We either believe the entire Word or none of it.  

Christians will continue to believe the Word.  We will continue to love everyone, and we will continue to hate sin.  We will continue to abide by the laws of our land, but we will not compromise The Word.  It will not always be easy to walk the fine line of obeying The Word and obeying the law, but we will do just that.  Our God, The Word, will direct us.  We believe.