NEWS

MIDDLE EAST

Palestinian Christians are hopeful that recent confrontations will bring an end to Israeli domination.

Since December, conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has escalated into a grim stalemate with few signs of resolution. The violence has highlighted concerns among Palestinian Christians, many of whom feel that U.S. Christians wrongly support Israel uncritically.

Last month a Christian Zionist Congress convened in Jerusalem, calling on Christians to “come together to honor the Jewish state and pledge their ongoing support for her.” Meanwhile, the Middle East Council of Churches issued a statement designed to help Western Christians realize how Arab believers view their circumstances.

The council statement read in part: “The indigenous churches of the Middle East are keenly aware of the human rights violations presently inflicted on the unarmed Arab population of the occupied territories and Gaza, and they refuse to make God the author of such treatment.”

For Palestinians, Muslim and Christian, the recent unrest signals a fundamental change in tactics and self-understanding. Despite nearly 200 fatalities in the past six months, Palestinians report their morale remains high.

Prominent Palestinian lawyer Jonathan Kuttab, a Christian, recently completed a speaking tour of the United States and Canada during which he described the effect of the uprising on his people. Kuttab challenged church groups and human-rights advocates to monitor what is happening.

Meanwhile, the American Alliance for Palestinian Human Rights has been organized in Washington, D.C., to coordinate the efforts of the many organizations working on behalf of human rights and Arab-Israeli peace. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has announced it will send field observers to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to “monitor and report on Israeli activities.”

No Longer Helpless

In an area the size of New Jersey, Israel maintains tense relations with Arabs, both inside its official borders and in Israeli-occupied lands of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. About a million Palestinians inhabit the West Bank and Gaza, some 60,000 of them in refugee camps.

For decades, many of these Arabs have wanted to return to the villages they fled during the 1948 Israeli war of independence and the Six-Day War of 1967. Leadership for the recent uprising has emerged mainly from a network of committees in the refugee camps and in predominantly Arab cities such as Bethlehem and Ramallah.

Speaking last month in Washington, D.C., Kuttab observed, “The forces that have been unleashed in this uprising were there all along.” What is new, he said, is that Palestinians no longer view themselves as helpless victims. “On the eve of the uprising, the common wisdom was that there was nothing the Palestinians could do,” said Kuttab. “Their leadership was divided and in exile.… They had no military option. Their allies, so called, in the Arab world were worse than their enemies,” he said, adding that Palestinians became consigned to waiting out the occupation.

The change in attitude came from an unexpected source: children. What began as isolated incidents of children throwing stones at Israeli army vehicles escalated into a full-fledged uprising. Kuttab said the children “simply decided that we are a people, we want to be free now, and we’re going to do something about it.”

Adults caught the spirit of resistance, Kuttab said, adding that Palestinians are now attempting to conduct a careful, thoroughgoing campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience. Their efforts include boycotting Israeli goods, holding partial and full labor strikes, and encouraging Arab tax collectors, police officers, and other civil servants who work with and for Israelis to resign en masse.

In response, the Israeli army has increasingly cracked down on Arabs; soldiers have broken up demonstrations with bullets and clubs. Electricity and water to Arab villages and refugee camps have been cut off, and telephone service has been disrupted.

A Plea For Help

Between 10 and 15 percent of Palestinians are Christians, with church affiliations that include Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Mennonite, and Anglican. One Palestinian evangelical, Bishara Awad, worked at a Mennonite school for orphaned boys after receiving a U.S. education. He realized there are few opportunities for Arab Christian young people to obtain theological training without leaving the country, so he founded Bethlehem Bible College (CT, April 18, 1986, p. 16).

Awad says recent unrest is affecting students and former students at the Bible College. He has distributed an account written by one of his graduates of an experience she had in February while visiting her brothers in the town of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem.

Israeli soldiers marched through the town, rounding up young people. They fired bullets through the windows of the home the young woman was visiting. Then the soldiers entered the house and dragged the girl’s brothers, aged 26 and 30, into the street, covering their heads before beating them with sticks and putting out cigarettes on their bodies.

When the men were released, the woman writes, “They could not stand, collapsing like rags on the ground.” She claims her brothers have never been involved in political demonstrations.

In a letter accompanying this account, Awad urgently requested the prayers of U.S. Christians, writing, “God has called us to a ministry of reconciliation and peace in this land. Hatred can easily breed in situations of oppression, but the Bible College tries to further dialogue between Jews and Arabs. We are here to bear witness of Jesus Christ and his redemptive power and love. But our hope in Christ does not make us insensitive to injustice and suffering in our community.”

Awad requested prayer for an end to “the bloodshed, brutality, and oppression” and for “a just solution that will lead to reconciliation and peace for both peoples of this troubled land.”

Kuttab believes the current conflict presents a new opportunity for a two-state solution based on compromise. He observed, “In strategic terms, this uprising is a real watershed not only for us but also for Israelis. They can choose to reach a compromise … or, if they choose, the war will continue.”

By Beth Spring

Classic and contemporary excerpts.

Losing touch

What is largely missing in American life today is a sense of context, of saying or doing anything that is intended or even expected to live beyond the moment. There is no culture in the world that is so obsessed as ours with immediacy. In our journalism, the trivial displaces the momentous because we tend to measure the importance of events by how recently they happened. We have become so obsessed with facts that we have lost all touch with truth.

—Ted Koppel in a speech to the International Radio and Television Society, quoted in Harper’s (Jan. 1986)

The Bible: Force or farce?

I remain unpersuaded that any theological movement can dramatically affect the course of the world while its own leaders undermine the integrity of its charter documents, or while its spokespersons domestically exhaust all their energies in internal defense of those documents. The Bible stands impressively unshaken by the fury of destructive critics, while the nonbelieving world, itself marked for destruction, urgently needs to hear its singular message of salvation.

—Carl F. H. Henry in The Christian Century (Nov. 1980)

Hell: Heat plus humidity

I want to say that the humidity factor has never to my knowledge been taken into account in descriptions of Hell. Your talking eternal fire without no humidity, a Mississippian is gonna think you mean Heaven or Southern California.

—Jack Butler in Jujitsu for Christ: A Novel

Talking too much

Would-be theologians … must be on their guard lest by beginning too soon to preach they rather chatter themselves into Christianity than live themselves into it and find themselves at home there.

—Søren Kierkegaard as recorded in his Journal (July 11, 1838)

Misplaced redwoods

I suppose that the worst thing we can do with our lives is actively pursue wickedness: oppression, rape, hatred—they are hideous. But doing things that don’t matter is nearly as bad. God created us as wonderful beings, capable of loving, caring, growing. And what do we do most of the time? Nothing.

We’re intended to grow into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” We’re meant to be like trees planted by rivers of water, like redwoods. We’re intended to treat others as we’d like to be treated ourselves.

But instead we go about our daily routines, rarely asking whether what we’re doing matters. Most of the time, we’re redwoods transplanting ourselves to the desert.

—John Alexander in The Other Side (May 1987)

Out of the rabbit holes

Many believers are “rabbit hole” Christians. In the morning they pop out of their safe Christian homes, hold their breath at work, scurry home to their families and then off to their Bible studies, and finally end the day praying for the unbelievers they safely avoided all day.

—Jan Johnson in Moody Monthly (Nov. 1987)

Work never done

The trouble with doing good works is that one can never be said to have done one’s share because some works always need doing and there are never enough people to do them.

—Barbara Pym in An Academic Question

Distracted fans

We’ve lost ourselves in the cult of personality. We seem to have become “fans,” passive spectators of the passing scene. The stars whom we either admire or despise serve as a distraction from the things we should be thinking about, such as our own lives.

—Maureen Howard, interviewed in Sunday (Chicago Tribune magazine, Sept. 7, 1986)

More than hardware

The visionaries of the electronic age have tended to only look at what it is possible for the new Age of Information to bring us, not what the probable outcome will be in a larger social or moral sense … we should remember that technology is not just “hardware.” It cannot be removed from its social context or consequences.

—Stewart Hoover, quoted in Media&Values (Summer/Fall 1987)

Has heroism become a trivial pursuit?

Nowadays heroes come and go with alarming frequency. Oliver North is a goat one day, a hero the next. And so it is with Gary Hart, Jim and Tammy Bakker, and hordes of other politicians, Christian figures, athletes, and entertainers. Have we reached Andy Warhol’s society of the future when everyone will be famous—but only for 15 minutes?

Americans have always taken heroes seriously, and rightly so. Heroes, whether we are aware of it or not, focus the human imagination and thereby shape the lives and personalities of their admirers. Public heroes also provide coherence at a deep level to the society of which they are a part. This is what makes our present confusion about heroes particularly troubling. How can they exert this influence if they rise and fall, inflate and deflate like soap bubbles on the wind? It is no small thing when the heroes of a society are in disarray, because heroism touches the human spirit deeply at so many levels—the psychological, the sociological, and the theological.

You can see the psychological importance of heroism early in a child’s life. Think of the hats a child puts on—those of the nurse, the fire chief, the soldier. Long before a child is aware of abstract moral rules, he or she has a fertile imagination and wants to be like certain kinds of people and unlike others.

Even as we grow older, we are motivated not just by rules and laws, but by stories, by images of flesh-and-blood people who have lived in a way we find admirable and attractive.

On a social level, we do not need to look far to see the significance that people like Elizabeth I, Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, and Gandhi had for their respective countries. (Of course, on the dark side of heroism, there was Hitler, who was probably the most skilled architect of a hero system in our century.)

In reading theology, I often find Christians speaking as if having heroes is pardonable up through early adolescence, but after that heroism is a negative force, tied inevitably to pride. Not only is this the fruit of a low view of the power of the imagination, but it also shows a theological thinness. The God of the Bible is the God of glory, and we are called to reflect something of this glory in our relationship to him through Christ. Glory and honor are not the featherweight conceptions that our society has made them, but are heavy and solid, rooted in the unchanging character of God for all eternity.

The desire for heroism, properly understood, comes from the need to interact with and reflect the glory of God himself. In this is found true human greatness and excellence, which is focused ultimately in the imitation of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). At its worst, the heroic harnesses the full force of human vanity, self-deception, and cruelty to become a scourge on the planet. But at its redeemed best, the longing to reach toward heroism is the burning desire to honor God, forgetful of self.

Heroism is not dead in our society, but it has been besieged by two powerful forces: cynicism and trivialization. Together they bring about a crisis of the imagination that has deeply affected our society.

Heroes And Cynics

We are living at a time when the very word hero has come to carry cynical connotations. Many loud and learned voices are claiming there is no such thing as human greatness at all, and there never was. There has been a widespread loss of confidence that meaning for human life can ever be expressed in words. This is obviously devastating, because heroes must be heroic in terms of meanings, values, or standards—without which their heroism would be indistinguishable from villainy or random behavior. If the foundation for meaning is cut away, the human need for heroism will shrivel up in boredom and alienation. Or it will hang in midair, waiting to attach itself to the fragmented, arbitrary, and sometimes fanatical meanings that either individuals will create for themselves, or charismatic leaders will prefabricate for them.

The existentialist Ernest Becker has given an incisive thumbnail sketch of the history of meaning. He points out that for all of known civilization, people have believed in two worlds: one that you could see, and one that was invisible. They lived in the visible world, but they believed in the unseen world, in which lived spirits, hobgoblins, gods, goddesses, and God. The invisible world provided the basis for meaning and value, and hence, for what was heroic. It was the source of cohesion for their society. However, about the middle of the last century, people began to be told that there was no invisible world. It did not exist and never had. They were living a lie.

Becker then looks at what happened to heroism as a result. Once the door to the invisible world was closed and barred, we had to derive a sense of the heroic from the visible, tangible, material world.

He writes in The Birth and Death of Meaning: “People no longer drew their power from the invisible dimension, but from intensive manipulation of very visible Ferraris and other material gadgets. They try to find their whole fulfillment in a sex partner or an endless succession of partners, or in their children.”

Suddenly the theater of heroism has shrunk. There is nothing beyond ourselves to which we correspond except the vast impersonal. Lost is God and the moral and heroic absolutes that made sense under his reign, and with it the idea of distinctive human dignity. The British philosopher C. E. M. Joad put it well: “Although there was scientific basis for saying that man was the highest primate, there was none for placing him outside the animal kingdom in the matter of unique rights; he was only the star performer in the zoo. Suppose, then, someone put him in a cage or made a slave of him; was there any biological or sociological law which said this could not be done?”

Admittedly, we do different tricks than the other animals in the zoo. But unless there is a God in whose image we are made, all our higher ideals for justice, goodness, and beauty are just pretensions, mirages in the consciousness of the human animal. At the philosophical level, there is therefore little confidence in human distinctiveness, let alone heroism.

Freud Confronts Da Vinci

The human sciences have also made a major contribution to cynicism about human greatness, especially as they treat the subjects of motivation and freedom. We are told that human choice is not what it appears to be. If we accept the sophistications of some views of psychology, we know that what appears to be heroic—for example, a man or woman’s act of courage in saving another’s life—is, in fact, a desperate attempt to win the approval of a long-dead parent who had withheld love in the childhood years. What, then, has become of the hero? He or she is transformed in our minds into a neurotic, and with a slight turn of the mind, admiration is changed to pity and condescension.

Psychoanalysis has always been a great equalizer of people. This, of course, puts it at loggerheads with heroism, which by definition gives attention to what is extraordinary. The influence of Freud, although great in psychology and psychiatry, may have been even more pervasive in literature, history, and the arts in general. He set a pattern in his early study of Leonardo da Vinci when he explained that da Vinci’s extraordinary creativity could be accounted for by his repressed homosexual desires. As an “in-closet” homosexual, such psychic energy was built up inside him that it was sublimated into his artistic and engineering accomplishments.

By this psychoanalytic method, any heroic act can be seen to have self-serving, even sordid roots. We are left with our attention fixed on the internal crippling of a person, and we are thoroughly uninspired by that person’s genius.

Space does not allow a survey of the debunking strands in psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, sociobiology, and economics. Despite the many helpful contributions these fields have made, there has been a tendency to see individuals as only products of intrapsychic, socioeconomic, or biological forces beyond their control. These factors eclipse the drama of life—stories with unfolding narratives of agonizing choice and action. In the name of science and under the aura of its authority and sophistication, some of the work in these disciplines simply obscures those things most important and most admirable in human existence.

The Trivialization Of Charles Lindbergh

The second great force besieging heroism today is trivialization. While the acid of cynicism dissolves the very idea of the heroic, the force of trivialization at first seems to be blowing the horn for the heroic. On closer observation, however, we discover trivialization dilutes heroism. It contributes just as much as cynicism to the loss of the heroic. The media are prime culprits. In his landmark work, The Image, Daniel Boorstin complains that we have exchanged heroes for celebrities. While a hero is someone who has done something great or honorable and therefore commands respect, a celebrity is “known for his well-knownness” and is envied for it. He is the “human pseudo-event.”

Trivialization takes two forms. First, true heroes are trivialized. Second, trivial people are inflated to heroic status.

Charles Lindbergh was one of the first heroes to be trivialized by the news media’s power. His flight was extraordinary, but relatively uncomplicated—insufficient to satisfy the public’s hunger for information about him. Therefore, his rise to fame itself became the focus of the news, with all the complications and tragedy that it brought to his life. What the press had made of him was more newsworthy than what he actually did, and hero became celebrity.

More recently, Lenny Skutnik, the man who rescued a woman from the icy Potomac River after the Air Florida plane crash, observed the same thing. After he had appeared on television beside Nancy Reagan at the State of the Union address, he reported that when people would come to him they no longer asked, “Hey, aren’t you the guy who jumped in the river and saved the lady?” but instead, “Hey, aren’t you the guy who was on the State of the Union?”

The second form of trivialization—inflating superficial people to heroic status—is more destructive. It provides us with a new cast of fascinating people each week, and with fame as the central virtue. The National Enquirer is always ready to feed our inquiring minds, and People Weekly magazine to keep us abreast of the most recent divorces and indictments among celebrities. In a recent study of the top ten American heroes, seven were in show business, and most were considered not so much for who they were but for their stage or celluloid images. Much of what is admired actually does not exist except in the form of image. Like the dehydrated desert wanderer, we are navigating by mirages.

This is very serious. Today’s heroism is one of style, not of character, where the important points are driving a Mercedes or BMW, and wearing Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren fashions. Even in the “serious” world of politics, what seems to matter is physical appearance, an attractive family, and a quotable quip on every current issue. (Of course, for someone who wants to be a celebrity badly enough, that is always possible. All one needs to do is to shoot a famous person.)

Not only are certain individuals trivialized, but heroism itself has become superficial. As long ago as 1959, Earl Blackwell and Cleveland Amory compiled the voluminous Celebrity Register. In it the television comedienne Dagmar was listed beside the Dalai Lama, Anita Ekberg beside Dwight Eisenhower, and Jane Russell beside Bertrand Russell.

As long as fame is the highest value, we cannot make important distinctions between celebrities and true heroes. Could it be that some of our televangelists have pulled God himself into the triviality of America’s consumer culture, where faith is a commodity and theology is lite—all for your entertainment pleasure?

Eating Indiana Jones’S Cake

Although the forces of cynicism and trivialization seem to start off in opposite directions, they in fact feed each other. The more cynical one is, the more life seems to be trivial. The more life seems trivial, the more cynicism is justified. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two, the result of which makes it very difficult to develop a healthy sense of heroism.

The heroism that survives the acid of cynicism and the inflation-deflation cycles of trivialization is apt to be a heroism out of reach of the vast majority of people. This is because there is no modern transcendent source of meaning. As long as heroism is linked to moral character, it can provide a focus of aspiration for common people, for the possibility of moral choice is available to any of us. But much of what passes for high-visibility heroism today is morally neutral. Society can no longer distinguish between right and wrong. Instead, we exalt heroes of beauty, sports, music, and film—those with money and possessions.

If we follow the heroics of Clint Eastwood or James Bond, we will end up dead or in jail. What if (like the vast majority of us) our physical endowments are such that the heroism of beauty or professional sports is simply not an option? Or how many of us can be rock music stars? Wealth and its accouterments may be a little more accessible, but they are still unavailable to most people.

What we have is a heroism that has a different function than it used to have. The hero was once a focal point for aspiration, but this is no longer realistically the case. After initial short-lived aspiration, the modern hero is apt to produce two responses—daydreaming and self-hatred. We daydream about what life would be like if we walked in the shoes of the hero, but we detest ourselves for falling so far short.

Watching a 90-yard touchdown run is inspiring, but for most observers, it inspires only a trip to the kitchen for another can of beer. Likewise, the adoring fans of the rock guitarist are inspired to invest fortunes in records, tapes, posters, and correct clothing, but few get beyond “air guitar” in their own musical accomplishments. As Christopher Lasch has noted, there is a loss of will to emulate another—it takes too much effort. The highest aspiration is to live a hassle-free life, to minimize frustration and maximize stimulation and comfort.

Admiration without aspiration ends ultimately in frustration. My life seems so dull compared to Clint Eastwood’s roles. This turns easily to compensatory heroism: using a hero not to aspire to, but, by a vicarious voyage of identity, to silence the need for aspiration. The compensatory hero does not fire our ideals; he compensates for our lack of ideals. He or she reduces us to obedient little people, because we are without any imaginative moral vision that could call us to break with conformity. This, not true religion, is the opiate of the masses, leaving us easy victims to the seductions of the consumer culture.

As columnist Russell Baker said of Raiders of the Lost Ark, “you want to make sure nobody in the audience thinks you’re an outdated sap who really believes in swashbuckling. So you keep winking at the audience by making the whole thing so preposterous that they’ll know you’re only kidding.” Heroes like Indiana Jones are often held up as proof that true heroism remains. In fact, they are only attempts to have one’s cake and eat it too—to get an imaginative charge out of a story, but still preserve a basic cynicism.

True heroes challenge the excuseladen mediocrity of our lives and open us to new possibilities of what we might be. As such, they are uncomfortable to live with and are often unwanted. If we can debunk or trivialize them, we give ourselves a reprieve from their challenge and from the shame of our shortfall. This reprieve is one of the payoffs of the cynic or, in biblical language, the scoffer. However, there are great losses involved that we are only now beginning to see. C. S. Lewis wrote that “in trying to extirpate shame we have broken down one of the ramparts of the human spirit, madly exulting in the work as the Trojans exulted when they broke their walls and pulled the horse into Troy.”

In a world without heroes, there is no shame, but neither is there glory and honor or a positive moral imagination. Time will tell whether the Trojan horse is already in the city or not. Last year’s Fourth of July edition of Newsweek celebrated everyday heroes from each of the 50 states. It was moving in that they were selected because they were unknown, and they cared in imaginative and costly ways—usually about other people less fortunate than themselves. It is gratifying that these are Newsweek’s heroes, but it is less encouraging when we realize that there are other “heroic virtues” that have left larger footprints on the American imagination. The advertisements within that same magazine predictably show that it is in fact beauty, talent, money, and power that are considered to be the real motivating levers to human action.

Christians have a possibility of pointing to a new way, to a redemption of the imagination. But before we become triumphant, we must concede that our track record in recent times has not been good. Ernest Becker, in Escape from Evil, pointed out that the world, looking for the Christian ideal of heroic sainthood, too often sees a church that “openly subscribes to a commercial-industrial hero system” rather than the excellence of God. The challenge is to show something better in the integrity of our lives, before one another and before God, as we imitate his Son.

Dick Keyes is director of L’Abri Fellowship in South-borough, Massachusetts. Now at work on a book about heroism, he is the author of Beyond Identity (Servant, 1984).

Two-hundred-fifty years after Aldersgate, John Wesley’s experience of grace belongs to us all.

Two-hundred-fifty years ago, on May 24, 1738, a 35-year-old Oxford don, Anglican priest, and missionary to America went “very unwillingly” to a small room on a narrow street called Aldersgate in the north of London. At a quarter to nine, as someone read from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, he felt his heart “strangely warmed.” “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation,” he later wrote in his journal, “and an assurance was given to me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Immediately, with a band of jubilant friends, John Wesley left to find his brother Charles, who had come into a similar experience three days earlier. When they met, John spoke only two words: “I believe.” The whole company burst into “birth song”—the first hymn that Charles had written to celebrate his new-found faith in Christ:

Where shall my wandering soul begin?

How shall I all to heaven aspire?

A slave redeemed from death and sin,

A brand plucked from eternal fire.

How shall I equal triumphs raise,

Or sing my Great Deliverer’s praise?

After prayers of thanksgiving, the friends parted, without knowing that John Wesley’s heart-warming experience would be noted 250 years later as the watershed in his spiritual journey.

Aldersgate is more than an event in time; it is an experience in grace. By his own testimony, John Wesley never isolated the gift of grace from the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit—leading him to Aldersgate, assuring him of salvation, and hallowing him for a ministry that revived the soul and reformed the society of eighteenth-century England.

Wesley’s theology of grace lives on. Leading grace, assuring grace, and hallowing grace are timeless biblical truths. And by retracing Wesley’s journey in grace, we can see not only grace for reviving our own souls, but also grace for reforming our society.

Leading Grace

Grace led Wesley to Aldersgate. “Preserving grace,” as Wesley might call it, saved him from an arsonist’s fire at the manse of his father’s parish at Ep-worth, so that he later referred to himself as “a brand plucked from the burning.” “Preventing grace” kept him from gross sin as he learned the discipline of righteousness from his strong-minded mother and his exacting headmaster at Charterhouse School. “Quickening grace” created in Wesley a thirst for inward holiness that took him through the frustrations of intellectual search at Oxford and the futility of striving for salvation by the good works of the Holy Club.

Grace also attended his failures, leading him through ineffectiveness as an Anglican priest in England and a missionary in Georgia, to the “convicting grace” he met aboard ship as he fled America. There he watched Moravians whose lives witnessed to the inward peace he so desperately sought. And a Moravian named Peter Böhler helped him realize that his lifetime of reason, ritual, and righteousness stood for him as the last barrier to saving faith. Just before Aldersgate, grace made tender the heart of Wesley as he wept openly over his unbelief.

Modern psychology has caused us often to focus on the destructive aspects of our personal pasts, blaming traumas, tragedies, failures, and frustrations for our present problems. But examining our lives for evidence of leading or prevenient grace—the grace that goes before us and draws us to saving faith in Jesus Christ—can put our pasts to constructive use. Wesley and other early Methodists kept journals of their life history. They not only recorded their spiritual progress, but also remembered their spiritual past by tracing the evidence of prevenient grace at work in their lives.

Today, there is a renewed interest in logging the daily events of one’s spiritual journey. Reviewing the chapters of our lives and giving each chapter a name, we ask the question, “How was the Spirit of God leading me during this time in my life?” By tracing the movement of the Spirit, even through trauma, tragedy, frustration, and failure, we will sing of grace.

Prevenient grace also changes the way in which we look at others. Imagine the difference in our outlook if we viewed dissimilar people or cultures not through the eyes of superiority or prejudice, but with the question, “How is the Spirit of God leading this person or this culture toward Christ?” With the weight of glory on our shoulders, we would find ourselves with C. S. Lewis realizing that no person is common and no culture is hopeless.

Assuring Grace

Grace met Wesley at Aldersgate. Those of us who are accustomed to emotion in religion can hardly comprehend how radical it was for Wesley to confess, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” His words ran counter to a lifetime of cold reason, rigid religion, and methodical good works. For the first time in his life, Wesley gave spiritual credibility to feeling as well as fact, heart as well as head, surprise as well as order.

Regenerating grace always brings the balance that makes us whole, a balance we all need. For Wesley, regeneration meant an emotional breakthrough to balance his disciplined mind and obedient will. In our day, grace may move us in the opposite direction. As Allan Bloom notes in The Closing of the American Mind, the discipline of reason and commitment to absolute values has been sacrificed to emotional intensity. Today we need discipline of intellect and obedience of will to balance the tendencies toward emotional intensity and experiential subjectivity.

Assuring grace confirmed Wesley’s justification at Aldersgate. On the return voyage from his aborted missionary venture in Georgia, Wesley met a Moravian pastor named August Gottlieb Spangenberg who asked him, “Does the Spirit of God witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?” Wesley could only answer, “I hope he died to save me.” At Aldersgate, however, he spoke with certainty, “I felt … an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

This, too, is a need we all share. We still seek signs, seals, symbols, and symptoms as proof of spiritual certainty. None is more scriptural nor more exacting than the continuing question of the Moravian pastor. If our leaders and people regularly had asked and answered each other, “Does his Spirit witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?” some of the scandals and disillusionment that have blotted our recent evangelical history might well have been avoided.

Hallowing Grace

Grace followed Wesley from Aldersgate. While we best remember Wesley’s affirmation of faith at Aldersgate, we cannot neglect the rest of his testimony. Immediately after he experienced the strange warming of his heart, he began to pray for those who despitefully used and abused him. But soon, Wesley wrote, “The enemy suggested, ‘This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?’ ” The lifelong struggle for inward holiness was not over.

At one time after Aldersgate, Wesley wrote out of depressed agony, “I am not a Christian.” At another time he foolishly flipped open his Bible to justify marrying a woman ill-suited to his style of ministry. Yet, his pursuit of inward holiness did not cease. Throughout his ministry he preached the message of hallowing grace—the gift of the Holy Spirit that fills the heart with love.

Wesley frequently asked believers, “Have you received the filling of the Holy Spirit?” He preferred to speak of the “filling of the Spirit” rather than the “baptism of the Spirit.” To illustrate “the filling,” he used the analogy of a house. Our repentance, he said, is the porch, justification is the doorway, and sanctification is the Holy Spirit filling every room of the house.

The quest for holiness is being renewed among us. After a swing of the pendulum to a period of religious activism, we sense the need for spiritual cleansing and filling. Hallowing grace awaits us. With the incarnate spirit of “Christ in us” as our promise, we sing the Wesley hymn:

Finish then thy new creation,

Pure and spotless let us be,

Let us see thy great salvation

Perfectly restored in thee.

The quest for holiness, however, is not without its own check and balance. For John Wesley, piety and mercy were inseparably linked in the experience of hallowing grace. He likened the witness of the Spirit to a two-sided coin: On one side is the witness that we are the children of God—the inward evidence of piety. On the other side is the witness that we are obedient to his will—the outward evidence of justice and mercy.

For Wesley, hallowing grace meant giving grace. Under the banner of “faith working through love,” he traveled more than 250,000 miles on horseback, preached a thousand times a year, wrote 400 books, established hundreds of societies, and founded schools, hospitals, and orphanages.

By giving himself, Wesley found the joy he sought. For him, perfect love expressed through the world of action became another way to “celebrate the sovereignty of grace.”

Aldersgate belongs to all of us. It is not the time, the place, or the person that we celebrate 250 years after the event. It is the grace that leads us to Christ, assures us of salvation, and hallows us for deeds of justice and mercy. Aldersgate still calls us to the saving grace that strangely warms the heart and sets the soul to singing.

David McKenna is president of Asbury Theological Seminary and author of The Whisper of His Grace (Word).

Knowing the Lord was with her sustained Nien Cheng in a Red Chinese prison.

“The past is forever with me and I remember it all.” So begins the haunting first chapter of Life and Death in Shanghai, the vivid portrayal of one Chinese woman’s life, imprisonment, torture, and release during Mao Zedong’s brutal Cultural Revolution of the mid-1960s.

Today Nien Cheng lives in a one-bedroom condominium in Washington, D.C. She wrote her book on a manual typewriter on a mahogany desk near a window overlooking Cathedral Avenue.

The view is far different than the one she enjoyed from her elegant home in Shanghai, before the chaotic days of the Cultural Revolution. It is also far different from what Nien Cheng saw through the rusty, thick-barred window of a bare prison cell, her home for more than six years after Mao’s purges engulfed her. Her only crime: wealth, position, and an appreciation of Western art and culture.

Not only did Cheng, the widow of a Shell Oil executive who died of cancer in 1957, suffer imprisonment and torture. Her only child, Meiping, a spirited young actress at the Shanghai Film Studio, also disappeared during her mother’s imprisonment. Upon Cheng’s release, she was told by the authorities that her daughter had committed suicide. But after an exhaustive investigation, she discovered that her daughter had been beaten to death during interrogation concerning her mother’s alleged crimes as an imperialist spy. Years later, under post-Mao reforms, the man responsible for Meiping’s murder received only a two-year prison sentence.

Nien Cheng was able to leave China on a temporary visa in 1980. After living in Canada, she settled in Washington in 1983. Life and Death in Shanghai, published last June by Grove Press, was featured on the cover of Time as well as the New York Times best-seller list. To her surprise, Cheng soon found herself the focus of media attention and the recipient of a variety of awards.

What many secular interviewers failed to note or emphasize, however, was the fact that Nien Cheng is a committed Christian. “My survival of the Cultural Revolution was not due to any merit of my own,” she says today. “Without the grace and mercy of our Lord, I could not have lived through such abuse and persecution. Throughout the six-and-a-half years of solitary confinement, and after I learned of my daughter’s death, I turned to our Lord often. It was his love and guidance that sustained and encouraged me to carry on. Without him, I am nothing.”

This month Penguin Books releases its paperback of Life and Death in Shanghai. And the multitudes who read it will encounter not only a story of human imprisonment, but also a powerful testimony to the sustaining power of a sovereign God.

“Are you going to confess?” the man in the tinted glasses asked again. I was silently reciting to myself the Twenty-third Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want …”

“Have you gone dumb?”

“Have you lost your voice?”

“Speak!”

“Confess!” They were shouting.

The man with the tinted spectacles and the man from the police department were looking at me thoughtfully. They mistook my silence as a sign of weakening. I knew I had to show courage. In fact, I felt much better for having recited the words of the psalm. I had not been so free of fear the whole evening as I was in that moment standing beside the black jeep, a symbol of repression.

I lifted my head and said in a loud and firm voice, “I’m not guilty! I have nothing to confess.”

This time there was no more shouting. The Red Guards and the Revolutionaries, as well as the onlookers, were perhaps awed by the solemnity of the occasion. After I had spoken, at a signal from the man in the tinted glasses, the young man from the police pulled my arms behind my back and put the handcuffs on my wrists. There was a deep sigh from an elderly man.

The driver of the jeep started the engine. “Get in!” The young man gave me a push. [He] got in with the driver, and the man with the tinted glasses sat down beside me. The jeep drove off into the dark streets (from Life and Death in Shanghai).

The Journey Of Faith

It is clear from your book that faith played a critical role in your surviving the Cultural Revolution. How did you become a Christian?

Through my husband. You see, his was one of the earliest Chinese Christian families. His mother was converted at a girl’s school run by the China Inland Mission. And she married a man—his father—who also went to a Christian school. So my husband grew up in a Christian family.

Years later, when I was engaged to my husband and we were both students in England, he wrote to his mother, and she said, You must try to convert her to be a Christian. That’s how I went to church with him; gradually I read the Bible.

Did you have any resistance to it?

No, I loved it. I wanted to have a more harmonious life. And in any case, I had no prejudice against being a Christian. It was just that my family background was different. We were a traditional Chinese family. We believed in ancestor worship. My father was not interested in religion in any sense, but he didn’t forbid my mother from practicing Buddhism. She was very devout. She used not to eat meat on certain days of the month, and she read the Buddhist scriptures every day. And she always did good deeds.

But I became a Christian, and then, when we returned to China in 1948, my husband received a letter from his mother saying she had no one to live with. Chinese old people always live with their children. So in 1950 we went to North China and brought her to Shanghai to live with us. She lived with us for seven years, until she passed on. During those seven years I was very close to her. I think she exercised a great deal of influence on me.

In your growth as a Christian?

Yes. We used to read the Bible together. She had a copy of the Bible with large characters, because her eyesight was failing. Often I read to her—and I learned from her. She helped me a lot.

Did that discipleship lay the groundwork for the way in which you survived your prison experiences?

It strengthened my resolve to resist, because I didn’t feel alone. The Lord was with me. He sustained me. Sometimes I felt, Oh, I’m so weak, I can’t do it. But then I felt strengthened through prayer. When I lost my daughter, if I had not been a Christian, I think I would have wanted to die. It was very, very difficult.

Did you know you had this strength within you? Before you went to prison you hadn’t been tried in such a way. You had had a very comfortable lifestyle.

I could endure hardship because—let me put it this way—I knew that the Lord was testing me. The Lord wanted to see if I could do it—if I could endure it. So I was compelled to endure it.

Do you question why God allowed you to experience such pain?

I’m the sort of person who has never asked God to tell me what he wants to do or why he wants to do it. I never do that. I think God has his own plan—I can’t see that far or that high. I can see only a little bit. So I obey the will of God. And I accept whatever happens.

I had this attitude long ago. Because, you see, I lived in an environment in China that encouraged people to be atheists. Frequently people would argue with me—Why do you believe in God? Can you see God? Why do good people have to suffer? So I gave it a lot of thought.

And how would you respond to that question? Why do people suffer?

I would have to say we don’t know why. We can’t assume God is like us.

Sometimes young students, my daughter’s friends, would say to me, “Do you think God is cruel? God punishes people.” And I would say that I don’t think God is cruel. God is merciful. People punish themselves. It is not God’s punishment.

It’s when we are face to face with danger, with hardship, with threats to our lives, that we are much stronger in our faith. Also, when I was in prison, I realized I hadn’t been as kind a person as I might have been. I was casual toward other people’s suffering. I’d say, “Oh, I pity them.” But it would pass. Now I understand suffering better.

You can identify with the suffering of others.

Yes, I know what it means to be hungry, to be cold, to be alone with no family. So when I hear about other people or meet somebody in that situation, I want to help. I know what it means to suffer.

A Changing China?

Throughout its long history, China has been a source of mystery and fascination for the West. After years of isolation and domestic upheaval, those in the leadership of China today seem determined to bring what General Secretary Zhao Ziyang has called their “backward” nation forward in an effort to recover from the failures of the past.

Last September’s thirteenth congress of the 46 million-member Chinese Communist party, the first since 1982, had been anticipated as a watershed event for the political and economic future of China. As the “reformers” set their policies at that meeting, it was clear that a long struggle lies ahead in the face of resistance from the more orthodox Marxists within the Communist party. It remains to be seen whether planned reforms will yield viable political, economic, or religious freedoms for the more than one billion Chinese people.

Although I have decided to become a citizen of the United States, I continue to be concerned with the situation in China. I am heartened by the news that unprecedented economic progress has been made since the implementation of Deng Xiaoping’s new economic policy. Often I look back on the wasted years of the Mao Zedong era and the madness of the Cultural Revolution. I feel deeply saddened that so many innocent lives were needlessly sacrificed. I was glad when the Cultural Revolution was officially declared a national catastrophe, but I regret the Communist Party leadership’s inabilityor unwillingness to repudiate Mao’s policy in explicit terms.

From the point of view of the Chinese Communist Party, the greatest casualties of the Cultural Revolution were the Party’s prestige and its ability to govern. When Mao Zedong used the masses (the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries) to destroy the so-called capitalist-roaders in the Party leadership, he forced the Chinese people to witness and to take part in an ugly drama. The prolonged power struggle and the denunciations of one leader after another enabled the Chinese people to stumble upon the truth that the emperor had no clothes. When Mao Zedong died in 1976, the country was in a state of political disintegration. Obviously if the Party was to continue to govern, it must change course.

What kind of leadership will General Secretary Zhao Ziyang provide?

We have to remember two things from Zhao Ziyang’s report at the Chinese Communist party congress. One is the call to collect capital through the issuing of more stocks and bonds. That’s definitely a step toward capitalism. He said people should be allowed to earn money in ways other than direct labor. For instance, he legitimized income from dividends, from a profit. According to orthodox Marxism, that’s a form of exploitation, because you didn’t actually earn it.

Another interesting thing he said was that the power of the party must be exercised in a more indirect way. Hitherto the party secretary was the boss in each organization. Now the party secretary will have only a supervisory role, and the managers will have the real power. The managers are better educated, they are the technocrats; now they will be the ones administering the office, the research institution, the hospital, the shop or factory. The party secretary will have to cooperate.

There are millions of party secretaries on all different levels, right down to the village party secretary, who until now has been the king in his own village. Now he is going to have to let an administrative head run the shop.

It’s going to take a long time to implement this policy because the party secretaries will resist it. There is quite a lot of corruption among them now. When the party secretary’s power is reduced, he will lose all his opportunities. He can’t openly oppose the policy because it’s from Beijing, and he would risk party discipline. So he is going to covertly oppose it.

What is the government reformers’ objective?

No government does things out of charity. For every government, whether democratic or totalitarian, the first consideration is the consolidation of power. If its leaders can’t consolidate their power unless they treat the people well, then they will treat the people well. The Cultural Revolution exposed the weakness of the communist system. So Deng Xiaoping now has to give the people something to win their support.

Do you think in the process that the people of China now will enjoy a little more personal freedom?

Oh, yes; economic freedom. That is, they can now set up a little something for themselves; a little shop or something.

But this brings up another point: In Zhao’s report, he said categorically that China will never tolerate a political system with two parties taking over the government alternately. Another thing China won’t tolerate—even though it is demanded by many Chinese, especially educated Chinese—is the separation of the three powers of government: the administrative, the executive, and the judicial. Unless you have an independent judiciary, you won’t have the guarantee of law. The law is in the hands of the Communist government. And without an independent judiciary, law is under politics. Whoever is in power can change the law.

You’ve got a constitution in America. Nobody can change that. But in China you’ve got this leader; he does it this way. You’ve got another leader; he does it another way. China is a country ruled by the will of a man, not ruled by law.

Unless the Communist government changes, China will never have the guarantee of human rights and all that we enjoy in the United States.

So we mustn’t confuse economic reform with political reform. I don’t think the Communist party will ever voluntarily give the people real political freedom.

Do you think that could ever come in China as a result of these economic reforms?

In, say, 50 years the Chinese people will be much better off through this economic reform. When they don’t have to worry about food, clothing, where they live, or anything like that, then they will demand political freedom.

It depends on whether or not the reform policy is perpetuated after Deng has died.

What about the issue of religious freedom in China?

The Chinese people as a whole are not religious. Before the Communists came, we had only four million Christians. What guided Chinese society was the teachings of Confucius.

He provided the ethical framework?

Yes, because Confucius’ philosophy had very comprehensive rules and regulations governing human behavior and human relationships. For instance, he said that the individual is the basic element of society. Individual, family, state. Individuals belong to a family. Many family units make up the state, to be governed by the Son of Heaven, who is the emperor.

But if he misgoverns, then the mandate from heaven will be withdrawn. So every emperor must strive to govern according to justice, benevolence—but he must never set himself up as a god.

There is a saying that a king is a good king if in his kingdom the poets can write poetry, the ministers can give advice to the king, the young people can think whatever they like, and the old people can grumble about everything they don’t like.

Through these kinds of stories, the Chinese people learned what is good. Good is the freedom of speech: The poet can write anything, the minister is not afraid the king will kill him, and the people have their freedom of expression. If you judge by that standard, Mao Zedong was no good at all.

How did the Communists crack down on the churches?

The Communists came and established their Marxist government. Right away they denounced Confucius and they abolished religion. But they didn’t close all the churches until 1958, when Mao Zedong started the Great Leap Forward campaign.

Today, the Chinese constitution provides for freedom of religion. That sounds good, doesn’t it? Until you see the next line. It also provides for freedom of unbelief. So if you preach or try to convert somebody, you are infringing on his freedom of unbelief. By this one stroke they made it impossible for religions to spread—or even to preach, except in their own churches and temples. So people became very afraid to talk about religious matters or to lend the Bible to somebody.

But now China has over five million Christians. One million more grew when no churches were allowed. Isn’t that marvelous? It’s a miracle, really. Because this one million are mostly young people.

We hear a lot about the underground churches in China. Were you able to be involved?

I didn’t take part in any of that for the simple reason that in the cities it was very difficult. You lived in close proximity with others. You were constantly watched. But in rural areas, in the villages, you could gather together without anybody knowing. Also, the Chinese villages are most often inhabited by people who are related to each other. So even the party official may be a relative—he will just pretend he doesn’t notice.

The most extraordinary thing is that after the Cultural Revolution a lot of Red Guards and Communist party members turned to the Christian religion.

And why is that? Had they seen the emptiness of the Communist philosophy?

Yes. Also, the Red Guards felt guilty.

And were they in turn persecuted for converting?

No. When Deng Xiaoping came into power he immediately restored the churches and temples that the Red Guards had destroyed.

And if Deng Xiaoping is rebuilding the churches, is that for his own purposes? Is he maintaining power by allowing the privilege of worship?

I think he feels no harm in people having religion. Because he is not such a die-hard, orthodox Marxist. I wonder if, deep in his heart, maybe he doesn’t believe in it anymore.

Some Christian commentators believe that if China’s trends toward modernization and reform continue, Christianity may have the opportunity to become one of the leading spiritual forces in Chinese society. Do you think that’s a realistic hope?

The Communist party members won’t allow it.

Do you think the Chinese people as a whole are open to the gospel?

They have experienced what life was like without faith and belief; they are more thirsty for it. I think they are more ready to accept Christian thought than ever before.

The Communists, by criticizing Confucius, broke down traditional belief, which was a blockage that prevented Chinese people from accepting Christianity.

What about the Islamic presence in China?

We have quite a few Muslims in China. They get special treatment because the Communists want to court the Arabs. I think their religion is too fanatical; the Chinese don’t like to be too fanatical. Chinese are more pragmatic.

But their spirit is now wandering; they find that communism doesn’t satisfy; they are thirsty. They are eager to receive Christian things, because the alternatives are less attractive.

Speaking as a Chinese, I think communism is too materialistic. It doesn’t satisfy real spiritual longings. We all have that. We are born with it. We are looking for spiritual satisfaction because we are human beings. Just to have material satisfaction is not enough.

Making Peace With The Past

Nien Cheng’s life today is a busy one. She begins each morning with Chinese exercises in the green gardens of her condominium complex; her days are filled with speaking engagements, interviews, correspondence, reading, and time with friends. Sometimes her life in China seems remote.

Yet pain in one’s past does not merely dissipate of its own accord or deaden with the passage of time. It must be met with purpose and discipline. The same godly determination that carried Nien Cheng through the destruction of her Shanghai home, imprisonment, torture, and the death of her daughter is today the means by which she can make peace with both her past and her present.

Throughout the years of my imprisonment, I had turned to God often and felt His presence. In the drab surroundings of the gray cell, I had known magic moments of transcendence that I had not experienced in the ease and comfort of my normal life. My belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and goodness had been restored and I had renewed courage to fight on. My faith had sustained me in these darkest hours of my life and broughtme safely through privation, sickness, and torture. At the same time, my suffering had strengthened my faith and made me realize that God was always there. It was up to me to come to Him.

Under the watchful eyes of the guards, I could not pray openly in the daytime. The only way I could be certain of being left alone with my prayers was to bend my head over a volume of Mao Zedong’s books while I prayed to God from my tormented heart. As I spoke of my daughter, I relived the precious years from the time of her birth in Canberra, Australia, in 1942 until our forcible separation on the night of September 27, 1966, when I was taken to the struggle meeting and arrested. I felt again and again the joy she had given me at each stage of her growth and knew I was fortunate to have received from God this very special blessing of a daughter. Day after day I prayed. More and more I remembered the days of her living, and less and less I dwelled on the tragedy of her dying.

Gradually peace came to me, and with it a measure of acceptance. But there was something more. While I could no longer cling tenaciously to the hope that I would see her alive and well on the day I walked out of the No. 1 Detention House, I knew there was much I still had to do both before and after my release. My battle was by no means over. It was up to me to find out what had happened to my daughter and, if I could, right the wrong that had been done to her. My life would be bleak without Meiping. But I had to fight on.

Horrible things happened to you. Yet your book has no bitterness in it.

No, I am not bitter.

And you write that Christians are commanded to love their enemies, to forgive. That is a very difficult process.

To forgive the man who killed my daughter is very difficult. Some days, even now, I can’t forgive him. I get all in tears—and then maybe the next day, I get over it. I’m not altogether forgiving yet.

But I don’t feel any grudge against the Red Guards. They were just teenagers. They didn’t really know any better. You see I have scars, here on my wrists, very bad scars. This is where I was handcuffed. Yet I can forgive.

Particularly about my things—it doesn’t matter. What are things, anyway? We come into the world with nothing, and when we die we shall leave everything behind. I am an old lady; I am quite comfortable. So it’s okay. Actually, God has been very kind to me—very loving and merciful. To be able to live in freedom in the last period of my life—I’m very grateful for it.

God has his hand upon you; he is using you very much now, I think, for his purposes.

Do you think so?

You are a very strong testimony of his grace and strength to come through such adversity and not be filled with bitterness—to be peaceful, to have your humor, to be contributing to others.

I get a lot of letters from young people who say that after reading my book they feel they must value their freedom and democracy more. This is so good.

Do you think you’ll ever go back to China?

I don’t want to. There are too many places there that remind me of my daughter. The other night a Chinese girl, a student at American University, came to see me. She was not a bit like my daughter. My daughter was tall. This girl was petite. But I could not sleep at all that night. I kept thinking, If my daughter were alive, what would she be doing? Would she come to America? Would she be married? Would she have children?

No, I can’t go back. If I go back I will see all of the old things, the old friends again, and we will talk about her …

In your book, you describe how when you were in prison, they brought you your daughter’s clothes and her teacup, and then you knew she was gone.

Yes, that was the worst moment. And yet it was through prayer that I began to resolve all that.

Of course, she is with me all the time, in my heart. There is not a moment that passes that I don’t think of her. That’s true.

I’ve got her ashes here. When she was cremated the ashes were put in a box at the crematorium. After I was released from prison, I got my old servant to go and get the box for me. So I had it in my apartment in Shanghai.

But when I was leaving, I was allowed only one suitcase, one carry-on bag, and 20 U.S. dollars. I was at the customs shed for nearly half an hour. Two men searched my suitcase, my bag, even the hems of my clothing, as if I was smuggling something. I had debated whether I should take the ashes. But I didn’t dare. I had asked for a visitor’s visa; and they would have thought, ah, she is never coming back, since she is taking her daughter’s ashes.

But then a young man I knew in China was able to go to Hong Kong. He took my daughter’s ashes, broke the box and put them in a plastic bag, and brought them out for me.

The next thing I must do is dispose of the ashes. I’m old. I’m 73. I’m healthy, but when you reach this age, anything can happen. So I’d like to get it all done. It’s important.

After I become a U.S. citizen, I will go visit my sister in Hawaii. We will hire a boat and get a pastor to go out with us. And I will scatter her ashes into the Pacific Ocean—because the waters of the Pacific touch both China and America. Then it will be done.

I live a full and busy life. Only sometimes I feel a haunting sadness. At dusk, when the day is fading away and my physical energy is at a low ebb, I may find myself depressed and nostalgic. But next morning I invariably wake up with renewed optimism to welcome the day as another God-given opportunity for enlightenment and experience.

Ellen Santilli Vaughn is editorial director for Prison Fellowship Ministries in Reston, Virginia. She collaborated with Charles Colson on his latest book, Kingdoms in Conflict.

On Sunday, December 6, 1987, the day before the Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting, my wife and I attended the “Freedom Sunday” march in Washington, D.C., to protest the treatment of Soviet Jews. More than 200,000 men, women, and children from all over the United States and Canada gathered at the nation’s capital carrying banners, posters, and pictures of Soviet Jews. It was inspiring to see the dedication of thousands of people and the outpouring of feeling toward the many Soviet Jews seeking their freedom.

The Jewish community has been successful in focusing public and world opinion upon the mistreatment of Soviet Jewry. They continue to fight for their brethren in the Soviet Union, no matter whether U.S.-Soviet relations are in a state of Cold War, détente, or glasnost. Most Christians in the United States, however, have ignored or have been ignorant of the plight of Christians in the Soviet Union.

In spite of the much-touted Soviet policy of glasnost (openness), the simple fact remains that an estimated 4,000 Christians are imprisoned in Siberia or are diagnosed as suffering from “sluggish schizophrenia” and placed in psychiatric hospitals as a result of their actions and beliefs as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many Western political and religious leaders have stuck their heads in the sand rather than face this situation, perhaps in the hope of furthering delicate U.S.-Soviet relations. Yet the same policy of glasnost has given Western Christians a historic chance to take the offensive, to use the possibilities of a promised openness to fight for freedom for Christians in the Soviet Union.

Example Of Success

The success of the Jewish community in focusing public attention on Jewish dissidents and prisoners of conscience provides an example for us in our battle. “I was arrested and I became a famous name in the West,” says Natan Sharansky, the Jewish dissident who was released last year after a long campaign publicizing his imprisonment. The Christian community in the United States must focus similar attention on Christians in the Soviet Union—and on the persecution taking place there. If we are serious about helping persecuted believers in the Soviet Union, we must take action.

We have many opportunities to help, but the simplest and perhaps most potent is simply to write letters. Can you imagine the impact thousands of letters from Christians in the United States would have on individual Soviet Christians and Soviet political leaders? The correspondence we send to imprisoned Christians will uplift their spirits more than we can imagine. That correspondence will also notify the Soviet authorities that Christians in the United States have not forgotten their Soviet counterparts.

Letter campaigns to Secretary Gorbachev, President Reagan, and the state department, asking them to keep Soviet Christians and religious persecution at the forefront of the U.S.-Soviet dialogue, will contribute immensely toward gaining the freedom of prisoners of faith. But we cannot afford to limit our efforts to the mailbox.

Active And Informed

If we are serious about helping our brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union, we will contact ministry and “watchdog” organizations, such as the U.S.-based Slavic Gospel Association and the Coalition for Solidarity with Christians in the USSR, as well as Keston College in Great Britain, for more information about Soviet Christians and how to help them.

Persistent prayer, multiple petitions, and peaceful demonstrations at the Soviet embassy or at the Soviet mission to the United Nations will all help keep the plight of Soviet Christians in the spotlight, where, as the efforts of the Jewish community have shown, success is often found.

This year marks the the one-thousandth anniversary of the coming of Christianity to parts of what is now the USSR. The years that Christianity has survived in the Soviet Union amidst great political turmoil and change illustrate the deep-rooted faith of its people. Members of government, the religious community, and all Americans interested in human and religious rights have the unique liberty to bring to the attention of the world the plight of Christians in the Soviet Union. On the eve of another Reagan-Gorbachev summit, we must seize this opportunity for all persecuted believers in the Soviet Union.

There is no question Soviet Christians need our help; the only question remaining is, Will we help?

Congressman Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) serves on the executive committee of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.

Speaking Out offers responsible Christians a forum. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Christianity Today.

Okay. Maybe it really wasn’t very funny, but at the time I was amused. Truthfully, I’m still smiling.

Recently, on a rare foray into the local do-it-yourself building-supply emporium, I encountered Archie Bunker’s twin (or it could have been Ralph Kramden’s). As I approached the checkout counter, “Archie” rammed his cart in line ahead of me. Trailing behind was his mousy spouse.

“Hurry up, youse,” he snapped at her, “and pay for dis.”

Without waiting for his wife to open her purse or for the clerk to ring up the sale, Archie snatched the 60-pound bag of patching plaster from the cart and slung it over his shoulder. Out of the store he charged—spilling out his purchase in a steady stream behind him.

After completing my own small transaction, I followed the white trail of plaster into the parking lot and arrived just in time to see Archie discover he now possessed no more than a third of his original purchase.

Boom! He exploded at “Edith” and all the rest of the world.

Even as I chuckled to myself about Archie’s dribbling sack of plaster, I was reminded of something I had recently read. The purported memoirs of the disciple Thomas are a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus. Portions of the text are familiar teachings closely paralleling the canonical Gospels. In other places the material and style more closely resemble the apochryphal gospels rejected from the Canon as fanciful and spurious. And finally, the text does contain a few sections so unique and attractive that one can easily imagine them to be genuine sayings of Jesus.

In this last category is a parable attributed to Jesus that came to mind as I followed Archie’s plaster trail. As I recall it, Jesus said the kingdom of the Father is like a woman carrying a jar of meal. While she walked on a distant road, the jar “sprung a leak.” The meal streamed out behind her on the road. Taking no note of her loss until she arrived home, she found her jar empty. Thus the kingdom can be lost.

Whether authentic or spurious, this parable does teach us an important lesson about the kingdom of the Father where his will is done. The reign of God—his effective lordship over our lives—is something that indeed can be lost all too easily. In ways of which we are seldom conscious, the example of Christ and the precepts he taught can become increasingly irrelevant to our patterns of behavior and human relationships. Sadly, we can, and often do, allow his reign to drain out of our lives by imperceptible degrees.

Like Archie in the building-supply store, we can become so obsessed with the immediate tasks of the moment that we are oblivious to our loss of God’s presence. We confuse urgency with importance, even in the work of the church. Imposing our agenda and timetable on the kingdom of the Father, we gradually lose his perspective on our lives and fail to discern his purposes for us.

The kingdom can also be lost through our preoccupation with trivialities. For want of a proper sense of proportion, we magnify petty slights and hurts. We rationalize or make light of seemingly small moral flaws, cultivate them in secret, and then suffer surprise when they are finally recognized as grievous sins. We persistently pursue the ephemeral and what lacks enduring value. All of these represent efforts to slip out from under the lordship of Christ: these are probably not deliberate or conscious steps, but they are “rebellion” no less.

In the area of career, too, the kingdom can be lost. Career objectives can be formed without due reference to our stewardship of talents entrusted to us by the Lord. His model of servanthood may be ignored as we are tempted by illicit opportunities to achieve influence and exercise power over others. Excessive self-confidence can leave us trapped in egocentric isolation from criticism or the support of others. Never do we intend deliberately to challenge the lordship of Christ. It just happens.

The bucket sometimes leaks and, like Archie, we may be the last to recognize what has been lost. And so it may be with the rule of God in our hearts and lives.

Bob Clouse’s Victory

What a precise reflection by Bob Clouse on his heart transplant [“A Little Victory Over Death,” Mar. 18]! I am just a bit surprised, however, at his three theological reasons for favoring transplants. They are excellent and valid—but what about a fourth: God, the Creator, taking a rib from Adam to start a new life with Eve? That seems more difficult than continuing a life!

FRANK A. LAWRENCE

Lancaster, Pa.

I rejoice with Robert Clouse and his new-found “lease on life.” I noted with interest that the cost of the procedure in 1985 was around $100,000. This is fairly typical for cardiac transplantation.

In the article, the point is made that “organ transplantation will increasingly confront us with … tough questions.” Indeed, it already does. In this day of shrinking resources, where human beings across the globe and even in the U.S. are literally starving to death, it is questionable whether spending those amounts of money on one human being is appropriate from a Christian perspective. The amount of money spent on any organ transplantation patient could make a dramatic difference in the health of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other human beings if it were distributed properly.

We must be careful about our glorified technology. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should do something.

JEREMY C. KLEIN, M.D.

Salem, W. Va.

Selling indulgences on TV

Thank you for the March 18 CT Institute section devoted to the subject of television evangelism [“The Great Transmission”]. I am surprised no one has yet drawn the comparison between the unscrupulous activity of some contemporary television evangelists with the practice of selling indulgences in sixteenth-century Europe. Recently, I switched on a religious broadcast. The camera came in close on the evangelist, who seemed to look me right in the eye as he said, “Do you need a miracle in your life? Friend, you can have that miracle by planting a seed today. Plant the seed for your miracle by sending your gift of $100, and let us pray for a miracle in your life.” He could have been John Tetzel raised from the dead selling his indulgences.

What the church needs is a modern-day Luther who will nail his theses to the 19-inch diagonal tube, proclaiming to the world that grace is not by works, nor can it be purchased with our “gifts,” but rather it is a gift from God himself.

LEON L. PINKERMAN

Greenville, S.C.

Pray By The Rules

Conversational prayer, I suppose, is here to stay. But if this spontaneous form is going to be a staple in our church diet, I think we need to do something to avoid some of the misunderstanding and confusion that creeps in when heads are bowed and eyes are closed. Consider a few basic rules:

1. Specify the acceptable length of individual prayers. (The number of minutes of scheduled prayer time divided by the number of participants equals the maximum length of individual prayers.)

2. When two people begin praying simultaneously, the pray-er on the left yields to the pray-er on the right by saying “excuse me” or quietly pretending to cough.

3. Count to 15 between prayers to make sure the previous person is finished (and not just pausing, stumped, or enraptured).

4. Clearly specify who is praying last. The clock chimed 11:00 at our last 7 p.m. prayer meeting before our leader realized that “Don” and “Ron” sound a lot alike—and Don and Ron were each waiting for the other to close the meeting.

There. Adding just a little organizational structure to this otherwise extemporaneous prayer style will help it go a lot more smoothly and predictably. Otherwise, we’ll have to depend solely on—ummm—inspiration to guide our conversational prayer.

EUTYCHUS

Your recent article about my television ministry was correct in that I do not receive any income from our televison or radio ministries, but incorrect in saying I received royalties from my books that are offered on the air. I receive no royalties on any of the thousands of my books given away. Though I could take both a salary and royalties, I chose to do neither so no one could say I was on television for the money I could get out of it. Sad to say, your article is the first to claim I made anything from our television ministry.

D. JAMES KENNEDY

Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Your institute left out a question about TV evangelism that interests me. As a Catholic, even I would object if some enterprising young priest were to slip a tape player behind one of the statues in his church, playing a tape: “I love you. Will you pray with me? And will you drop a little extra in the collection basket next Sunday so I could continue to pray for you?” But what is TV evangelism, if not a more sophisticated form of the statue-and-tape-player routine? The evangelist whose image appears on your screen may be dead; what you’re watching is the videotape of his performance in front of a camera that was taped hours, maybe months, ago.

DON SCHENK

Allentown, Pa.

Robert Schuller has indeed “paid his dues,” and a good deal more! His achievements continue to be phenomenal. He clearly understands the people he is trying to reach, and he is doing it better than most. Moreover, behind his message is solid theology and deep commitment to Jesus Christ. Let us celebrate this remarkable man and thank God for what he is doing.

REV. DONALD W. MORGAN

First Church of Christ

Wethersfield, Conn.

Holy mackerel?

Concerning Eutychus [“The First Church of the Fish Stick,” Mar. 18]: There is a dove-shaped church in the state of Washington. And there is a fishshaped church in Massachusetts (fondly known as the Holy Mackerel).

THAYER S. WARSHAW

Andover, Maine

Suspect findings

I am disappointed in the article “Race and the Church: A Progress Report,” by Randall Frame [Mar. 4]. The article reports the results of a survey of approximately 65 CT readers as if it is representative of the magazine’s readership. Putting aside the small sample, the fact that you achieved only a 13 percent response rate with this survey makes the “findings” suspect.

I am a professional market researcher who would find it a compromise of my integrity to report these kinds of data as “findings” to the management of my company. I should add, however, that I find surveys of this kind quite informative and enlightening when I know I can trust the findings; so please don’t stop doing surveys—just be careful.

BOB COHEN

Sparta, N.J.

Black-and-white gospel

Thank God for men of conviction, courage, and vision like Flynn Johnson [“The Gospel in Black and White,” Mar. 4], Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein [“Fudge Ripple at the Rock”]. They have boldly chosen the gospel of Christ and the teaching of the Word of God over the gospel of statistical analysis and the teachings of church growth.

Truly these men are the pioneers of the next generation of church leadership. They are building homogeneous churches made up of members of only that chosen race and culture described in 1 Peter 2:9–10. I, too, am privileged to belong to such a church. Those who belong to “homogeneous” ethnic clique churches (white included) do not know what they are missing.

GEORGE H. MITCHELL

San Francisco, Calif.

There is one troubling aspect to the article “Fudge Ripple at the Rock.” Robert Kachur relates how the Rev. Mr. Washington had been in the army, but that due to undisclosed reasons, found himself having to leave “under unjust circumstances.” The paragraph implies he had to leave the service due to racial bigotry on the part of other officers and the army in general.

Since I do not know the circumstances of the case, obviously I cannot comment upon it. However, I would like to comment on Kachur’s inference that significant bigotry and racial prejudice exist in the army. This is simply not the case, and such implications may leave wrongful impressions with some of your readers. I believe the army is at the forefront of eliminating racial prejudice and affording equal opportunity for all.

LT. COL. MARK R. WELCH

U.S. Army Reserve

Albuquerque, N.M.

Barbara Thompson’s interview with Flynn Johnson was excellent. He said, “I believe culturally mixed congregations make a stronger statement to the world about the power of the gospel.” In this he is at odds with the missiology of Ralph Winter and Peter Wagner. But let’s move beyond church-growth debate and pragmatism: Underlying all discussion of racial disharmony is the issue of miscegenation. We are still in need of a biblical exposition on the subject from CT 20 years after the civil rights battle was won.

MICHAEL BRAY

Ray Brook, N.Y.

A confusing doctrine?

Cornelius Plantinga’s article “The Perfect Family” [Mar. 4] leaves the reader as confused as the Trinity doctrine itself is. When Jesus comes back, the Jews are going to recognize Jesus as their Lord (the Jews have always had one Lord—never a trinity), and crown him Lord of Lords, and in that day there will be one Lord and his name one. Where will the Trinity be then? Answer: the same place as it is today—nonexistent.

HAROLD VANGORDON

Upland, Ind.

Real evangelicals!

Just when I was about to think I wasn’t evangelical any more, Eutychus reassures me that I am truly evangelical [“Test Your EQ,” Mar. 4]. My answers to his questions were inerrant.

NANCY A. HARDESTY

Atlanta, Ga.

A clear picture of Islam

I was pleased to read Terry Muck’s article “The Mosque Next Door” [Feb. 19], especially as he endeavored to present a clear picture about the Islamic movement in the U.S. The information provided is very illuminating and should alert our Christian churches and organizations to the impact of this movement on our communities.

SAMUEL SHAHID, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Good News for the Crescent World, Inc.

Fair Haven, N.J.

The percentage of practicing Buddhists in the 10,000-member Vietnamese immigrant community in Chicago—cited as 80 percent—sounds much too high. The majority of Vietnamese are not practicing Buddhists. A province chief I visited in central Vietnam some years ago, in response to the question of what percentage were Buddhists in his province, answered 14 percent.

In our effort to share our Christian faith with these newly arrived people, we should emphasize that while we do not worship dead ancestors, we do respect them. God is the object of our worship through his incarnate Son, a concept readily understood by these responsive people.

REV. SPENCER T. SUTHERLAND

Vietnamese Theological College

Westminster, Calif.

As a teacher of international students, primarily Muslims, I appreciated the article. Having three different religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam—sitting side by side in a classroom and interacting with my Christianity, is quite challenging. Islam, of the three, is the strongest in the areas of sincerity, desire to convert, respect for laws and Allah, and moral conduct. For a long while, I struggled quietly over how to show a difference.

However, as Muck stated, the distinctive difference is the love that surrounds us and comes through everything we do. “The truth in love” is a powerful element that can soften barriers between Christianity and other religions.

MARILYN SCHULTIES

Newburgh, Ind.