The Love which makes us one

Convert, pay a protection tax, or face death. This was the ultimatum given to Christians and members of other minority groups in Mosul and Qaraqosh in Iraq over the last fortnight by the radical Sunni Muslim group ISIS. There is ‘no place for Christians in an Islamic state’, they were told. Most fled – there were several hundred thousand Christians and members of the Yazidi faith among the 1.2 million people who have been displaced by the Iraqi conflict.

And this nightmare is not limited to Iraq. In Northern Nigeria, 650,000 people have been forced to flee by Boko Haram. And it’s reported that the many Christians among the 275 girls abducted by them earlier in the year were compelled to convert to Islam.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby comments ‘With the world’s attention on the plight of those in Iraq we must not forget that this is part of an evil pattern around the world where Christians and other minorities are being killed and persecuted.’

My first instinct is to pray for empathy – to be able to enter imaginatively into the experience of people facing this kind of suffering – and then to ask what I can do – by praying, supporting relief and human rights agencies, and calling for our government to take appropriate action.

But the events in Nigeria and Iraq also underline how precious is the relative freedom we enjoy in Scotland to believe and to worship in line with our true convictions. This is a precious gift for which I am truly grateful.

I’m also conscious that we can’t define Islam in terms of its most radical exponents, ISIS (‘The Islamic State’) and Boko Haram and other groups who insist on an absolutely literal interpretation of the Qur’an. There is a long history of Muslim states interpreting the Qur’an in such a way as to allow peaceful co-existence with other faiths. And I’m moved by stories of Muslims in Iraq risking their lives to help Christian neighbours.

‘She is keeping us alive,’ Lara from Qaraqosh told The Times last Friday, speaking of a Muslim friend. Lara and her family are in hiding, not having escaped in time.

But that phrase ‘convert or die’ has been uppermost in my mind. The stark choice facing our Christian brothers and sisters in Iraq prompts me to ask ‘How valuable is my faith to me?’ Would I be prepared to turn my back on home and possessions rather than compromise? Syrian Orthodox priest Father Matthew al-Banna says of his church that he had not heard of any Christians who had chosen to convert.

Is my faith in Jesus Christ so central to my identity that I will sacrifice anything, my life included before I will renounce it? And if not, should it be?

And a related question: ‘How genuine is my faith?’ No-one says to us ‘convert or die,’ and yet our culture while generally happy with faith as a quirky, peripheral element in our lives, grows uncomfortable when it touches and shapes all of our living. Are we unconsciously undergoing a slow, imperceptible conversion at the end of which we live most of our lives as virtual atheists, side-lining God?

And how do we react to news of others, like those schoolgirls in Nigeria who have been forcibly converted, and may be struggling with guilt and sorrow to keep the flame of the old faith alive in their hearts while outwardly conforming to Islam? We must not judge, for we do not know what it was like for them, and we do not know if we would have acted differently. We love them, as the God who knows their hearts loves them, and we pray for them.

Christian faith aims to draw people to Jesus Christ, to the God who loves them. It’s a faith which invites conversion – a turning round, and letting the new embrace you. Christians have been known to use fear and emotional manipulation to draw people to faith. Sometimes, with lurid imagery of hell, the message has been ‘convert or die.’

But people come to deep, joyous faith when they are drawn by an irresistible, forgiving love, not driven by fear or eloquence or sword. As Christians we are called to express God’s love in all our words, actions and relationships. This divine love is everywhere present: over the last week, it has been nowhere more visible than in the actions of courageous Muslims like Lara’s neighbour.

Our hearts break as we reflect on the global extent of human suffering. How much we need, all of humanity, to encounter and experience God’s loving reality. How much we need, all of humanity, to be converted and keep on being converted in response to the humbling, liberating Love which makes us all one.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 21st August 2014)