Our Theology of Comfort & Safety
The western church lives in a bubble that the global church does not experience. We live comfortable lives in relative physical safety. We may endure a little hate speech at times, but the hate we experience rarely goes to the level of physical violence. Not so with most of the global church. Many Christians live and worship as minorities in cultures that are openly hostile to them, their worship and their world view.
Comfort and safety are not bad things at all. I wish our global Christian friends experienced more comfort and safety than they do. But there is a problem that develops when comfort and safety become the norm. It creates an expectation that comfort and safety are central to the Christian life. Our theology of what it is to be Christian can easily add an expectation of comfort and safety that Jesus Christ did not promise us.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4: 8-10, "We are hard pressed on all sides, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." James writes in James 1: 2-3, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." In Acts 5: 40-41, after a flogging, Peter and other apostles "left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name."
This is the world that the majority church lives in today. There is a significant cost to just being a Christian. A greater cost of worshipping Christ and preaching Jesus Christ as Savior of the world. And yet they do so, fully aware of the cost and accepting the danger and the risk that belief in Jesus brings them. It would be easier for them to go along with the majority religion in their culture, but they don’t because the Hope of Jesus Christ is worth all the suffering in this world to them. .
Last fall I earned a mild rebuke by asking a leader supporting the persecuted church in Korea: “How do you determine when it is safe to cross the border”? He told me my question was irrelevant. “It is never safe. We just go”. He helped me see that safety had crept into my value system and it could blind my duty to “just go”. We do this all the time. We pull missionaries out of countries because of political instability. We don’t do outreach into dangerous parts of the city. Yes, we ask short term teams to surrender their comfort and expectations before heading onto a mission trip, but even here, we treat it as an exception, not the norm.
I’m not advocating for you to take unnecessary risks and live on the edge. But see clearly that our comfort and safety are not normal experiences for Christ followers and so we need to keep this out of our theology. And as a ministry supporting His church in some of the most hostile places on this planet, there is further application for us.
One Global ministries has seen hundreds come to faith through our Bible distribution events where we preach Jesus Christ and hand out Bibles. The majority receiving Bibles are believers who don’t have a Bible, but the Holy Spirit calls others not of the flock to these events. Many receive Bibles and profess faith. But now they face what Paul, James and Peter wrote about. These new believers face extreme persecution. This week, we were grieved to learn that one new believer who was in hiding, was found and murdered by a relative in what would be accepted in his country as an “honor killing”. Satan used that relative for evil, but Satan lost the battle! I am comforted knowing our brother left this world with the one thing we can take with us: Jesus. And I’m praying that relative finds Jesus, too.
Let us lay aside our theology of comfort and safety – so people can meet Jesus.
Give Hope! Give Life! Give Bibles!
Chuck Hayes