Though He Slay Me, Yet Will I Trust in Him

I am currently reading a book appropriately titled "China's Christian Martyrs" by Paul Hattaway who also edited The Heavenly Man and Living Water by Chinese Christian Brother Yun. In doing some outside research it encourages, humbles, and stirs up a fiery jealousy in me when reading about the church in China. A little under two years ago, I took a trip to Guangzhou, China with a family who was adopting a little girl. Though I was confined to one city in China rather than traveling the whole country as I would have liked, I discovered that to see and learn about everything in this one city would take near a lifetime to do. There are 7 times as many people in Guangzhou than there are in New York City. Wow! That's a lot of people! While in Guangzhou, I visited the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the Church of Christ on Shamian Island, and The Temple of the Six Banyan Trees, a working Buddhist temple. The Church of Christ had an English service and I was fortunate enough to get a firsthand look at the difference between true Christianity, and the Christianity prescribed by the People's Republic of China CCC movement. The government sanctioned churches in China are not allowed to preach, among other things, Christ as supreme over government, the resurrection of the dead, and the atonement for sins. Wow! That's like the whole gospel! To read about the true underground church in China and to see the actual Three Self Patriotic Movement in action is really eye opening. It's almost like The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis: the Narnians were persecuted, not for being Narnians which they were free to do, but because they believed in being Free Narnians. Anyway, what I'm getting at is how inspiring it is to me to think of the Chinese House Church Movement- the believers in China are persecuted daily (though their government claims they are not as they have "freedom of religion") and they have grown exponentially because of it! I used to want to be a missionary to China and while I still desire to go visit there again, and if the Lord were to call Brandon and I, we would certainly go, there is not doubt in my mind that China needs no Western missionaries, they have it down way better than we do! Back to the book though: I am so inspired by the stories of these brothers and sisters who were not afraid to lose their lives. I find me putting myself in their shoes: would I be so brave as to sing while about to be hanged? Would you be so brave? Is it even about bravery? I think that there is something about persecution that makes the Christian heart fiercer in it's working. If it gets to the point where people want to behead you for Christ, it means you're finally doing it right! Why stop then? I think it's a very dangerous thing indeed when the "empire gets baptised" as Shane Claiborne puts it. When Christianity became the official religion of Rome and therefore the rest of the then known world, it became corrupt, mandatory, and dead but for those precious few who were true followers. In America, we thank the Lord for providing us with huge buildings in which to worship and learn about Him, I face no persecution other than that which I bring upon myself by being a jerk. What if we did? What if we started living like Jesus? What if we let Him turn our worlds upside down? What if we counted our lives as nothing? Knew nothing but Christ and Him crucified? Paid as much attention to promises in the Bible like "They hated Me, they will hate you also" as we do to "I will never leave you"? What if we spent less on buildings (like none) and instead spent our money on furthering the Kingdom? On Blessing people? What would happen......