Quarantine fear

                                                    

There’s a disease on the move that’s even deadlier than Ebola.

It is invisible and highly contagious. It spreads with lightning speed and paralyzes its victims. It turns people, communities and nations against each other.

 

The disease is fear.
 

Anxiety and dread seem to permeate our nation — and many of our churches — at the moment. Threats abound: Ebola, ISIS, mindless violence, multiplying enemies. There’s a general sense that the world is spinning out of control and no one knows what to do about it — certainly not the institutions and experts we once looked to for guidance. 

“The Ebola crisis has aroused its own flavor of fear,” observes David Brooks of The New York Times. “It’s not the heart-pounding fear you might feel if you were running away from a bear or some distinct threat. It’s a sour, existential fear. It’s a fear you feel when the whole environment seems hostile, when the things that are supposed to keep you safe, like national borders and national authorities, seem porous and ineffective, when some menace is hard to understand.”


 

Some threats are real; others are the product of hysteria and saturation coverage of death and destruction. But we aren’t sure which is which. So we hunker down behind locked doors and dire predictions of worst-case scenarios.  

 

“There is no doubt that we will stop this [Ebola] outbreak, end the deaths, and, if done right, build the tools to prevent another large outbreak like this,” writes epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in The Wall Street Journal. “But it won’t be easy. Fear, panic and politics have gripped Americans, with the potential to do untold damage to our nation and the global economy. Our real enemy is a hybrid of the virus of Ebola and the virus of fear. As the famous World War II British poster reads, we need to keep calm and carry on.”

 

Easier said than done. Instant media spread facts and knowledge as well as rumors, misinformation and doubt. Many Americans now apparently fear anyone coming from Africa, even if they arrive from countries nowhere near the West African region affected by the Ebola outbreak. Some African immigrants who came to America years or decades ago report being ostracized or treated with suspicion since the Ebola scare began.

Eighteen Oklahoma high school students reportedly stayed away from class recently when their parents heard rumors on social media about three students who had just returned from a mission trip to Ethiopia, thousands of miles from the Ebola zone. “Our students were not exposed to Ebola,” Inola School Superintendent Kent Holbrook assured a local TV news reporter. “There was no person that was sick on the trip. There was no person sick [in] Ethiopia while they were there. There was no person [sick] on the plane.”

T.J. Helling, a local youth pastor who helped organize the mission trip, told the TV reporter the three students “did more in the last 10 days [during the mission trip] than most people do in their lifetime for other people. We need to remember that we’re here to encourage them and support them, not beat them down.”

I called First Baptist Church of Inola, where the three students attend, and talked to an adult member there. She said the fear in the community “shows that the world is lost. But our reaction to the fear shows Christ in us. I’m telling our students, ‘It’s easy to show love and grace to a kid in Ethiopia on a mission trip, but you need to show the same grace to the kids you see every day at school who are fearful of death. God may be building character in you.’

“The church can’t react in fear,” she added — at home or abroad.

Amen, sister. First Baptist of Inola is an example for us all in these uncertain days.

Fear is real. Don’t deny it or mock others who feel it, even when their fear seems irrational. That would make us hypocrites, because we all struggle with it. A friend of mine who did Southern Baptist mission work for many years in the Middle East currently mobilizes churches in the United States. He regularly interacts with Christians and church groups who fear all Muslims, fear everything happening in the Middle East, fear even the thought of going there — or befriending someone coming here from the Muslim world.


 

“I acknowledge the fear. It’s real; I get that,” said my friend. “But we’ve got to look at it through God’s eyes. If God can turn a terrorist named Saul into [the Apostle] Paul, He can turn some of the hearts of the people in ISIS. Jesus is the only solution.”

 

Jesus calls us to look at the world through His eyes — and to look at Him, not the dangers and troubles that terrify us. Matthew 14 describes the night He came to the disciples walking on water:
 

“When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.’ Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.’ And He said, ‘Come!’ And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’” (Matt. 14:26-31 NASB)

 

If bold, impetuous Peter, who walked with Christ Himself, experienced fear when He looked at the world, don’t be surprised if you do. Acknowledge it. Confess it to the Lord. Then look into His eyes, not at the fearful circumstances of our times. Step out of your safe, cramped boat. Befriend a lonely immigrant. Cross a border — and challenge some friends to go with you.

 

Jesus is already there, even in the darkest places, waiting for you to follow.

 

(To explore ways to follow Jesus into a dark world, visit http://imb.org/go/serving.aspx)

Amid the storm, a quiet wind in ‘House of Islam’

                                                   

 

The Arab Spring movement for freedom, which brought so much hope and expectation to the Middle East just three years ago, is stone-cold dead — hijacked by Islamic extremists, brutalized by repressive governments, trampled into the dust by factional power struggles.

That’s the consensus in the Arab world, now torn apart by civil war, insurgencies, chaos, political crackdowns and a widening confrontation between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The Syrian war has produced unimaginable suffering and millions of refugees. Iraq might be on the verge of breaking into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish pieces. A well-armed — and murderous — Islamist “caliphate” has emerged, straddling the crumbling borders between Syria and Iraq and threatening both. Egypt has returned to autocracy after rejecting the brief and disastrous rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. Next door, yet another round of fighting is crushing the already-fading hopes for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

Tunisia, where the protests for freedom that led to the Arab Spring began in late 2010, is the only Arab country where real political reforms have taken hold. The more than 400 million mostly Muslim people living elsewhere in the region will have to wait until the desire for change once again overcomes the forces arrayed against change. Like sheep without a shepherd, they wonder if a better future will ever come.

Meanwhile, wave after wave of attacks on Christians appear to threaten the very existence of the church in the Middle East. Prospects for expansion of the Gospel among Arabs would seem bleak at best.

Or are they?

“Could there be more to this current mess than meets the eye?” asks IMB global mission strategist David Garrison. “Could the Muslim world’s agonizing labor pains be leading to some new expression of life that is yet to be revealed?”

The Arab region is only one of nine “rooms” in the Dar al-Islam — the global “House of Islam” that encompasses 1.6 billion Muslims, Garrison writes in his new book, A Wind in the House of Islam (WIGTake Resources, 2014). The wider Islamic “house” includes other “rooms” throughout Africa, the Persian world, greater Turkestan (Central Asia), South Asia and Indo-Malaysia.

Garrison is the author of Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World, which helped revolutionize how evangelicals spread the Gospel among unreached peoples. I highlighted A Wind in the House of Islam in a column last year, before it was published. Now it’s available; I highly recommend it if you want to learn about what God is doing behind the scenes in the Muslim world (order at http://www.WindintheHouse.org).

Over a period of three years, Garrison traveled a quarter of a million miles throughout the Islamic world, conducting interviews with more than 1,000 Muslims who have decided to follow Christ as Lord and Savior.

“Today, in more than 70 separate locations in 29 nations, new movements of Muslim-background followers of Christ are taking place,” he reports. “Each of these movements has crossed the threshold of at least 100 new church starts or 1,000 baptized believers, all of whom have come to Christ over the past two decades. In some countries the numbers within these movements have grown to tens of thousands.

“Though the total number of new Christ followers, between 2 million to 7 million, may be a statistically small drop in the vast sea of Islam, they are not insignificant,” Garrison continues. “Not limited to a remote corner of the Muslim world, these new communities of believers are widespread, from West Africa’s Sahel to the teeming islands of Indonesia — and everywhere in between. ... And these religious renegades are paying an incalculable price [in persecution and rejection] for their spiritual migration to Christ. Yet they continue to come. What began as a few scattered expressions of dissent is now growing more substantial. Historically unprecedented numbers of Muslim men and women are wading against the current of their societies to follow Jesus Christ. And it is only beginning.”

Why historically unprecedented? Because very few such movements occurred during the first 14 centuries of Muslim-Christian interaction. In his research, Garrison identifies 82 instances throughout history of Muslim movements to Christ (defined as the occurrence of at least 1,000 voluntary Muslim baptisms into the Christian faith over a two-decade time span). Of these 82 movements, 69 are occurring today — and began within the past 20 years.

“These 21st-century movements are not isolated to one or two corners of the world,” Garrison says. “They are taking place across the Muslim world, including sub-Saharan Africa, the Persian world, the Arab world, in Turkestan, in South Asia and in Southeast Asia.”

Specific locations include Iran, heart of the Shiite revival; Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world; Algeria, where a struggle between Islamists and the military saw more than 100,000 civilians killed in the 1990s; Central Asia, ruled for generations by Soviet communism and, for centuries before that, by rigid forms of Islam; and Bangladesh, born in the blood of a war for independence from Pakistan in 1971, ravaged by poverty and natural disasters. Garrison includes actual testimonies from Muslim-background Christ followers — Islamic sheikhs and imams in the Horn of Africa, jihadi warriors from the Afghan frontier, Sufi mullahs from Bengali villages. 

One of them, a 50-year-old Arab Muslim named Sabri,* became a follower of Christ after hearing the Gospel from Nasr,* another Muslim-background believer. Raised in a strong Islamic environment, Sabri says he “began to see the truth from a lie, and I wanted to follow the truth.” He led his family to faith and now leads a network of 400 believers in his area, including 25 disciple group leaders.

“We keep the groups really small because it causes a problem when the groups get large,” he explains. They also use caution in their contacts with traditional Arab Christian churches, which often fear self-identified Muslim converts to Christ will bring persecution — or suspect they might be agents of the secret police. Still, Muslim-background believer groups are growing in the area.

“There are a large number of secret believers,” Nasr says. “We need to say to the masses, ‘Come.’”

If Garrison’s findings are accurate, many more will come.

“Something is happening — something historic, something unprecedented,” he writes. “A wind is blowing through the House of Islam.”

*(Name changed)

Rumors of wars

                                                          

 

2014 will mark a grim anniversary: 100 years since the beginning of World War I.

It was to be the “war to end all wars.” If only.

World War I is rapidly disappearing from modern memory. At the current pace of events, we often forget what happened last week, much less a century ago. We are twice as far removed from 1914 as Americans in that year were removed from the Civil War era. Another world war and scores of smaller ones have occurred in the generations since. Revolutions have shaken and reshaped entire chunks of the globe. Technology has transformed almost everything.

But we should never forget the consequences of “the Great War.” Aside from its staggering bloodshed and suffering (more than 30 million killed or wounded), it brought the end of the old order in Europe and laid the groundwork for a new one. It swept away monarchies and empires, set the stage for revolutions and years of global economic struggle — and ultimately led to an even more devastating global conflict.

Some historians believe we are entering a similar era of endings and beginnings. If Christians intend to make an impact on the world, we must strive to understand the times. We also must deal with the world as it is, not as we want it to be. If you’re waiting for general stability and peace before you launch out to the nations or lead your church to go, you’ve got a long wait ahead.

 “[T]he coming conflicts and challenges are pretty clear,” writes Gordon Adams, professor of international relations at American University, in Foreign Policy magazine. “We will hear a lot about the Syrian civil war, the fate of the Iranian nuclear program, conflict in Iraq, the departure of U.S. forces from Afghanistan — not to speak of what applecart Vladimir Putin plans to upset next, whether the North Korean regime will implode, and whether China and its neighbors intensify their conflict over the rocky outcroppings they all want to own. …

“As we reflect on this [World War I] anniversary year, however, there are deeper rumblings afoot, rumblings that will color and shape many of these conflicts. The same was true 100 years ago. … At the start of that new century, the shape of world politics was about to transform, while class conflict rose and shook the very foundations of the monarchies of continental Europe. Between these two forces, they would wipe out the Austro-Hungarian Empire, remove royalty from power in Germany, bring revolutionary turmoil to Russia, undermine the colonial systems established by France and Germany, and bring a new power — the United States — to the center of the world stage.”

Now the United States and its allies seem to be receding as global power players, by circumstance or by choice, while economic, political and military conflicts simmer around the globe. If that withdrawal or decline continues, other forces will fill the power vacuum.

In some cases, the vacuum itself will bring chaos. It’s an old historical pattern, repeated many times through the ages.

“Why so much anarchy?” asks Robert Kaplan in a new piece for Stratfor, the global intelligence analysis service. Twenty years ago, Kaplan warned in an influential Atlantic Monthly article (“The Coming Anarchy”) of “unprecedented upheaval, brought on by scarce resources, overpopulation, uncontrollable disease, brutal warfare and the widespread collapse of nation-states and indeed, of any semblance of government. ... Welcome to the 21st century.”

Some of those predictions came true; some didn’t. But “what is not in dispute is that significant portions of the earth … are simply harder and harder to govern,” Kaplan reports. He identifies five major causes for the persistent upheaval of recent decades:

n  The end of imperialism: Empires and spheres of influence built by international powers often oppress and exploit the peoples they absorb. But they provide (or enforce) order. When they crumble, freedom may follow. Or chaos and blood.

n   The end of post-colonial strongmen: National dictators replaced departing colonial authorities in many places during the post-colonial era in the 20^th century and again after the Cold War. Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gadhafi, Hosni Mubarak and many other strongmen are gone. But who — or what — will replace them? 

n  No national institutions and feeble national identities: Post-colonial dictators typically ruled by fear and secret police, not strong social and political institutions. “It is institutions that fill the gap between the ruler at the top and the extended family or tribe at the bottom,” Kaplan explains. Without such institutions, “the chances for either [more] dictatorship or anarchy proliferate.” States with such weak national identities become particularly vulnerable to “non-state identities that fill the subsequent void.” Think al-Qaida, organized criminal cartels and other bad actors.  

n  Doctrinal battles: Religious struggles have sparked many wars in the past. It’s happening again in the Muslim world “as state identities weaken and sectarian and other differences within Islam come to the fore, often violently,” Kaplan notes. Americans tend to focus on radical Islam versus the West. But the great ideological battle now tearing apart the Middle East — from Syria and Iraq to Iran and Saudi Arabia — is the blood feud between Sunni and Shiite Islam.

n  Information Technology: Smartphones “can empower the crowd against a hated regime, as protesters who do not know each other personally can find each other through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media,” Kaplan acknowledges. But they “cannot provide [or] maintain political stability afterwards. This is how technology encourages anarchy. The Industrial Age was about bigness: big tanks, aircraft carriers, railway networks and so forth. … But the post-industrial age is about smallness, which can empower small and oppressed groups, allowing them to challenge the state — with anarchy sometimes the result.”

What comes next?

“The real question marks are Russia and China. The possible weakening of authoritarian rule in those sprawling states may usher in less democracy than chronic instability and ethnic separatism that would dwarf in scale the current instability in the Middle East,” Kaplan warns. “The future of world politics will be about which societies can develop responsive institutions to govern vast geographical space and which cannot. That is the question toward which the present season of anarchy leads.”

That might be the political question. The spiritual question for Christians: How do we continue to go into the world, declare the Gospel and make disciples among all nations as yet another era of upheaval unfolds? There are as many answers as there are nations, cultures and peoples.

 But retreat is not one of them.

Generational challenge confronts global church

                                      

(PHOTO) SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS—In a Cairo neighborhood, a child walks by an Egyptian flag painted on a wall — with apparent symbols of a Muslim crescent and Christian cross added. As the often-violent struggle for freedom continues in Egypt and other countries, larger demographic forces are at work. Sixty percent of all Egyptians are under 25. The total population of the Middle East and North Africa surpassed 430 million in 2007 and likely will top 700 million by 2050. One in every three people in the region is between 10 and 24. About one in every five people on earth is between the ages of 15 and 24. They want jobs and better lives, but prosperity alone isn’t enough. They want something more. “People here are craving life,” said a mission leader in the Middle East. “They’re craving change and not just political and economic change. Their deep heart cry is for answers.” PHOTO by Joseph Rose


The global spread of democracy doesn’t look nearly as promising as it once did.

High hopes for lasting freedom appear to be fading in Russia, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Tunisia, to name a few countries where authoritarians, extremists, corruption and other forces have undermined fledgling democratic institutions. Dictators have fallen like bowling pins in some places, but the vacuum they left behind hasn’t necessarily been filled by freedom. Elsewhere, police states have proven surprisingly resilient in the face of challenges from globalization, demands for change and the spread of social media.

In the Middle East, epicenter of massive movements for change, “observers are increasingly cynical about the prospects for democracy, arguing that the Arab Spring has turned into an Islamist winter,” reports the journal Foreign Affairs. Radical Islamism is the biggest threat to liberty in the region. However, Foreign Affairs argued that “instead of fretting over Islamists, the international community needs to have a more nuanced conception of political transition in the Arab world and should strive to bolster institutions and economic reforms in post-Arab Spring countries.”

Maybe, but diplomats and democracy activists said the same thing when now-deposed dictators were still in power. Building durable democratic institutions and reforming national economies take time, even under favorable conditions.

Meanwhile, there are larger demographic forces at work worldwide.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently compared three major countries: China, India and Egypt. Very different societies, very different governments. “But there is one thing that all three have in common: gigantic youth bulges under the age of 30, increasingly connected by technology but very unevenly educated,” Friedman wrote. “[T]he one that will thrive the most in the 21st century will be the one that is most successful at converting its youth bulge into a ‘demographic dividend’ that keeps paying off every decade, as opposed to a ‘demographic bomb’ that keeps going off every decade. That will be the society that provides more of its youth with the education, jobs and voice they seek to realize their full potential.”
India counted 560 million people under the age of 25 in 2011. Of that number, 225 million were between the ages of 10 and 19. In Egypt, the largest country in the Middle East, a million people are born every nine months, according to one estimate. Sixty percent of all Egyptians are under 25. The total population of the Middle East and North Africa surpassed 430 million in 2007. It’s expected to top 700 million by 2050. One in every three people in the region is between 10 and 24. Asia, by far the largest demographic region of the globe with more than 4 billion people, likely will increase to 5.3 billion by mid-century.

About one in every five people on earth is between the ages of 15 and 24. Eight in 10 of them live in Africa and Asia. As population growth rates stabilize or even decline in the West — particularly Europe — future growth will come almost entirely in the global East and South. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The “demographic dividend” Friedman identified could benefit many countries — if young workers can fuel productivity and prosperity in once-poor areas of the global East and South.

They want jobs. They want better lives. But prosperity alone isn’t enough for them. Even freedom and democracy aren’t enough. They want something more — and they are absorbing ideas from all directions.

“We’re sitting on a tectonic plate that is shifting,” a mission leader in the Middle East told me last year. “If expectations continue not to be met, we'll see another [political] earthquake. But this is a really good time for anybody who wants to discuss ideas. The marketplace of ideas has changed radically. For the Gospel, we need to be in the conversation.”

Another Christian worker in the region put it this way: “People here are craving life. They’re craving change and not just political and economic change. Their deep heart cry is for answers. What they grew up with is not giving them answers. [The current political turmoil eventually] will create even more of a spiritual harvest. What men meant for evil, God will use for good.”

Most of the people groups currently unreached or unengaged by the Gospel live in the vast eastern and southern regions experiencing rapid population growth. Most of the countries in those regions have a high percentage of children, teens and young adults.

Making disciples among them is the great generational challenge facing the 21st-century church.

For Middle East, harvest time is now

There’s a question that keeps Jack Logan* awake at night: Who is praying for the people of Syria?

Not just because a murderous civil war is tearing Syria apart, though that tragedy is unfolding. Not just because millions of Syrians are suffering and need help, though they do.

Who is praying for the Syrians God is drawing to Himself in the midst of great struggle? (See stories about ministry response among Syrian Muslim refugees at http://www.imb.org/main/news/details.asp?StoryID=11287&LanguageID=1709.) They aren’t embracing Christ because Christians are helping them survive tough times. Like so many others in the region, they are seeking truth because all else is collapsing around them.

Logan, a Christian worker and strategist based in the Middle East, has seen it before.

“Whenever there’s a war and people are affected, the Lord opens up doors to give us access to people that we really never had before,” Logan says. “It happened in 2006 during the war between Hezbollah [the Lebanon-based Shiite Muslim group] and Israel, which opened up unprecedented opportunities for us in an area that we had not had access to before.”

The same thing is going on now, as Syrians stream out of their embattled homeland — and as the peoples of the Middle East continue to cope with the changes unleashed by “Arab Spring” political/social movements across the region.

“My job is developing strategy for engaging the lost, the unreached and unengaged peoples for this part of the world,” Logan reflects. “But when we’re presented with these opportunities, it’s pretty reactionary. It’s humbling, but at the same time it’s incredibly exciting, because we see the Lord moving in ways that we never expected. I don’t know how to explain it. I just know that in times like these, we have to have our senses tuned to what the Lord is doing. Hundreds of thousands of people that we had no access to inside of their country, we now do. It takes giving up our own agenda and saying, ‘What do we need to sacrifice in order to get to these people that God has put on our back door?’

“During these crises, this Arab Spring, this stirring of peoples across the Arab world, God is creating opportunities like we’ve never had before to reach people at a point of need, to embody and proclaim the Gospel.”

Yes, the wider region is experiencing unpredictable turmoil. Yes, violence and persecution have increased. Yes, it’s dangerous to be a follower of Christ in certain places. Yet amid the ongoing crisis, the Arab world has become a harvest field for the Gospel. But after generations of sowing seeds in rock-hard ground, how many Christians believe it?

“The harvest is now,” Logan insists. “A few years ago I’m not sure I would have believed that myself. But it’s not only believable right now, it is a reality. We’re not preparing the harvest; we are working in a harvest field. This has to be ingrained in our expectations. People look at the Middle East and they see a barren land. They see sand and desert and dry land, not just physically but spiritually, and they look at it as an unreachable place. But our expectations are most often defined by past experience and present realities, when they should be based on what we believe God is going to do.

“If we believe we’re working in a harvest field, then we’ll give up anything to make Christ known and worshipped in the darkest of places. I want the church in the United States to believe that. I want us [workers in the region] to believe that.”

Sounds a little like Hebrews 11. Earlier followers of the Lord experienced some very tough sledding in the Middle East — before and after the birth of the Christian church — and they turned the known world upside down by faith. Today, some of the most faithful and courageous heirs of that tradition are Muslim-background followers of Christ. Many have come to Him after experiencing dreams and visions, after counting the cost of obedience, after paying a steep price. I sat in a church with one such believer in Egypt earlier this year and listened to him gently challenge Christian-background brothers to overcome their fear and timidity in the face of opposition.

“Christians have a problem with understanding their own religion, because if they understand their faith they’re going to make real change,” he told listeners. “The church has to move; it is not moving toward those from other backgrounds.”

A veteran Egyptian pastor leaned over and confided: “He is the future of the church in Egypt.”

Opposition is a given. Always has been. Followers of Christ who understand that recognize the signs of the times and keep moving.

“These are people who are walking in darkness, who are blinded by the god of this world,” Logan says. “We have the light of the Gospel inside of us. Do we perceive ourselves as Gospel bearers in a dark world? If so, then we have a responsibility to take the Gospel to the darkest places. Jesus told us to take the Gospel to all nations and make disciples. We know there will be people from every tribe, language, people and nation before the throne, so we know that there will be people from the Middle East. There will be Syrians, there will be Sunni, there will be Alawites, there will be Kurds, there will be Druze, there will be Palestinians, there will be Salafists, there will be activists, there will be secularists, there will be all these people who will worship Jesus.

“I hope the church will consider what it’s going to take for that to happen. We cannot get to the unreached and unengaged doing things the way that we have done. It’s going to take a higher tolerance of risk. It’s going to take a greater resolve to sacrifice, to give up and to follow Christ with abandon. What we really have to come to grips with is: Do we really love Jesus that much? People ask me all the time when I’m in the States, ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ I’m not sure that’s the right question. Ultimately, there’s nowhere safe these days. The real question is: Is Jesus worth it? If it’s about ourselves, our safety, our future, or even doing it for the sake of the nations, that’s not enough.

“It’s got to be about Jesus.”

*(Name changed)

Things fall apart

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/137/13720/13720-77125.mp3


Feeling a little unstable lately?

I’m not talking about the earthquake that rattled America’s East Coast the other day — though it symbolizes other forces currently shaking things up.

Financial markets lurch up and down with the latest bit of hopeful or gloomy news, while a dazed global economy hangs on for dear life. Once-stable governments in the so-called developed world, including our own, struggle to contain deep social and economic divisions tearing at the foundations of their nations. Flash mobs randomly assault people on the streets for fun and profit.

Long-term regimes have fallen — or are falling — in the Middle East, but no one is sure what will follow them. Perhaps something worse? Scenarios range from a new dawn of freedom and democracy to the rise of Islamist theocracies across the region.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” W.B. Yeats wrote in “The Second Coming,” one of the most-quoted poems of modern times. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. …”

We can hope “mere anarchy” holds off for a while, but things sure seem to be falling apart, for better or worse. Of course, things always seem to be falling apart. That’s the problem with supposedly indestructible human institutions: They aren’t.

A recent newspaper editorial discussing U.S. defense requirements argued that many military bases overseas “serve little purpose in a post-Soviet world.” The writer thoughtfully added an explanation for those who might be puzzled by the word “Soviet”: “The Soviet Union was an empire of communist states in Eastern Europe, led by Russia, that constituted the principal enemy of the U.S. in the second half of the 20th century.”

Here was an imperial colossus that bestrode half the world for generations — and periodically threatened the rest with nuclear extinction. It crumbled only 20 years ago. Yet the editorialist feared, probably with good reason, that some readers are so historically uninformed or forgetful that they wouldn’t know the Soviet Union had ever existed. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” thundered King Ozymandias of old — long forgotten except for his shattered statue, half-buried in the desert sands.

Even the seemingly eternal institution of bribery in India, as predictable as tea and the rising sun, trembles before the protests of one man, Anna (“elder brother”) Hazare. An ascetic who has galvanized the nation in recent days through his Gandhian tactic of fasting for change, Hazare calls for a “second revolution” to rid Indian society of corruption.

“Graft has long wracked India’s public life and society, running the gamut from small-scale bribes to the police in exchange for dispensing with traffic tickets to massive payoffs to politicians and political parties to acquire complex weapons systems,” reports the journal, Foreign Affairs. “The country’s citizens have frequently complained about this malaise but have rarely, if ever, resorted to organized public protest to register their frustration and anger about this pervasive phenomenon.” This time, many are joining Hazare to demand real change.

Nothing is permanent in human affairs. Changing an institution is pointless, however, without changing hearts. The new institution inevitably sinks into the same swamp as the old.

No wonder Jesus Christ refused to be pressured into leading a political or revolutionary movement to liberate the Jewish nation from the Roman Empire, as some misunderstood his Messianic mission to be.

“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said when He stood before Pontius Pilate, Rome’s military prefect, before His crucifixion (John 18:36a).

“So you are a king?” Pilate asked.

Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice” (John 18:37, NASB).

Our mission as His followers, then, is to proclaim His truth in every culture and give every searching heart the opportunity to hear His voice. The millions who search for something permanent in this ever-changing world deserve to know there is a kingdom that will outlast the stars.

You say you want a revolution

“You say you want a revolution. Well, you know, we all want to change the world. …”

Those words come from “Revolution,” one of the Beatles’ hit songs of 1968 — a tumultuous year of mass protests, student demonstrations and demands for change across Europe, America and beyond (listen to the song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJMmpJYDF8). It was a heady time for idealists, particularly on the political left. Many insisted on the nonviolent tactics so effectively adapted by Martin Luther King Jr. and the U.S. civil rights movement from the strategy Gandhi used to end British rule in India.

Others, less patient and more militant, advocated using “any means necessary” (read: violence) to overthrow what they saw as oppressive systems. Some supported or even joined Marxist guerrilla movements across Latin America and Asia.

Pop stars aren’t known for their political sophistication. But in “Revolution,” the Beatles warned of the dangers involved in rapid political and social change — even as they led the charge:

“[W]hen you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out. …You tell me it’s the institution, well, you know, you better free your mind instead. …”

Wise words for those leading the movements for change now shaking societies across the Arab world. Many worldly institutions are rotten, corrupt and long overdue for tossing into history’s dustbin. But what will replace them?

The institution most in need of transformation is the human mind.

“It’s a dangerous time, because the youth are full of anger,” says an Arab Baptist pastor in one of the Middle Eastern countries rocked by protests. “This is not something new. The youth get this frustration from their parents when they can’t afford what they need to live or to get education. And even for the ones that do graduate, they have the same frustration: no jobs. They take loans from banks and then they don’t find work. That causes them to go to drugs, to steal, to be dishonest, to prostitute.”

Arab Christians, he adds, deal with all of those stresses, plus the added burden of oppression as a religious minority — “especially the evangelicals.”

“As an evangelical church, what we are doing now is praying for more awareness for the people and what they should do at this time,” he says. “At the same time, we are trying to find more [connections] between us, between Christians and Muslims. Pray for policies to change — for more freedom, more human rights, more freedom for the people to choose what they want.”

He is hopeful, but realistic. He places little hope in human institutions — democratic or otherwise.

“My hope is in God, not with people,” he states. "I'm a good reader of [Arab] history."

A Christian representative based in the region believes the current cascade of events constitutes a “perfect storm,” under God’s sovereign control, to spread His glory throughout North Africa and the Middle East.

The peoples of the region are experiencing “an ever-widening sociopolitical discontent that is moving like a tsunami wave across their communication networks,” the representative says. “Whether they live in the thick of demonstrations occurring in Libya, Morocco or Yemen, or in an apartment complex in Dallas-Fort Worth or Los Angeles, they are anxious and rightly concerned about what is happening across their homelands.

“This visceral dissatisfaction makes people either run from God or run toward Him. Let’s pray the majority of our peoples run toward Him!”

Specifically, the worker asks for prayer that God will be honored and glorified in each country as governments shift and change; that the Gospel will spread to millions of families; that disciples of Christ among peoples of the region will multiply; and that believers will “be of one mind and one heart to carry out God’s purposes on earth” during this historic moment.

Revolutions typically take one of three courses, according to geopolitical analyst George Friedman:

* They fail.

* They falter, but sow seeds that bloom for decades afterward.

* They succeed — and create a new order in a nation, a region, even the world.

Pray that the revolutions now sweeping across the Arab world will create a new spiritual order in the minds of men and women, regardless of what happens to their political institutions.

(Listen to an audio version of this post at
http://media1.imbresources.org/files/123/12370/12370-69197.mp3)

Cry of Arab youth: 'Enough!'

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/123/12314/12314-68892.mp3


It’s no coincidence that so many of the people you see demanding change on the streets and squares of Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Yemen and other countries in the Arab world are young.

They’re the expanding majority, for one thing. Two of every three people in the Middle East are under 24. Half of greater Cairo’s 18 million people are under 30.

And they’ve had it.

“Kefaya!” (enough) is the Egyptian Arabic word heard loud and clear in many of the protests. It’s also the unofficial name of a grass-roots political reform movement in Egypt, but it has taken on a far wider and deeper meaning in recent days. It has become a cry of anger, of despair — and of determination. Young people in the region have had enough of being ignored. Enough of being abused. Enough of being silenced. Enough of being forgotten. Enough of being left behind as the rest of the world rushes ahead.

“The regimes and the leaders are the ones under fire, but it’s really about despair over the future,” said Sami Alfaraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies, in an interview with the Associated Press.

Egyptian opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei
admitted as much. “It’s all [led by those age] 30 and below … who want a future and a hope,” he told a reporter as the protests gained momentum.

Food shortages — and food prices — in many Arab countries are increasing. Jobs are decreasing. Opportunities for young adults with good educations to get ahead often depend on family “connections” and bribes. Political, social and religious freedoms vary from country to country, but they generally fall far below the liberties Arab young people see their counterparts enjoying in other parts of the world.

David, 23, an Egyptian-American follower of Christ, will never forget the first time his parents took him to visit relatives in Egypt. He was talking loudly on the street when his parents nervously told him to be quiet.

“I can say what I want!” he protested.

“No you can’t,” they sternly warned him. “This is Egypt!”

In that moment, David understood why his grandfather, an Egyptian Christian pastor, had left his beloved homeland many years before. “Why do people come to America, like my grandfather?” he asked. “Because of the freedom of speech and religion. These are the kind of rights every human deserves and that we don’t have in Egypt.”

Not yet, but change might be coming.

Customs die hard in ancient societies, however. The youth-oriented culture that dominates the West remains a foreign import in the Middle East, despite the nightclubs and pop scene in Cairo, Beirut or Amman. Youth still defers to age, parents, elder brothers, tribal chiefs, imams, kings. Young, unmarried men have little standing in most communities. Young women — even less.

MORE THAN HALF THE WORLD

But the sheer number of young people has skyrocketed throughout the region —and in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Europe and North America are aging; much of the rest of the world is getting younger.

“If you look worldwide at the percentage of the population under the age of 30, it’s more than 50 percent,” says Mike Lopez, director of the International Mission Board’s student mobilization team. “That age group is going to make a significant difference, for better or for worse, in the state of global affairs in the future. How are we addressing this in our evangelism strategies?”

By 2009, the number of college students worldwide had more than doubled — to 130 million — over the previous 50 years, according to Ken Cochrum, strategist for student-led movements at Campus Crusade for Christ.

“If taken as a whole, this generation of college students would constitute the world’s 10th-largest country,” Cochrum reported in the August 2009 edition of Lausanne World Pulse. Forward-looking governments “have realized that their future depends upon a well-educated population who can compete in today's borderless ‘glocal’ economy.”

Those governments, joined by corporations and advertisers, “invest millions of dollars each year attempting to influence students and the choices they will make for the rest of their lives,” Cochrum observed. “What about the church? What level of urgency and intentionality do we give to making disciples and building Christ-centered movements among students today?”

Today’s students, he stressed, “will determine tomorrow’s culture. ... The next few years represent a significant window of opportunity.”

That certainly applies in the Middle East, where millions of students and other young adults have had “enough” of the old way and want something new. They’re looking to others their age to lead the way.

There’s a historical precedent worth considering: Jesus, who spent part of His childhood in Egypt, was about 30 when He started turning that part of the world upside down.