Have you ever taken a beating for the gospel? People have fallen asleep while I’ve preached and a javelina once ran out of the woods, down the side of an outdoor amphitheater and derailed my best effort at a high school church camp altar call! But that’s about it for me.
Recently in the United Kingdom, as 33 year old Karandeep Mamman preached on a street corner in Walsall, he found himself surrounded by a group of angry Muslims. Not appreciating his assertion that the Quranic version of Jesus was false, they hemmed him in, yelled at him and trashed his sign.
Days after police showed up to check on him and disperse the crowds, Mamman was surprised to find himself facing prosecution for the event! His case was subsequently tossed when the judge found there to be no evidence of him “causing religiously aggravated harassment, alarm and distress” or violating hate crime statutes.
This makes me wonder three things:
- Is there more to the story? Of course there is. There’s always more to the story. One account mentioned that his sign condemned homosexuality and two of his attackers were a homosexual couple. It’s not always Muslims. (To be fair, perhaps they were both homosexual and Muslim.)
- How effective is street preaching? I’ve had some success in Sicily with telling Jesus stories to a couple Muslims at a time, but I’ve done no legit street preaching. I believe for some people it is obedient service to Christ. For most of us, I suspect we’d do better to connect in a more low key, less antagonistic way.
- Then there’s this, If you or I faced physical threats for sharing our faith, what would we do? One option, of course, is “don’t do it!” In that event may Jeremiah’s “fire in my bones” toast our own marrow! Another option is to keep at it, endeavoring to be “Shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.”
All the while, may the Holy Spirit remind us to pray for women and men like Mamman around the planet who “consider [their] lives worth nothing. . . beyond the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”