seeing christianity for the first time

I have been trying to put my finger on what it is that impacted me so profoundly in my visit to India. I would not describe my experience as particularly overwhelming or devastating, but I would say that there came a time in this experience that I knew that somehow from that moment on life would seem different to me. I would see things differently.

I think it is because I feel as if I have seen true Christianity for the first time.

It seems odd for the me to say this- in fact I know that I have made this observation several times since coming back, and have followed up that statement with a kind of tepid explanation for what I meant to say. Surely someone like me who has been a Christian my entire life and a pastor for most of my adult life is exaggerating with a statement like that. It sounds crazy even to me. I have surely been around true Christianity before- I have known many great Christians. I have seen the love of Christ demonstrated in very profound and self sacrificing ways not only in our culture but in places around the world. I know men and women who are giving the best of their years and the best of their talent in places where angels dare not trod (so to speak).

But I have never seen this before.

I have never seen people who are willing to live in a garbage dump in order to show the love of Christ to the desperately poor. I have never seen people who are willing to sacrifice so much for people who have absolutely nothing to give back. I have never before in my experience seen people who have taken so literally and so seriously the command of Christ to give up your life in order to find it.

At the conference in Orissa on Monday of last week, our team of Indians, Americans and Kroatians handed out over 10,000 Bibles to young men and women so that they could give them away to their friends. Before distributing them, our team made it clear that if they chose to pass them out, they could expect persecution.

In the state of Orissa, it is against the law to talk to someone about Christianity.

Before our plane even touched ground in America, we got word that six young people were arrested in Orissa for distributing Bibles. Radical Hindus ganged up on them, beat them, dragged them to a temple and doused them with cow urine (to "purify" them) and then handed them over to the police, who arrested them for disturbing the peace.

I suppose the reason that I am saying that I have seen Christianity for the first time, is because I have had nothing within my limited context to identify with this kind of witness. I have not until now had opportunities to see first hand how the movement of Christ actually works in most of the rest of the world.

In fact, this is the way the movement of genuine Christianity has always worked.

I recently watched a debate between Indian Christian apologist Dinesh D'souza and renowned atheist Richard Hitchins (I recommend that everyone youtube this in it's entirety). In one of the most compelling moments in the debate, D'souza told the story of Mother Teresa on the streets of Calcutta one day, putting her arms around a man whose body was racked with horrible leprosy. A man walking by said to her, "I would not do that for all the money in the world!". Teresa responded, "Neither would I. But I will do it for the love of Christ".

Hitchins scoffed from the other microphone, "Oh please... gag me with a spoon...such saccharine".

D'souza went on to explain that Christianity moves a person beyond reason and logic and up to a place beyond themselves. It is not something that can be explained- it is transcendent and spiritual in nature.

What I have seen and experienced defies all logic and explanation- aside from the movement and work of the Holy Spirit and the recalibration that takes place in the human heart as a result of the work of God's grace. Truthfully, most of what I have seen up to this point in my Christian experience has been at times powerfully exceptional, but very seldom have I experienced something that so absolutely defies human imagination and reason.

How I want us to know this kind of Christianity. When one tastes it and sees it, nothing else can satisfy.

Perhaps this is why Christianity is growing so rapidly in places like India and China and Indonesia- and has always grown through the centuries whenever it is persecuted. History has taught us that when world powers attempt to stamp the flame of true Christianity, they only help spread it.

Perhaps this is why Christians by the thousands drive 20 hours to gather with other Christians and cram into uncomfortable spaces and eagerly accept Bibles to hand to their friends, all in the face of persecution.

But we who have so much, who have been so blessed and spoiled, we who have two or three Bibles at home we seldom read and who only come to Christian gatherings when it is most convenient and self serving-have become somehow immune from the affects of true Christianity, it seems to me. This is why trips like this are worth whatever you have to sacrifice to make them.

I asked my friend Sergay how he liked his visit to America. He told me, "it is a great country, the people are wonderful and the land is beautiful, but the whole time I was there I was thinking to myself, 'I could be in India'".

I really like Sergay. Such honesty. Such pure faith and Christian joy.

I watched Sergay pass out those Bibles to the young people of Orissa. He immediatly jumped to the front of the line with a huge bundle of Bibles in his arms. He didn't just hand out Bibles, he handed out hugs and prayers. He wanted to touch every single one of them. He wasn't just involved in it, he was indulged in it. He was going to be the first in line to pass out these Bibles. He was so eager to hand them out, to look each person in the eye- to embrace them and encourage them. Sergay was very enthusiastic at this- he was doing it with greater purpose than the rest of us.

And then it occurred to me what I was seeing.

My Ukranian friend had also endured years of persecution for his faith. He too knew what it meant to be arrested for living your faith- for passing out Bibles. As that knowledge sunk in, I positioned myself so that I could begin passing Bibles to Sergay so that Sergay could pass Bibles to the front of the line. My purpose from that point was to keep feeding Sergay those Bibles so that he could keep handing them out.

It took us a full hour to distribute all of those Bibles. The line extended and curled hundreds of meters out into the hot India sun outside the tent. But Sergay stood there in the front of the line the entire time. Every single person who walked on that stage received not just a Bible, but the encouragement of a Ukranian believer who understood perhaps better than most people on earth EXACTLY what he was handing them.

When the service is over, Sergay is beaming, ecstatic. This is why he is in India.

Perhaps this is why I was in India. So that I could see Christianity for the first time.