We just spent the last month of our lives being hosted in a home with little to no furniture.  There were no couches to sit on and at times there was barely enough seats around the kitchen table–er, I mean folding table at which we ate dinner.  But it was one of the best experiences that we’ve had being hosted.

I would have been surprised, but I’ve experienced this before.  Every week we visit the homes of North Korean defectors in South Korea.  They will often cook for us and gladly share their lives with us.  At times, they will even host us overnight.  But it’s often very strange for American visitors (me included) because they have no beds, no kitchen table, no couches . . . and might I add, very small apartments! I often think that if a North Korean knew how strange it was for Americans they might…

“…barbaric atrocities committed against Christian minorities”…”blood…splashed everywhere“…”Christian communities being brutalized and extinguished“…”Is there not a stage when violent reciprocation becomes the only effective alternative?”

These are the recent news reports and opinions about what is more and more frequently being called “the year of the Christian genocide.” One commentator writes that the situation “can only be compared to the first centuries when Christians were hunted down as criminals in the Roman Empire.”

Amidst warnings that the situation will worsen “unless world leaders take more concrete actions to safeguard the religious and human rights of people,” and amidst claims that Jesus’ teachings don’t mean what they sound like they mean or  don’t apply in this case of large-scale barbarity, it’s worth asking:

How did God respond in that comparable situation of Christian genocide in the first centuries of the church’s existence?

He sent a…