Responding to crises
This morning about 20,000 turned up to protest, among things, the recent hike in fuel prices. The rally at the Kelana Jaya Stadium and the issues demonstrated about reflects a growing sense of national crisis, both economic and political, but in a political economy double whammies are anything but uncommon.
A national crisis – now that’s something Christians go through all the time. I’d like to share something I read about an even greater crisis in Rome back in the first century and how the church then ‘dealt with’ it, in hope that it sheds some light on the paths we can take today.
In 165AD and 251AD two devastating plagues ravaged the Roman empire, killing up to a third of the population. Many villages were deserted as people fled the epidemic, even leaving behind the dying (including loved-ones).
This was the ‘common-sense’ response. A less-than-common sensical approach was taken by the Christians at the time: They stayed behind to care for the sick, including those who were non-Christians. They risked their lives and many died as a result.
Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, AD260, reported:
“Most of our brothers showed unbounded love… never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another… Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ… drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains”
He also mentioned what the non-Christians did:
“The heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.”
In time a few remarkable things happened. Due to the basic nursing and feeding provided by the Christians, many of the would-de dead survived and developed immunisation to the disease. These included Christians and those would become new believers (for who wouldn’t give their life to Christ when His disciples put their lives on the line for them?)
The end-result was that the Christian population grew tremendously and its reputation of self-less love expanded. The love of Christ triumphed through this national crisis because His Body acted like the sacrificial all-giving all-loving meta-organism it was supposed to be. (For more information and wonderful read, save a few petrol-consuming car rides and buy Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force HarperOne 1st HarperCollins, 1997).
Today we have different crises before us but - like all events big, bad and widespread – the Body of Christ can respond in a way which not only provides a model for the world but actually saves it, an act which in turn leads to the kingdom of God being realised more.
How can Malaysian Christians in this latest century behave like the Roman Christians in the early centuries? How can we refrain from ‘escaping’ the fuel-hike crisis and instead show the world how true Christ-like humanity behaves in the thick of one? E.g. how about offering to provide free car-pooling to our friends, at our own personal cost? Or if you’re a boss, how about giving a fuel subsidy to your employees?
Good self-sacrificial ideas are legion. We only need to start churning out options, but only if we buy the idea that God works most powerfully in our weakness and through our sacrifices for the sake of those who don’t know Him.
Alwyn Lau is a Researcher and Teacher at Fairview International School. Being an astute theological thinker, he is interested in theological methods, emerging theologies, as well as the relevance of the Christian faith to the emerging generation.
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