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Suffering is not an option

John Oros

Thirty-five years of living as a Christian under a totalitarian Communist regime taught me that suffering for Christ is not an option. I spent the first years of my life in Romania. Christians were discriminated against. Churches were locked and then bulldozed. Bibles were confiscated and later turned into toilet paper. Pastors were interrogated, imprisoned and killed.

As a frightened young boy in elementary school, I was told that in our generation Christians would disappear from the land. I was put down many times by my teachers and my peers because I believed that there is a higher authority we should believe in and obey. Later on, I was not promoted at work because I believed that Jesus Christ and not a political system is the ultimate Saviour.

I was a computer analyst and was also involved in evangelism and Bible teaching in the underground church. Several times, I was interrogated by the secret police and asked to be an informer, to tell them what was happening in our churches. I didn’t want to do that. Because of that, I was told that my wife would become a widow and my kids orphans.

From all of this, I understood that suffering is part of the package delivered by God to us. I wanted to know if being persecuted for my faith was allowed by God, so I studied my Bible. I found that every single book of the Bible presents stories of real people who suffered for their faith. I also found that suffering for what you believe in is not a curse. I strongly believe that a person does not know what real joy is until he/she suffers in one way or another for the truth of God. If we are not ready to die for what we believe, it will be very difficult for us to know what we are living for.

In 1973, our pastor told us, a group of 15 teenagers that he had picked to work with, that he was afraid to stand for the gospel because he was afraid of persecution. God took hold of our pastor, and that man started to pray for several hours a day. He encouraged us to do the same. We asked the Lord that the gospel would be proclaimed in kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools, colleges and universities, even in the Communist headquarters. We asked God to save the nation of Romania. Every one of our prayers was answered.

The Lord had mercy

I was not there by then. I had gotten the message that my days were numbered. I had seen many friends shot dead, but the Lord had mercy on me and pushed me out from Romania in a very interesting way. The government gave me a passport to Budapest, Hungary, another Communist country. From there I worked my way to Austria, and lived in a refugee camp for a-year-and-a-half.

My family was left behind. My wife was harassed by the secret police, who tried to brainwash her. They told her “Don’t be stupid. Your husband will marry. Go on with your life.” My kids were harassed at school by teachers who said I had betrayed the Communist ideals.

I communicated plans to my parents and friends via the phone using code. After one year, my wife escaped and we met in the refugee camp. The kids were left behind with my parents. My kids were never given to me in Austria. The secret police wanted me to go back and pick them up. We knew that they wanted to catch me and would kill me if I went back.

After we arrived in Kitchener, Ont., I met a member of parliament, who eased the way for me to go back. The Romanian authorities wouldn’t give me my kids, but they never knew that I was in Romania. I stole my kids, crossed the border to Austria and from there took a plane for Canada.

God is in control

When we started our life here in Canada, I thought that my Lord wanted me here to become rich, because I was doing quite well in computers in Romania and Austria. But the Lord had a different plan. Now I understand that I am here, not to be rich in finances, but to be rich in Him. I have the huge privilege to go to many places and inform Christians about suffering and persecution, to tell them that God is still in control and that sometimes He allows evil events and evil people as part of His plan. In the end, His name will be glorified, and we will understand that we have been purified through suffering.

I have always wanted to proclaim the Word of God. What God has called me to here is to do above ground what I did for years underground in Romania. I realize that in North America I am on very different ground, with very different socio-economic and philosophical realities. I try to contextualize the gospel in this post-Christian and even anti-Christian culture. We call North America an ABC culture: Anything But Christianity. Yet I see hope here. This is the greatest of times, because the greater the darkness, the brighter the light. Jesus was born in a multicultural society, and He sends us Christians to multicultural North American society with the express mandate of making disciples.

The North American Christian Body (I prefer this term to “Church”) is not only very different from the Eastern European Body, but different from what the North American Body was several decades ago. Yet, as I have had the privilege of speaking in over 220 churches in 18 denominations in Canada, I have seen how beautiful the Body of Christ is. I see the bottom part of the glass that is filled with water, not the empty part at the top. I believe God has sent me to North America to encourage Christians who are at the end of their hope.

Must we suffer?

Suffering for Christ is a privilege. It is part of the training we receive in His school over the course of many years. I have been asked many times if we need to suffer. What I know is that the Enemy is not happy with Christians who pay the price for what they believe. Easy believism is not found in my Bible. My Jesus is telling me to take up my cross on a daily basis and follow Him. At the vertical level, the cross between me and God the Father was taken up by Jesus; He paid the price in full, once and for all, so that I am declared righteous. My cross, taken at the horizontal level, means I am to spread Jesus among people. There is a price to be paid for that, too. The question is: Do I want to pay the price Jesus is asking me to pay? The question is not if I can pay; it is always if I want to.

The story of the apostle Paul is well known. From being a persecutor of those “on the way”, he experienced a unique conversion. What we overlook sometimes as we read Acts 9:1-19 is the detail regarding Ananias. He was told by the Lord to go and lay hands on Saul because of a sight problem. Ananias, very concerned, said, “Lord, this fellow is not part of our team.” Ananias was trying to help the Lord, as if the Lord had forgotten who Saul was and why he had come to Damascus. God told him: “This man is My chosen instrument to carry My name before the Gentiles and their kings, and before the people of Israel” (verse 15). The seal of approval over his life follows: “I will show him how much he must suffer for My name” (verse 16).

If I read these verses correctly, it follows that, as chosen instruments in God’s hand (as all Christians are, by virtue of the Great Commission), we must suffer for His name. God did not suggest that Paul might suffer, and that the possibility would vary from people group to people group as he served among Gentiles and the people of Israel. Nor did God say that, as an ambassador of the King of the Universe, Paul would receive dignitary-like treatment from earthly kings. No, God said that Paul “must suffer”. As we read Paul’s epistles and the book of Acts, we read of a man who paid a heavy price for what he believed was the truth.

Looking ahead

It is no news that we live in a post-Christian and anti-Christian culture. Is this a tragedy for Christians? What is our attitude towards our “rights” that are no longer in place?

After the exile, the Levites, priests and family heads of Israel gathered in Jerusalem as the foundation was laid for the second temple. Many of them wept aloud, while many others rejoiced (Ezra 3:12). Those who wept looked back in history to the glory of the former temple, compared it with this temple and concluded that the new one was nowhere as good as the old. Those many lived in the past. Many others rejoiced because, though they knew that the new temple could not equal the old, they were looking to the future.

One of the questions for today’s Christians is: Are we still living in the past with its Christendom mentality, still clinging to “our rights”? Or, understanding the present, are we looking to the future? The way we understand our times affects the way we live, believe and act. Suffering persecution because of our belief that Jesus is the only Saviour will purify the Body worldwide, including in North America. Gold is not purified in ice but by fire.

John Oros is Canadian director of church ministries for Mission Without Borders, based in Abbotsford, B.C. The mission can be contacted by phone at (604) 855-9126 or by e-mail at joros@mwbi.org. The mission’s Web site can be found at www.mwb-ca.org.

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Last modified June 22, 2000.

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