Review: The Insanity of Obedience

I’m reading Nik Ripken’s The Insanity of Obedience, and I’ll be posting my thoughts here as an ongoing review and then tidy it up when I complete it (at least that’s the intention).

The book is a “bold challenge to global discipleship” and is a powerful admonishment to believers to evaluate their faithfulness in view of their willingness to experience persecution for Jesus’ name.

It asks some tough questions, not the least of which is does a lack of current persecution for following Jesus indicate a lack of true following Jesus? Also, “as followers of Jesus, will we allow ourselves to be seized by both the content and the context of the New Testament?”

October 7, 2014:

According to Paul Marshall of Freedom House, 80% of the world’s believers who are practicing their faith live in persecution. Before offering this shocking statistic, Marshall goes to great lengths to define what he means by “believers.” It turns out that he is talking about people who would not only use the word “Christian” to define themselves, but specifically about people who have a genuine relationship with Jesus. Marshall is talking about people.. for whom faith in Jesus is formative in life.

Ripken identifies through a long study process, in more than 70 countries, that “persecution increases as people respond to the activity of the God.” His research and interviews show (and it may seem obvious) that access to the gospel does not equate to persecution. Rather, it’s response to the gospel that invites it. Where there is great response to the gospel, there will be great persecution.

If our goal were to simply stop persecution, then followers of Jesus could accomplish that goal easily and quickly by refusing to share Jesus… [and so] the reduction (or elimination) of persecution is not our ultimate goal… We must see it the way that Jesus sees it… as an inevitable result of the obedience of His followers.

Here’s the provocative question: do we see little persecution of Christians in the Western Church because we personally share the story of Jesus so infrequently?

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