Joy in India
Andhra Pradesh, a state in southern India, graduates more engineers every year than the entire population of Canada. Many in this state use the freely provided primary and secondary education, a rarity in Indian states, as a springboard to an engineering degree.
Unless you’re a Christian. India requires registration of your religion, and many states have anti-conversion laws. When Hindus convert to Christianity, they lose government benefits including free education. While India technically allows freedom of religion, persecution like this against Christians, who are often in poverty and working low-wage jobs, means Christian families struggle to scrape up enough money for food and school.
The Christians I met in India, though, had joy in their salvation in Christ even in the face of state-sponsored persecution and poverty. They are an example of Christian faithfulness to us in the west who do not suffer as they do.
I met these Christians last winter when teaching at a pastor’s conference in a rural town in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The average Christian in this state is influenced by Pentecostal and prosperity gospel teachings. One believer asked me to pray for her oil so she could use it to bless items in her house. I politely declined, explaining that while God has power to answer prayer, oil does not.
The believers I encountered were eager to worship, learn from the preached word of God, and gather as a church body. The congregation gathered three nights in a row for mid-week church services, held a Saturday evening prayer meeting until 1am, then gathered again for church Sunday morning. The service was delayed Sunday morning because of a funeral procession for a Christian brother who died the evening before. They lit firecrackers in the street during the procession as a celebration of the believer’s new life in God’s eternal kingdom. Their faith in Christ—even amidst sadness, was a daily source of joy.
The believers in this village put American hospitality to shame. Even in their poverty, I was welcomed warmly by the church community. The women of the church cooked three meals a day over an open flame to feed 70 people—pastors, their families, and pastoral assistants helping with the conference. In addition to their work ethic, the women also seemed more spiritually engaged than the men. Multiple pastors mentioned having more women than men in their church. This was true in the hosting church, where women were also more apt to sing boldly, share testimonies, and ask for prayer.
The pastor of the hosting church lives with his family in a shack made of fronds and a corrugated tin roof. No Westerners had ever visited it before. Rather than building a home for himself, the pastor prioritized church construction, being inspired by the nation of Israel in the biblical book of Haggai. The church itself had grates for windows and no air conditioning, so it felt like being outside, though with electricity and fans.
I was deeply moved by the suffering and faith of the Christian congregants. I prayed for saints who were HIV positive, orphans, widows, Christians married to non-Christian spouses or who were the only Christian in their family, and a newborn baby visibly sick with jaundice, whom the mother asked me to name. I named her Anna, after both my wife and the prophetess in the New Testament.
The conference I led was focused on preaching—how to prepare a sermon deeply rooted in a text of Scripture and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And even as pastors and congregants looked to me for input and guidance through God’s word, their lives illustrated God’s word to me. In their lives, I saw the Beatitudes. I saw the generosity of 1 Timothy 6. I saw the delight in God’s word of Psalm 1. And in seeing this, I was encouraged to remain faithful. Comfort can be a curse—and joy in the Lord can be found in suffering.
