Being A Christian Has Made You A Better Man

I’ve heard it said that if a believer from our region faithfully endures persecution long enough, his unbelieving family will eventually come to respect him for it – and will even boast about him to their Muslim friends and neighbors.

“This is our son. He became a Christian and for years we were awful to him because of it. But he put up with all of it and is doing better than ever. What a man!”

This past week I heard a testimony where this has actually happened. Now that we’re back in Caravan City*, we are once again fellow church members with Brother Ahmed*, the local believer who once taught me that jihad is the only understanding of covenant in his culture.

Ahmed was testifying because a group of us who were part of the church back in 2020 were spending the evening together, sharing how God has been faithful to us over the past five years.

“You know that things with my family were terrible after I became a Christian,” Ahmed shared. “Especially on my dad’s side. For three years they cut me off and wanted nothing to do with me.”

Shunning like this is one of the more common forms of persecution used against believers here. It’s a pressure mechanism meant to cut them off from their primary support network and publicly shame them back into conformity. In a culture where the family network is everything because there are almost no trustworthy public institutions to rely on, this is often a devastating blow.

Ahmed continued,

“Last year my middle brother came back from abroad and asked to stay with us. We were happy to have him live with us while he was looking for a job. At least, that was the reason he gave us for his visit. He later admitted that our dad had sent him to spy on us.

“My family was convinced that I had become a Christian so that I could live a wild life of sinful freedom. But instead, my brother saw my life, my marriage, and even interviewed a lot of the people I work with.

“After a few weeks, my brother admitted to me why he had really come. Then, he said to me, ‘I now see that becoming a Christian has made you a better man, not a worse one. In fact, you are a much better man than I am!’

“I am so thankful to God because after some very difficult years I now have a good relationship with my family, they respect me a lot, and we can see them all the time.”

I was so encouraged to hear Ahmed’s testimony to God’s faithfulness. Of course, it doesn’t always work out this way. However, my sense is that many more local believers could have healthy and respectful relationships with their families if they just hold on a little longer. The temptation many face is to believe that the broken relationship will be that way forever. But kinship ties go so deep in this culture that even when someone has shamed the family through something as drastic as apostasy, there still remain deep desires for relationship underneath all the persecution.

In the meantime, what local believers need to be reminded of is that faithfully enduring their family’s shaming is a way God has given them to accrue true honor (1 Pet 2:7). And not just in God’s eyes, but that even their unbelieving family may someday come to see their stubborn commitment to Jesus as honorable. Those of us in relationship with local believers can and should encourage them in light of this to remain “steadfast, immovable” knowing that heaven’s approval is sure – and their family’s eventual approval is not as impossible as it might seem today.

It’s interesting also to note his family’s stated concern – “We thought becoming a Christian would make you a bad man.” If this same fear is shared by other families whose children follow Jesus, then perhaps efforts could be made to get word back to these families of local believers – good gossip as it were – about how Christian faith has actually made their shunned family member even more of an upright and honorable person.

As for Ahmed, he was beaming as he sat next to his local believing wife (something he also once felt was impossible), testifying to how kind God has been to him.

Many believers grieve the loss of their families after they come to faith. This tragic outcome is often unavoidable, even for the most winsome of witnesses. Yet it is not impossible for believers from Muslim backgrounds to hold fast to Jesus and to eventually be reconciled to their Islamic families. May we pray and labor accordingly.

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*Names of places and individuals have been changed for security

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