As we were sitting down to a Bible study recently, when one of my Iranian parishioners declared, “Pastor, could you please pray that all the mullahs in Iran will go to hell?” His wife rolled her eyes at his comment. “Here we go again,” I thought… I have so often explained to this man and to many others that our Lord commands us to *love* our enemies (Mt 5:44, etc.), as difficult as that may be. “OK… let’s open our Bibles to the book of Jonah,” I suggested. We read key passages and I pointed out how Jonah was allowing his hatred for evil Nineveh to rule over him—even wanting to prevent God from giving the Ninevites the opportunity to repent and be forgiven. At the end of the book, God exposes Jonah’s self-centeredness and hardness of heart, as Jonah is consumed with the death of the plant while ignoring the astonishing grace that God has just extended to the repenting Nivevites. The wife turned to her husband and blurted out, “You’re just like Jonah! Jesus wants us to *love* our enemies!” The room exploded with laughter. The conversation then moved to another ubiquitous topic: “Why is God still allowing the mullahs to strangle Iran?” At that point, another man, who has been a Christian for several years, replied, “Pastor has answered this question so many times… we can’t read God’s mind and He grows our faith in tribulation. But there’s another issue we rarely bring up…” “What’s that?” everyone wondered. “We Iranians brought this mess upon ourselves. Ayatollah Khomeini was a liar—promising free busses and free electricity. It was all lies, and yet we took him in with open arms back in 1979. God allows free will in matters of the world—and so He also allows us to make mistakes too. We *wanted* the Islamic Revolution, and now we are reaping what we sowed. But… our Lord works all things for good for His people.” Wow…Thank you, Holy Spirit, for working such strong faith in the hearts of so many Iranians—both here in Germany and in their homeland.
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