Like much of the rest of 2020, this year’s path to the presidential election has been uncertain. Donald Trump’s complicated reelection bid has drawn mixed messages from evangelical leaders, while Biden’s platform and performance continue to cause even more concern.

With record numbers of early voters turning out to the polls in recent days and weeks, Election Day promises to be yet another unprecedented news event of 2020. Some estimates suggest we won’t know the outcome for at least several days while mail-in votes are counted.

Many Christians declared this election as weightier than most, pointing to rising racial tension, heartbreaking abortion rates, and increasing pressure against Christians and anyone else with traditional beliefs.

Both political parties have engaged in sky-is-falling claims for their campaigns, heightening the concern that society as we know it could end if their party fails in the voting booths.

But all things considered, we’ve got it easy.

Christianity around the world

For nearly twenty years, the number one spot on Open Doors’ World Watch List for persecution has gone to North Korea. The intentionally isolated country is notorious for secrecy and deception, prompting many Christian parents to hide their faith from their own children to avoid being turned in to the state. But North Korea is far from the only country hostile to Christians.

It’s estimated that every day, 8 people die for their Christian faith. Over half of these deaths occur in Africa, with countries like Nigeria increasingly in the news for violence.

Since a Hindu-nationalist party took power in 2014, Christians in India have faced increasing violence, and many families have been bypassed by the local leaders when distributing COVID-19 food aid. In Buddhist-majority communities in Myanmar, Christian families are often refused access to water resources. A teenage Christian convert in Laos was recently kicked out by his parents, and antagonistic villagers have destroyed their Christian neighbors’ crops and livestock.

Just last month, a Somalian couple was arrested—along with their two children, one less than a year old—for sharing their faith. In Afghanistan, even reading about Christianity on the internet can be punished by torture.

Years ago I read an article about an African church that had been bombed by its neighbors. “They thought they had destroyed the church,” the pastor said, standing among his church’s ruins, “but they only destroyed the building.”

His words define the attitude of many persecuted Christians, pointing to the peace and victory God gives even when their current circumstances seem overwhelming.

Standing among giants

There is no question that American culture is growing more and more hostile to Christianity, but we have yet to see or feel anything like believers in these other countries experience. It would be good for us to turn our eyes from our comparably itty-bitty problems and listen to the brothers and sisters who have faced far more.

A few years ago, an American church leader was surprised when interviewing a Chinese pastor to find that he and his fellow persecuted Christians did not ask for prayer that persecution would end. “It is through persecution that the church has grown,” the pastor explained.

Then the Chinese pastor assured his American friend that the persecuted church was also praying for believers living in political freedom and security: “We…are praying that the American church might taste the same persecution so revival would come to the American church like we have seen in China.”

Please read his words again. This is not how I pray about persecution. I have so much to learn from our persecuted brothers and sisters.

Randy Alcorn led a weekly prayer group for China while in college. When he was approached years later about writing a book about persecuted Christians, he felt underqualified for the job. “Who am I to convey the joys and trials of Chinese Christians?” he wrote.

But through prayer, Alcorn wrote Safely Home, a story of persecution told through the eyes of two fictional Harvard roommates who reunite after 20 years: one is a successful businessman in hot pursuit of the American Dream, while the other is a brilliant but ostracized pastor of an underground church. Li Quan patiently points former roommate and sheltered American Ben Fielding back to the God that Ben had once introduced Quan to. In one meaningful scene, Quan talks about Tiananmen Square:

“That day, hope was dashed—and no matter how painful, it is always good when false hopes are dashed. Since then, many have learned not to trust in man but in God…When men know they cannot hope in a country, in a political belief, or in themselves, they become free to hope in God.”

Always free to hope

The stories of persecuted Christians remind us that our problems are not as big as we think they are, and that not every Christian has the freedoms we take for granted. How often do I use the freedoms I have to share the good news of the Gospel? How often do I pray for those who are persecuted?

As fictional pastor Li Quan reminds us, some hopes are false hopes. We still don’t know what—or who—is next on our political landscape. But regardless of such an unusual election year and potentially tardy election results, where is our hope? Not in the Oval Office. Not on the Supreme Court bench. Not even in a 200-year-old document.

Honestly? I still hope and pray we have many more years of freedom and security.

But if we don’t?

We have the stories of a cloud of witnesses reminding us we are always free to hope in God.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash