When Cristóbal Krusen became a Christian, he thought he needed to become a Pastor to be a real Christian. As he tried to live his Christian faith outside of the work of the church, it made him wonder how other Christians had done it. How has Christianity affected those who believed it? Did it make an impact? He thought it must have because “[i]n truth, if God exists, then one should expect to find those who love him in every field of human endeavor” (This and all citations hereafter are from his book They Were Christians, 12). His book They Were Christians is the result of his search to find examples of people who put their Christian faith into action in the world. People like Florence Nightingale, John D. Rockefeller, and Frederick Douglas made a big impact on the world, and their story is well-known. However, Krusen wanted to tell the rest of the story. These people were Christians, and this made a big impact on what they did and why. That is less well-known.
I am a Pastor. I work for the institutional church. However, the majority of people in my congregation do not. One of my jobs is to help them think through how they can take the faith they hear about on Sunday and apply it to their lives. I can give them principles, but I have realized through the years that I also need examples and stories. So, I began to look at collections of Christian biographies. Most of the people in the collections were Pastors. Their examples were helpful but what about Christians who didn’t become pastors? That’s what I needed to inspire my people to live out their faith outside the church. When I saw Krusen’s book, I was intrigued. But I still wondered how much it would really help.
Well, it delivered in a big way. I was preaching this past summer on the Psalms. I was telling people that the Psalms were a resource that could enable us to live with less anxiety and give us more margin for service in the world. The Psalms teach us how to process our emotions before the Lord so that we can move forward even in difficult situations.
The first chapter of Krusen’s book was on Dag Hammarskjöld (July 29, 1905–September 18, 1961), the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. For Krusen and myself, this is not necessarily a place we would have thought to look for a Christian leader. Hammarskjöld was not extremely vocal about being a Christian. What happened, though, was that after his death, people found his journal by his bedside. They expected to find his true thoughts on the leaders of the world, his frustrations, and the inside stories of world politics. What they found was a man of faith, processing his emotions before God.
In 1956, Hammarskjöld faced his biggest crisis. Egypt wanted the Suez Canal, but France and Britain controlled it. So, Egypt courted the Soviet Union. The World Bank withdrew funding for the Aswan High Dam. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president, responded by nationalizing the Suez Canal to pay for it. The Soviet Union sided with Egypt. Threats were made. Nuclear war was a possibility. Hammarskjöld brokered a truce on October 13, but two weeks later, Britain, France, and Israel launched a surprise attack on the Canal. Hammarskjöld felt betrayed, and the situation was extremely dangerous.
So, what did Hammarskjöld do? He turned to the Psalms. In his journal of that day he quoted from the Psalms: “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety” (Ps. 4:8). The Psalms are a resource in the toughest and most dangerous situations. I used this illustration when I preached on that very psalm.
Many of these stories involve the great events of world history that may seem distant from our daily life. However, they are readily applicable to our own situations. For example, when Abraham Lincoln lost the First Battle of Manassas or Bull Run, what did he do? A man present in the White House reported that he saw the door to the president’s office slightly opened. There, he saw the president kneeling, “The door was open slightly, and he peered inside to see Abraham on his knees beside an open window, his face turned toward the sky” (134). After Lincoln prayed, he came back with greater strength to engage. What should we do in the midst of our disappointments? Process them before the Lord like Lincoln.
Another example was a Japanese Christian named Chiune Sugihara. At the beginning of World War 2, he was serving as ambassador to Lithuania. He had been demoted because of his protest of how the Japanese were treating the Chinese. This put him in a place where he was able to get some of the Jewish people out of Lithuania and to the Far East where they would be away from the danger of Hitler’s Third Reich. He was not able to save all that he wanted, but he used his energy to do what he could. We may not face a situation as dire as Sugihara, but we can easily become paralyzed when we cannot do all the good we want. This is a reminder that loving our neighbor is often about doing all the good we can and not all that we want. It also reminds us that our setbacks may give us opportunities to do good that we never looked for.
This book is filled with insights on what it means to live as a Christian outside the church. I found it inspiring, and I believe that as I used some of these stories this summer, my congregation did as well. For anyone looking for inspiration and guidance on how to live a Christian life outside the church, this is a resource that you do not want to miss.
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