Jul
19
It’s one thing to hear about how a country is…and another to experience it first hand. Before arriving to Belgium, I had an idea of how this country would feel about God and religion. We even had Brad, AIA staff in Germany, come and share more about how Europe perceives church. It wasn’t until I saw the pain in our hostel owner’s eyes did I begin to understand the depth of hurt.
Europeans have been bruised by the church. The church, meaning the people. Here, the church has taken advantage of the people – spending money on building beautiful buildings, allowing people to sin as long as they pay a tax and literally abusing them.
One night, as always, we were sitting on the huge couch in our hostel, just chatting away about anything and everything. We’re all spread out throughout the room and our hostel owner comes over and asks me a simple question. “What exactly is Athletes in Action?” A little background on the relationship with him. I have been emailing him, probably since March or April when I was looking for housing for our group. Through emails, I got the impression he was a great guy and I was looking forward to meeting him when we got to Leuven. Although I did not really know him, I did through the emails and it would be nice to actually “know” someone in a foreign country. Then we moved into the hostel and our group kind of took over the place (there’s 15 of us). Each morning our group would have our quiet time spread out in the room or outside. He watched. How we interacted with each other, he watched.
So when he asked his question, he already had some preconceived notion about who and what we are. Apparently he had gone to our website before we came and had been wanting to ask that question since we arrived. Well, that simple question led into an hour and a half conversation, which covered a lot of stuff, but mainly the difference between religion and a relationship with God. A few people in our group were able to share parts of their story and the Gospel.
But seeing the hurt in his eyes when he talked about how a member of his family had been abused by the church, it broke my heart. That is not God. God is love, God is grace, God is mercy. God may allow us to go through challenges and trials to strength us and allow us to grow closer to Him, but He doesn’t take advantage of us. He may use us to accomplish something for His glory, but He doesn’t abuse us.
There are a lot of barriers we have to fight through. It’s not that the people of Europe don’t want to hear what we have to say – it’s just that they don’t know or don’t understand. What they’ve heard and experienced their whole life is so different from what we have to share. We’re not fighting against people, we’re fighting against years of hurt and pain.
Paul’s words in Ephesians fits perfectly with this situation:
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)
Please be in prayer for our hostel owner, that with the time we have remaining in Leuven, we are still able to make an impact on his heart. And please pray for the people of Belgium, that what they have seen the church to be, is not how God is.