As a spectator I have some serious problems with the way God does things sometimes. I stand on the sidelines of history and I see things that frankly cause me to scratch my head. I see events in the lives of others and even in my own life and I am left with the incessant and lingering “why?”

I once read about 30 biographies of monumental pioneers of the Christian mission movement. By the time I finished I had some serious questions for God. For example, have you ever heard of Thomas Knibb? Probably not! That is because he died 3 months after arriving on the Island of Jamaica! So why, when it was his ‘passion’ for the spread of the Gospel that had led him there!? His brother back in England was so moved by his death that he went and took his place. He repeatedly buried his children almost as soon as they were born, although one son lived to be 12. As I read this I am saying “come on God this is not fair, give the gospel a chance, where are the miracles, these guys are in it heart and soul, why did you let this happen?” He went on to end slavery on that Island and establish Christianity, but at what a price!

Try this one. In 1818 David Jones and Thomas Bevan with their wives and infant children were the first missionaries to the Island of Madagascar. When they arrived, David was 23. Within 12 months Thomas, his wife and child and David’s wife and their infant child all died. A combination of Malaria and poisoning by the housekeeper was suspected. So why would David Jones, the only one in the entire world who cared, stay in Madagascar? I imagined him standing by the gravesides of all his companions and I wondered what he was thinking as one by one he buried all those who had come with him to this island? What was he thinking about God? What was he saying to God through his unimaginable grief and loneliness? Did he question God’s wisdom and His Sovereignty? What possible purpose could God have for his solitude and suffering?

Those that achieve great things for God often seem to do so through great suffering. Others eventually joined him, and David Jones went on to end slavery in Madagascar as well as establishing hospitals, schools and the first Christian churches! He died at the age of 42 from malaria after 19 years. What have I achieved in the last 20 years?

Another example. Francis Xavier went to Japan in the sixteenth century and within one generation of his arrival Christianity had flourished to 300,000. Then in the seventeenth century the Shoguns decided to rid Japan of the “Foreign Devils”. So brutal was their extermination, that Christianity virtually disappeared. Now, I was weaned into Christianity on the words of Tertullian that says, “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church” – but not here!! Why not in Japan? Why did God allow this annihilation of Christianity from which the church has never recovered in Japan?

So goes the trend if I had the time to recount the lives of other great religious pioneers and innovators. Even in our own day people have been beaten, imprisoned, vilified, and assassinated. The story is repeated over and over. A strong commitment to God appears to bring opposition, beating, imprisonment, great suffering, grief, loneliness, disease, loss of loved ones and premature death! Is it good to be a Christian? I have been in churches patrolled by banana spined dingoes that like to hunt ministers, (usually in packs of 3 or 4,) and I have asked God why He does not act more in favour of the Gospel and its propagation! Part 2 to follow.