In many countries around the world, the free exercise of religion is prohibited. In America, we often take for granted the ability to gather in the churches of our choice when and wherever we want. In countries like China, this would be a crime. Os Guinness, one of the great modern evangelists and social commentators, was raised as a missionary child in China. Here is a man who experienced religious persecution firsthand, but it only made his faith stronger and his will more determined.
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Church services stop being interesting after the first two hours—especially to an eight-year-old Irish boy living in a foreign country.
The teaching, prayer, and singing started as in all services, but one, two, three, four, five hours later, and young Os Guinness lost all attention and finally turned to his father,
“When’s this going to be over? Why are they still talking?”
His father answered quietly.
“They’re preparing for persecution.”
Os tried to keep listening, but the sermons were dense, filled with hours of Scripture and theology. Like a general preparing his troops for the final siege, this pastor sought to prepare his congregation to withstand hardship.
And in 1948, persecution and suffering strode toward the church of the Chinese people, in the form of Chairman Mao and the “People’s Army.” Even at the age of eight, Os knew what it meant to endure trials. His parents were medical missionaries, two selfless individuals who lived their lives on call for the Chinese people, thinking nothing of pulling teeth, amputating limbs, or of cycling one hundred miles to deliver a baby.
The service in China was not without cost. The Henan Famine of 1943 killed five million people. Two of those graves were filled by Os’ brothers.
Though many tears were shed, the Guinness family hadn’t lost their faith. Rooted in the tradition of evangelicals, the faithful line stretched back to Arthur Guinness and the Guinness Brewing Company. Generation after generation grounded themselves on the Word of God, leaving the children with a solid foundation.
But now another gale approached, and it struck with a fury.
“In morning there were trials,” said Guinness. “And in the afternoon, there were executions.”
From his first days, Os saw faith rooted realistically in his parents’ lives. The way of Christ was never painted as easy, but it never was seen as joyless. Os was away from his parents. They were imprisoned throughout his teenage years. Faith meant more than a simple rejection of other ideas, it embraced the way of Christ, and joyfully applied that to all parts of life.
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But in those days of China, Os witnessed a living definition of what it meant to be a Christian and live out a faith that breathes. It was a faith viewing the world for all its blackness, but a faith refusing to retreat.
“People often see doubt as the opposite of faith, and that’s not true,” said Os. “The opposite of faith is unbelief. Doubt is a halfway stage. It’s being of two minds; you half believe and you half don’t believe. Like a spinning coin, it’s going to come down one way or the other. Doubt is either going to be resolved and go back to faith or be left unresolved and move on to unbelief.”
“I came of faith and came of age in the 1960s, in what was called ‘Swinging London,’” said Os. “It was the beginnings of the counterculture, so it was an incredible challenge to relate my faith to everything going on around me, and most Christians didn’t.”
And so, the great-great-grandson of a man who was friends with John Wesley and George Whitfield and a supporter of William Wilberforce picked up the mantle of his family, and spent the next fifty years serving the twin roles of an apologist for the verity of his faith and a keen analyst of the times.
The two tie together. Os tells people that he’s always had a keen sense of the times, but that his understanding of the times stems from his understanding of Truth—the truth of the Scriptures. And that’s one that Os reinforces by returning to the source, practicing private devotion and worship—spending forty minutes reading and studying and twenty minutes praying, each day.
“I’ve now been reading the Scriptures for fifty years,” said Os. “There’s never a day when I don’t see something new, not last year, or the previous forty-nine years . . . the old Puritan John Robinson was right when he said, ‘the Lord has yet more truth and light to break out of the Word.’ We should expect that.”
And it’s against that standard that Os holds all trends in Christendom—are we living as Christ called us to live?
“Why do we take Scripture seriously?” asked Os. “We take it seriously, because Jesus did. For instance, what’s his answer to the evil one? Every temptation, ‘it is written.’ Clearly for him, Scripture was the final absolute authority for his life, and so for his followers it must be the same, for all their lives. That’s why we’re evangelicals.”
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When he thinks back to his time in China, Guinness can remember walking down the streets of Nanjing after the invasion, unable to escape the loudspeakers.
Blaring, screeching—the propaganda spewed across the Chinese city, enveloping marching Communist soldiers and the cowering people, as the swinging red and yellow banners hung high over one eight-year-old boy.
Os kept walking. He didn’t know much about Mao or the People’s Army. When the invasion of 1949 came, sweeping around the son of medical missionaries, infiltrating and touching every part of his life—the little Irish boy was left feeling more than a bit alone.
But there was a face coming toward him—a neighbor, a classmate, a close friend—and Os started to smile. But when little Os looked up into the eyes of these people, he saw nothing. It didn’t matter whether it was a girl or boy; young or old—the reaction repeated itself each time. Turn the head, and keep walking.
“They just looked right past me, as if I didn’t exist.”
Trust was deadly in these days of terror. Public discussion and debate suffocated. Parents informed on their children, children on their parents, and friends were a deadly luxury. Even the slightest of eye contact could be enough to turn a suspicious Communist tribunal to imprison a person or issue the death sentence.
Against this army, the Guinness family stood, unafraid, even when they were put under house arrest—given only a change of clothes, a Bible, and a hymnbook.
“I never saw them complain or lift an eyebrow of disagreement with each other,” said Os, “and I certainly never saw in them anything but pure dedication to Christ and Christ’s work for the Chinese people.”
His parents memorized three-fourths of the Bible during this arrest and never gave up hope, and Os was sent to a boarding school in England. At the end of a long odyssey of reading and thinking, at the age of eighteen, Os found faith for himself.
“The Nietzsches and Sartres and Camuses were on one side,” said Os. “And on the other side, Dostoyevsky, Pascal, C. S. Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton. I was convinced that the Christian faith was true, for me, and that’s where it became true and not just coming out of my family heritage.”
Cataloging the breadth of his work is exhausting. Os says he’s “not a prophet,” but the Irishman’s quiet clarity has served the church and society well throughout the years.
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He criticized the free-flowing “Jesus Movement” of the sixties and seventies for its shallow transience. He was the first to dissect the prosperity-driven megachurches in his book Dining with the Devil—with a gentle but sharp and cutting eye.
“The danger of the health and wealth gospel is not just that it’s strong here,” said Os. “But that it’s affecting other countries. It’s vile here, but when it’s used in Africa to oppress poor people and make a few pastors immensely rich, it’s trebly vile.”
But there’s something about those days in China, watching true oppression and totalitarian abuse, which seemed to help Os see the need for space and discussion. Christianity is free of the fear of differing ideas and values. Paul met the Athenians in debate, challenging their presuppositions in love and truth. A desire for that same type of discourse has driven much of Os’ energy in the last thirty years.
“How do we forge a civil public square?” asked Os. “America has the key, but they’re not living up to it.”
There is a commitment to freedom of expression and worship, within certain boundaries, at the foundations of America. This is uniquely suited to host discussion in a global society wrestling with the interaction of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and the pantheon of Eastern-based belief systems.
“America has to be true to its own values and history and core—the true remedy—and create a tough, civil public square,” said Os. “In other words, when Muslims come . . . they come, to put it in their terms, within our tent. And we should teach them, ‘This is the way that we do it in America. Everyone has religious liberty, we respect them, freedom of conscience is ultimate, but we teach them the American way’ . . . Take your motto, E Pluribus Unum—’out of the many, one.’ It’s not just a motto, it’s your greatest accomplishment. But to keep that going, you have to know what the Unum is.”
It’s a big goal. One that can seem to be progressing slowly in this anger-charged climate, and whether this public square will ever be created can be difficult to see at times.
But from his time in China, Guinness learned that growth isn’t always measured in the short term.
When his parents were released from prison in the 1950s, people would come up and say, “I’m so sorry your life’s work has been wasted.”
But his parents responded, “No, no, we trust God, the seeds have been sown.”
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The year before Os’ father died, he went back to China, the epicenter of the fastest growth of the Christian church in two thousand years of history. The seeds had been sown.