Go Beyond

North West Frontier Province | Pakistan

Today, a friend and I ventured by motorcycle into the foothills of the Himalayas to see his work among Hindko-speaking Muslims in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. The scenery in this part of Pakistan is absolutely spectacular, offering magnificent and breath-taking vistas that seem to go on forever. We stopped along the way to enjoy some conversation, cups of hot chai, and deep fried potatoes. Our chai break was interrupted by sudden gusts of high winds and rain that forced us to briefly huddle for warmth, along with a few locals, near the chai-maker’s fire. The sudden drop in temperature gave me a slight hint of what it must be like here in winter. As soon as the rain stopped we continued our journey higher into the hills until we finally arrived at our remote destination.

Our Hindko friend at the site of the mountain spring.

Our Hindko host, a slender man dressed in a gray shalwar kameez, smiled when he saw us coming. He greeted us with a handshake and a kindly-spoken As-Salaam Alaaikum. Weeks earlier, my friend had arranged for a water-well to be drilled into the steep slope behind this man’s home. Access to clean drinking water is a problem for the people who live in these hills, resulting in various health and malnutrition problems. Prior to the drilling of the new water well, the only source of water for the people of this area was a slow, seeping spring located higher up the mountain at the base of the gnarled roots of a massive tree. My friend told me that this spring is unreliable and that local families had an assigned hour to get their water from the spring. Each family was responsible for only accessing water at their assigned time, regardless of how inconvenient the hour. This was to ensure that each family could at least meet their basic water needs.

Things are different now. Families no longer need to queue up at certain hours of the day or night in order to get their water. They can now fill their water jugs as often and whenever they like at the new well. And, because they no longer need to make the long hike up the mountain to the spring, they have more discretionary time for other things. Our mountain-dwelling Muslim friend was overflowing with gratitude. At a time when Florida Pastor Terry Jones chose to burn a Qur’an, a profoundly stupid act that has resulted in the deaths of innocent people in Afghanistan and the persecution of Christians in Pakistan, my friend found favor among Muslims in the foothills of the Himalayas because he chose to demonstrate God’s love to them through a practical act of kindness. The people who live in this mountain village will always remember the kindness of this Christ-follower and will always welcome him into their homes to share a cup of chai and conversation.

Less than 1% of the Hindko are followers of Christ. Men like Terry Jones will never compel gentle people like the Hindko to come to Christ. His actions will only make it harder for them to do so. I find it ironic that a gun-toting man who has excelled at building walls of hate is the pastor of a church called the Dove World Outreach Center — a total oxymoron. Burning Qur’ans is what ignorant and lazy people do. It takes a person filled with the love of Christ to build the kinds of relationships over which the gospel can travel in order to transform the lives of those, like the Hindko, who have little or no access to the gospel. That’s hard work! But, if taking the time to build relationships with Muslims is what it will take to open doors for the gospel, then I choose to do things the hard way. After all, what is at stake here is the eternal welfare of men and women and children created in the image of God and deserving of the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Note: For the record, I find the actions of the Muslim clerics who incited persecution of Christians and the rioting that resulted in the deaths of innocent people to be contemptible. Like Jones, their actions hurt rather than help to promote understanding. Desperate people generally resort to argumentum ad baculum when their heads and hearts are empty.