Loving Fearlessly
If anyone thinks they have reason to be afraid of Muslims, I likely have more.
After I moved to America with my mother and younger sister, Joy, my mother became the target of an honor killing that forced us into hiding for ten years. (Yes, honor killings happen in the United States too.) She had dishonored the family by converting to Christianity and leading her two children “astray.” The extended family’s plan was clear: kill her and bring Joy and me back to our home country, where we would once again practice Islam. Later on, because of my mother’s growing Christian ministry to Muslims, she became one of the top names on Al Qaida’s hit list, with a price of millions on her head. Like my mother and my maternal grandmother before me, I also converted from Islam to Christianity and faced certain hostilities. My family is Egyptian, and to give you an idea of the culture, in my birth country, when citizens were polled by the Pew Research Center about what the punishment should be for conversion from Islam, 86 percent responded “death.”
Some of you may be shocked by this statistic, but to me, this sentiment is not an exclusively Egyptian phenomenon but a human one. The majority of people in my birth country have rejected the ideology of Christianity, and therefore, the temptation is to reject Christian people as well. But I can see how Westerners have the same tendency at times, not only to reject the ideology of Islam, but also to reject Muslim people. I do not provide this statistic to incite conflict or instill fear, but only to help the reader understand that the threats to our family over the years have been very real.
As I stated previously, I likely have far more reason than most people do to be afraid of Islam. And yet, I’m not afraid. And it’s not because I now reside in America, a relatively “safe” nation compared to some. Having a home and country that I dearly love, having true religious freedom in my life, having a place for my own family to flourish—these things are all good things, things the nation of America has given me, things I wish everyone in this world could experience personally.
But as a Christian, I understand that there are still much greater gifts. The gifts of true peace, freedom, righteousness, and hope through Christ alone. The gift of the Spirit, the gift of eternal life, the gift of real relationship with the God who is love, who teaches us to love fearlessly. In this perilous and fleeting life on earth, complete safety is a myth. At any moment, any of our lives could change for the worse. We are each so fragile, our very existence so precarious—no matter which country we might call home. And yet, despite our basic human insecurity, Christians have been called out of fear. As the apostle Paul says to Timothy, “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7).
My security is an eternal security. My ultimate safety is in God’s will—He holds my entire life in the palm of His hand. My homeland is in heaven. My allegiance is to the kingdom. And my peace and my hope for this world are in Christ Jesus. If you’re a Christian, this is good news! Within the current climate of fear, in the midst of the clash of cultural values of all kinds, even in the face of certain death . . . YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE AFRAID. Though the whole world has grown more fearful in recent years, especially of threats posed by Islam, the church is still called to live fearlessly. Fear is a transient emotion felt by every single human being—and yet, ultimately, fear should have no foothold in the life of a Christian.
I have kids. I want to protect them. There’s no thought process needed—instinctively, I want to keep them safe. I think all people respond to potential foreign threats with the same instinct. We all want to safeguard the things most precious to us—our families, our homes, our beliefs, our customs. And many people sincerely believe that the cultural values of immigrants and refugees are so different as to be dangerous. Why not stem the tide, keep them out, in order to protect the things in life we hold most dear? Doesn’t this just seem wise?
And yet, we also know what the Word says, repeatedly: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10a). The foundation of all wisdom in the life of the Christian begins and ends with God. So if God is calling the church to move, then moving in submission to His will is always going to be the wisest thing in the end—even if it doesn’t make sense to this world— because He is the very definition of wisdom, the only one with an unbiased eternal perspective. Complete and total safety in this life is a myth because humanity is a mess. I don’t have to tell stories about unsuspecting people who thought they were in safe places when tragedy struck them—we hear these stories all the time. So the question for the church is not only going to be: “What do we think is safe and wise?” or even, “What do our experts and professionals and leaders think is safe and wise?” Most importantly, we must ask, “What does God think is wise? What is God asking us to do right now?”
In the Psalms, King David wrote: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain” (Ps. 127:1). Every moment we spend in vigilance is all in vain unless God is truly with us in the endeavor. Otherwise, our human wisdom will fail. God’s wisdom endures forever.
I want to be clear. I’m not here to create controversy, but rather to stir up conviction; I’m not here to pick sides in a political debate. Not that political debates are wrong, but I am here to remind a frightened church of a deeper and more unifying truth—something that transcends all political views through all time: if you are a Christian, you can love people fearlessly. If you are a Christian, you simply have no reason to be afraid of anything, not terrorism or the immigrant boy down the street who needs to know Jesus.
The Lord is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid? (Ps. 27:1)
Adapted from The Stranger at Our Shore: How Immigrants and Refugees Strengthen the Church by Joshua Sherif (© 2022). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.
Joshua Sherif was born in Egypt to a Muslim family and immigrated to the United States, where he later came to faith in Jesus. For the past decade, he has planted and pastored in Albany Park, Chicago, Illinois, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country. His congregation represents more than thirty nationalities, speaking twenty languages. Josh has enjoyed his years equipping and coaching other missionaries and pastors around the world. His story was featured in Love Costs Everything, a documentary produced by CIY and Voice of the Martyrs, concerning Christian persecution.