Life in Perspective

Probably every Christian has at one time or another failed to share the Good News of salvation when the opportunity was presented to them by the Lord. It is also very likely that most Christians fail to grasp how faith transforms life, and how pressing the need is for evangelism. The following post from India places these into the proper perspective:

I saw a man die today.

It happened like this. We were commuting to this campus. I had just finished writing some emails on my 8lackberry and was thinking about the sermon I was about to preach.

Then, we came upon the scene. It must have just happened, because everything was very fresh. Picture a road the width of most American residential streets, but this road is a highway with heavy traffic in both directions.

I don’t know who this man was, or exactly what had happened. What I do know is that somehow he had been knocked off the bicycle he had been riding, and somebody drove a truck over his head. And that is how he was when we saw him - lying there in the middle of the road, a body with half a head still attached and the contents of the other half spilled all over the road.

I’ve never seen anything like that before. I instantly felt very sick. It was good that we had not yet eaten. The lively chatter that had characterized the drive up to that point was replaced by an earie, stunned, silence.

The strange thing about the scene was people’s reaction. In the US, if an accident like that happens, the poliece and firemen will be there right away, they will close the road, they will interview the witnesses, determine fault. The truck driver would loose his job, and maybe later the victim’s family would sue the trucking company for wrongful death.

But here, there was no poliece. There was no witnesses coming forward. There will be no investigation. The truck driver that hit the man continued along his way. Nobody was stopped to check into the accident, remove the body, or clean up the mess. The body just say there in the road, and everybody just drove around and kept going - like we would when encountering a dead possum. Such is the value of human life in a polytheistic society.

Still trying to cope with the shock of what I saw, I wonder about what that man’s life. Had he ever heard the gospel? Here, most likely not. That is why we are here training church planters - because the only hope for any Indian is to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed by the church of Jesus Christ.

There is no longer anything we can do for that man, but perhaps we reach the next man.