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A View from Abroad

by Philip Yancey

| 42 Comments

If you feel discouraged about the church in the U.S.—or the state of the nation itself, for that matter—I recommend traveling abroad.  I just returned from two countries that share a common border, Bulgaria and Greece, and both make our own problems seem small by contrast.

Bulgaria may hold the world record for bad luck in foreign policy.  For five hundred years it did not even exist as an independent country, ruled instead by Turks of the Ottoman Empire.  Freed at last with Russia’s help, it proceeded to lose a huge chunk of territory in the disastrous Balkan wars and then chose to ally with the wrong side in two straight world wars.  In punishment for Bulgaria’s support of Germany during World War II, the Soviet Union made them pay dearly through purges and mass executions.

To me it seemed the country is still reeling, with a national inferiority complex.  I spoke at a pastors’ conference and a writers’ conference (photo below), and attendees acted surprised that someone from the U.S. would even bother to come to their country.  Many people on the street dress in dark clothes and have a somber demeanor.  In the 1990s, one out of seven Bulgarians simply gave up and left the country.  “Who is a famous Bulgarian today?” I asked a few contacts, getting blank stares in response—no one came up with a name.

We have our own political problems, of course, but nothing like Bulgaria’s.  Everyone I talked to assumes their politicians are crooks.  For example, Bulgaria has the largest proportion of Roma people (Gypsies) in Europe, an ethnic group universally oppressed.  Organized gangs seize young Romas as sex slaves and traffick them across Western Europe.  Although some small Christian agencies are combating the problem, the highly-respected International Justice Mission refuses to work in Bulgaria because of its government corruption.

Along with several hundred million others, Bulgarians are still recovering from the disastrous effects of communist rule.  Every time I visit Eastern Europe, I come away humbled by the stories of Christians who clung to their faith at great personal cost.  I heard a typical account from a pastor who told me, “I was planning to be an engineer, but because I refused to renounce my faith during interrogations, I was barred from attending university.  Ironically, the Communist Party drove me into the pastorate.”  Many others spent time in prison.

Communism failed dismally in one declared goal: to eliminate religion.  Bulgarian communists sought to forge a 100 percent atheist society.  Yet, despite almost half a century of intense propaganda, only 20 percent of Bulgarians identify as atheists today.

The country now promotes religious tolerance.  Within a few blocks in the capital city of Sofia, you can find Catholic and Orthodox cathedrals as well as an Islamic mosque and a Jewish synagogue.  Bulgaria takes great pride in the historical fact that not a single one of its 50,000 Jews was sent to a death camp, this despite fierce pressure from Hitler and his minions.

After the fall of communism, interest in spirituality surged.  Churches, chapels, and monasteries have been rebuilt.  While there, I met with a group of forty Christian writers who are seeking creative ways to express their faith.  Many of them became Christians as adults, much to the befuddlement of their atheist parents.  Bulgaria is a small country, and an author there has little hope of selling even a thousand copies—they’re definitely not writing for the money.

 


 

A short flight to Greece brought me to a land at once more modern-looking and more ancient than its neglected neighbor.  Tucked among the modern buildings of Athens are priceless treasures from the past.  Democracy was birthed here, philosophy flourished, the Olympics began, classical art reached its peak—all this while humans in other places were living in caves.

These days, however, Greece makes the news mainly for its economic woes, as Europe grudgingly patches together yet another bailout plan.  I found that it’s one thing to read statistics and quite another to put human faces to them.  An educated Greek man told me, “I took a 35 percent pay cut during the financial crisis.  And I haven’t had a raise in twelve years.  The minimum wage here amounts to around $700 per month.  Imagine trying to live on that in a place where the cost of living is not much below that in the rest of Europe or the U.S.”

Greek media were reporting the encouraging news that unemployment had recently declined to 23 percent, more than five times the U.S. rate.  I met PhDs working as tour guides and taxi drivers—gratefully, for Greeks under the age of twenty-five have only a 50 percent chance of finding a job, any job.  As a tourist, I appreciated having such well-informed guides to point out the city’s wonders.

The Parthenon, sitting on a high hill in central Athens, is the city’s focal point, and our hotel room had a splendid view.  A shiny new Acropolis Museum details the massive effort it took to build this famous temple dedicated to the goddess Athena.  Similar temples dot the Greek landscape, silent witness to how seriously the ancients took their pagan faith.

A short walk away, I visited the site where Plato taught, and Socrates drank hemlock.  And on a bare rock just beyond the Acropolis, an upstart Jew named Paul engaged Athens’ leading philosophers, proclaiming the true identity of the “Unknown God” that they implicitly acknowledged.  Against all odds, the religion preached by Paul superseded all those pagan temples, including the one in Corinth that offered worshipers the services of hundreds of temple prostitutes.  Over the centuries, churches sprang up in every Greek village.

Like Bulgaria, Greece also spent several centuries under Islamic rule.  Museums in Athens chronicle a series of massacres under Ottoman conquerors (now modern-day Turkey), and Greeks pride themselves on having helped save the rest of Europe from Islamic conquest.  Unlike Bulgaria, though, Greece has little religious diversity.  The constitution recognizes the Eastern Orthodox Church as a state religion, and 90 percent of Greeks identify with it, at least nominally.  Countries like Germany, France, and Holland struggle with a restive Muslim minority.  Not Greece.  A decade ago, Athens finally granted a permit for the construction of its first mosque, but it remains unbuilt.

Nevertheless, most Greeks will tell you they don’t take religion seriously.  “Church is boring,” one Greek explained.  “The services last a couple of hours, and we have to stand throughout.  The liturgy is a thousand years old, and the music almost as old.  Most of it is chanted—Greek churches don’t have musical instruments.”  With its sunny climate, postcard-perfect islands, and leisure options, Greece offers appealing alternatives to church on Sunday.  I saw no sign of the resurgence of faith I had witnessed in beaten-down Bulgaria.

The Parthenon served as a pagan temple for a thousand years.  Christians converted it into a church for the next eight centuries.  After their conquest, the Ottoman Turks refashioned it into a mosque.  The Turks also used it as an ammunition dump, and in one battle, a cannonball struck their powder, causing an explosion that reduced the building to the ruins that remain today.  A pagan temple, a Christian church, a mosque, now a tourist site stripped of any religious meaning—the Parthenon stands as an appropriate symbol for the history of Europe. 

After two weeks abroad, the litany of familiar complaints in the U.S. appears in a different light.  We complain about a slow-growing economy, though our rate of growth exceeds that of every other advanced economy.  Most of our refugees and migrants have jobs and roofs over their heads, while European countries struggle to support hundreds of thousands in refugee camps.  Church-shoppers here look for more relevant and entertaining places to worship, whereas most of the world has no such option.  American news media portray a nation in a state of crisis.  Believe me, things could be worse—and in many places they are.

 

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Discussion

  1. Ronaldo Nunes Avatar
    Ronaldo Nunes

    Dear Phillip,

    I’m also fan of your books that i red all here in Brazil.

    If you was surprised with minimun salary in Bulgaria ($700), imagine in Brazil with $300 and higher cost from Europe and US.

    Continues writing with encouragement. Nowadays I am reading again “Disappointement with God”.

    God bless you!
    Ronaldo Nunes

    1. Philip Yancey Avatar
      Philip Yancey

      I know your country is going through some very hard times. I am very sorry, and hope and pray that things change soon.

  2. Nara Avatar
    Nara

    There seems to be no such thing as “the worst”, when it comes to misfortune and hardship.

    However more fortunate US denizens are compared to others, I can somewhat sympathize with the hardships you’re enduring. It still bothers me seeing so many people lose their homes due to the selfishness/indifference of some, the seemingly “irreconcilable differences” and excruciating conflicts concerning political views, racial prejudices, religious views and whatnot. It’s very discouraging for me to realize that all the very inspiring stories such as Martin Luther King’s didn’t necessarily put an end to racism, for instance. I hope (since i don’t pray much) those of you experiencing these difficulties are or will be graced with courage, endurance, and whatever necessary to get through.

    To add yet another view from abroad, we in Indonesia have our own hardships. Besides everlasting general welfare problems and perpetually corrupt politicians, to mention some, we’ve just witnessed how a man trying to do good ends up imprisoned (history repeating itself). Though there are probably more of such cases, the one concerning the former Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaya Purnama had a massive effect on our nation. This guy is most probably the most transparent, anti-corrupt government official we’ve ever seen. He posts every single gubernatorial meetings, in their entirety, to Youtube for the public to see. His lavish spending on things actually needed by Jakartans makes us angrily wonder what governors preceding him “spend” all that taxpayer money on. He revealed embezzlement schemes of corrupt legislators. He did things that was once thought impossible. Again, never have I, if not the whole nation, seen such dedicated government official. For many of us, he’s the kind of leader we’ve been longing for. Unfortunately, he’s a “double minority”, both a Christian and Chinese, and has the nationally “undesirable” quality of speaking candidly. These “weaknesses” of his end up being utilized by his enemies who eventually succeeded in putting him in prison while dragging the whole country to the verge of ethno-religious conflict. They say Indonesia promotes ethno-religious tolerance, but they who say this is actually unaware of the intolerance kept alive deep within some people’s hearts. I fear for my country’s future, and I’m not the only one. Please keep us Indonesians in mind when you pray for “world peace”.

  3. Deb Avatar
    Deb

    Wow, this brought tears to my eyes.
    When my great uncle was dying of brain cancer, he reflected on this country. He grew up poor, with no plumbing, no electricity, not enough clothing for all of his siblings to go to school, 3 kids per twin bed and not enough food, but always laughter and music. When he was dying he wondered how he had gotten so lucky to be alive at a time without war, and without famine. He said, “We have plumbing and heating and air conditioning and multiple televisions and more than one car and there are hospitals and 24 hour stores and we have so much leisure time. We have it so easy.”

    I remember his sister, my grandmother saying that for her 16th birthday, she wanted a special party, but all they had was bacon grease sandwiches and she pouted and stomped out the door, then, said to herself, “What a brat you are being. We are lucky to have food at all and you want Mom and Dad to have to worry about getting something special.” and she turned around and I don’t ever remember either of them complaining about anything in my lifetime. Most of their 6 siblings never had a single thing to complain about.

  4. Antoinette Avatar
    Antoinette

    I’m reading your book about Grace and it arguably is one of the best books I’ve ever read next to the Bible. I’ve also seen that you are saddened by the state of USA under this current administration. Please speak out as the rise of overt hatred towards black people, Jews, immigrants of colour etc are overwhelming. The states, unlike Germany, has never publicly apologized for slavery nor paid reparations for it nor teaches the wrong doing and total atrocity of it in their history. Reading your book I realized that this reluctance as a nation to be truly accountable allows for the rise of this current administration. Can you be a voice? Thanks

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42 thoughts on “A View from Abroad”

  1. Dear Phillip,

    I’m also fan of your books that i red all here in Brazil.

    If you was surprised with minimun salary in Bulgaria ($700), imagine in Brazil with $300 and higher cost from Europe and US.

    Continues writing with encouragement. Nowadays I am reading again “Disappointement with God”.

    God bless you!
    Ronaldo Nunes

    Reply
  2. There seems to be no such thing as “the worst”, when it comes to misfortune and hardship.

    However more fortunate US denizens are compared to others, I can somewhat sympathize with the hardships you’re enduring. It still bothers me seeing so many people lose their homes due to the selfishness/indifference of some, the seemingly “irreconcilable differences” and excruciating conflicts concerning political views, racial prejudices, religious views and whatnot. It’s very discouraging for me to realize that all the very inspiring stories such as Martin Luther King’s didn’t necessarily put an end to racism, for instance. I hope (since i don’t pray much) those of you experiencing these difficulties are or will be graced with courage, endurance, and whatever necessary to get through.

    To add yet another view from abroad, we in Indonesia have our own hardships. Besides everlasting general welfare problems and perpetually corrupt politicians, to mention some, we’ve just witnessed how a man trying to do good ends up imprisoned (history repeating itself). Though there are probably more of such cases, the one concerning the former Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaya Purnama had a massive effect on our nation. This guy is most probably the most transparent, anti-corrupt government official we’ve ever seen. He posts every single gubernatorial meetings, in their entirety, to Youtube for the public to see. His lavish spending on things actually needed by Jakartans makes us angrily wonder what governors preceding him “spend” all that taxpayer money on. He revealed embezzlement schemes of corrupt legislators. He did things that was once thought impossible. Again, never have I, if not the whole nation, seen such dedicated government official. For many of us, he’s the kind of leader we’ve been longing for. Unfortunately, he’s a “double minority”, both a Christian and Chinese, and has the nationally “undesirable” quality of speaking candidly. These “weaknesses” of his end up being utilized by his enemies who eventually succeeded in putting him in prison while dragging the whole country to the verge of ethno-religious conflict. They say Indonesia promotes ethno-religious tolerance, but they who say this is actually unaware of the intolerance kept alive deep within some people’s hearts. I fear for my country’s future, and I’m not the only one. Please keep us Indonesians in mind when you pray for “world peace”.

    Reply
  3. Wow, this brought tears to my eyes.
    When my great uncle was dying of brain cancer, he reflected on this country. He grew up poor, with no plumbing, no electricity, not enough clothing for all of his siblings to go to school, 3 kids per twin bed and not enough food, but always laughter and music. When he was dying he wondered how he had gotten so lucky to be alive at a time without war, and without famine. He said, “We have plumbing and heating and air conditioning and multiple televisions and more than one car and there are hospitals and 24 hour stores and we have so much leisure time. We have it so easy.”

    I remember his sister, my grandmother saying that for her 16th birthday, she wanted a special party, but all they had was bacon grease sandwiches and she pouted and stomped out the door, then, said to herself, “What a brat you are being. We are lucky to have food at all and you want Mom and Dad to have to worry about getting something special.” and she turned around and I don’t ever remember either of them complaining about anything in my lifetime. Most of their 6 siblings never had a single thing to complain about.

    Reply
  4. I’m reading your book about Grace and it arguably is one of the best books I’ve ever read next to the Bible. I’ve also seen that you are saddened by the state of USA under this current administration. Please speak out as the rise of overt hatred towards black people, Jews, immigrants of colour etc are overwhelming. The states, unlike Germany, has never publicly apologized for slavery nor paid reparations for it nor teaches the wrong doing and total atrocity of it in their history. Reading your book I realized that this reluctance as a nation to be truly accountable allows for the rise of this current administration. Can you be a voice? Thanks

    Reply

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