This Christmas, Will You Look to Bethlehem's Stable to Navigate the Chaos?
ANALYSIS
This Christmas, the Middle East — the birthplace of Jesus — is reeling. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria is just the latest chaotic event.
In Syria, militant rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — identified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. — has seized control, plunging the war-torn nation into further disarray and uncertainty.
Across the wider region, too, chaos reigns.
For weeks, staff in our Beirut, Lebanon, television studios have been watching missiles explode across their city, wreaking devastation, as war in the Holy Land continues.
The impact of the ongoing civil war in Yemen, largely underreported, has been described as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
Iran is a powder keg of social tensions, ready to explode at any moment.
In the midst of all this chaos, one group suffers the most — Christians.
Syria is home to some of the world's most ancient Christian communities. Yet right now, Christians are living in trauma and fear after HTS insurgents swept through the country before marching on the capital, Damascus, and toppling the decades-long Assad regime. HTS targets Christians — and thousands of Syrian believers are reportedly fleeing for their lives.
Syrian Christians attend Sunday Mass after Syrian President Bashar Assad's ouster, at Mariamiya Orthodox Church in old Damascus, Syria, Dec. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Christians make up only about 4% of the population of the Middle East. Because of their minority status, they're often shunted to the margins of society, despised, physically attacked, even killed.
It doesn't appear that Christians living amid the Middle East chaos have much to celebrate this Christmas.
But they do!
One Who's Familiar With Chaos
They have a Savior and Friend who is closer than a brother — Jesus Christ, born into chaos in the Middle East during a time of brutal Roman oppression and persecution.
What could be more chaotic than being born in a dark, smelly stable?
Or more frantic than escaping King Herod's Bethlehem massacre of male infants, recorded in Matthew's gospel?
Just as Jesus and his parents had to secretly flee to Egypt to escape Herod, the majority of Christians in the Middle East today celebrate Jesus' birth in secret, often for fear of their lives.
In places such as Afghanistan and Tajikistan, believers remain hidden, only able to communicate and meet with other Christians on secure social media channels, risking their lives if they're discovered.
Our unique Middle East-based media ministry at SAT-7 connects these courageous "secret" believers via satellite television, Instagram, Telegram, and other social media channels in real-time. In Afghanistan, SAT-7 has established a church for isolated believers that meets online. We've also set up an online church for Iranian children on Instagram — kids who face physical and emotional abuse in school if others find out they are Christians.
"In the midst of the isolation I've been experiencing," one believer told us, "you have connected me with my heavenly family."
How Do We Navigate the Chaos Around Us?
In America, we also know what it is to experience commotion. We see disarray all around us — in our inner cities, political institutions, college and university campuses, news feeds, and sometimes even in our churches.
What can we learn from Christians living in the present turmoil in the Middle East?
Bruised and battered — literally and figuratively — Middle East followers of the Babe in the Bethlehem manger navigate chaos and suffering the only way they know how — with uncompromising faith and courage amid adversity.
This life-sustaining faith comes from the Light of Christmas who lives in them — the same Christ Child who also lives in the hearts of all those who joyfully receive him.
This Christmas and in the coming year, will you — like the brave believers in the Middle East — look to Bethlehem's stable, full of faith and courage, to steer you through the chaos?
--- Dr. Rex Rogers is president of SAT-7 USA, a Christian media ministry that broadcasts in local languages across the Middle East and North Africa using satellite television and social media channels.
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— Jerusalem Dateline (@JlemDateline) December 18, 2024
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