God's elephant in the room

Earlier this month The Economist ran a special report on Iran, a nation classified by the U.S. State Department as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. The article, titled “The revolution is over,” says the movement that swept Ayatollah Khomeini into power and precipitated the hostage crisis of 1979 has burned out. Iranians today are sick of clerical bossiness and eager for consumer goods. On the street women’s headscarves are slipping back and public calls to prayer are largely ignored. The “modern world’s first and only constitutional theocracy” has become one of the least religious countries in the region. Enforced piety will often do that.

The tone of the report, published while the Obama administration engages in talks with Iran about its nuclear program, is scrupulously measured. Yes, “the country really could be set on having a bomb.” But the spirit of ’79 is a thing of the past. No longer does Iran’s president deny the Holocaust and rave about the coming of the 13th Imam to the UN General Assembly. The new president, Hassan Rouhani, is considered a moderate. The Revolutionary Guard still wields considerable political and financial power and terror organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah look to Iran for support, but ordinary Iranians are eager to move on up into the 21st century, and The Economist suggests that lifting some international sanctions would help them get on with it. Also, a “decent deal” allowing their nuclear program to continue—with strictures, of course—might not be amiss.

The 14-page report makes no mention of Iran’s prisoners of conscience, most notoriously Saeed Abedini, a U.S. citizen and Christian pastor. As regular WORLD readers know, Abedini has been in Iranian prisons since September 2012, when he was arrested at the border. During the last round of White House talks with Iran, officials admitted that the pastor’s name never came up, though he would have made an obvious bargaining chip. In the last few months, a postcard campaign initiated by Abedini’s wife encourages the Obama administration to include him in the current negotiations. So far he has fallen through the cracks of supposedly bigger concerns. But to Christians he is the elephant in the room.

He’s God’s elephant, chosen before the foundation of the world to be right where he is at this moment. “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel,” wrote the Apostle Paul from prison in Rome (Philippians 1:12, ESV). Pastor Abedini can say the same. Fellow prisoners and guards, hospital orderlies and doctors have heard the good news; he has endured beatings and torture because he won’t shut up about Jesus.

The current “Iran deal” was supposed to conclude today but has been extended until June 30, 2015, and we don’t know whether Abedini’s name ever will be mentioned. But while heads of state discuss sanctions and uranium enrichment, seeds are quietly being sown. Only God knows their time of germination and sprouting, and their outcome is far more consequential than any political agreement. I’ll pray for those seeds, and the sower.