When heroes betray us

Sometimes it’s easier to look at heroes in the rearview mirror. The long lens of history helps to put human foibles and outright failings in a better, more charitable light.

Winston Churchill felt no shame giving dictation to secretaries while nude and chewing a cigar. He could be obnoxious to pious Christians, and was difficult to work with, associates reported, “a kicker of waste baskets, with an unbelievably ungoverned bundle of bad temper.” Still, he has my gratitude and affection for saving the free world in the 20th century.

John Newton captained slave ships even after his conversion, but gave us “Amazing Grace.” Jonathan Edwards kept rigid study hours, walled off from his loved ones enough to madden any spouse, yet by all accounts was a stellar family man who adored his wife.

Each year months of in-house discussion precede WORLD’s selection of a Daniel of the Year. The year 2015 has been rife with persecutors, tormentors, and lions’ dens—giving us more choices than we would ever want. Our selection in the end reflected to us the greatest threat facing humanity at large and followers of Jesus Christ in particular. As we began to prepare this issue, events in Paris, on a grotesquely grand scale, bore out our choice, for now.

Few who are persecuted are perfect, saints are also sinners, and our just causes reside in fragile, mortal flesh.

Sometimes we misjudge. Our Daniels may fail us. The many weaknesses of the flesh undo what once had been laudatory work, principled and courageous stands against the currents of the day. We’ve watched a few Pauls become Sauls, instead of the other way around.

In November we were shocked to learn allegations of abuse by Saeed Abedini, the Iranian-American pastor serving an eight-year jail sentence in Iran. Saeed, I wrote (see “A sign and a witness,” Oct. 31), “has come to serve as the symbol of Christian persecution.”

Then Saeed’s wife Naghmeh gave revealing details of a troubled marriage that included “physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse (through Saeed’s addiction to pornography),” which she said have continued since his imprisonment. Her disclosures came in emails to supporters, first publicized in edited excerpts by Christianity Today.

A day after the emails became public, Naghmeh released a statement, saying, “I regret having sent the emails.” She was “under great psychological and emotional distress,” she said, asking “those who care about Saeed and our family to give us time for rest and healing and to respect our privacy.”

Because I’m honoring her request for privacy at this time, I cannot speak to the truth of Naghmeh’s allegations or the wisdom of sharing them. I know that those of us who’ve spent any time with Naghmeh saw evidence of growing fatigue. This year she has kept a whirlwind of speaking engagements on her husband’s behalf. She met with President Obama and Pope Francis, traveled to New York in September to meet with UN delegates while maintaining a weekslong fast for Saeed. And that same month she took part in some way in prayer vigils held in 46 countries on the third anniversary of her husband’s imprisonment—just as she was learning from family in Iran that Saeed had (again) been beaten in prison and abused with a Taser gun.

In early November, days before her emails surfaced, she posted to Facebook friends she would “be taking time off” social media and “spending more time with the Lord and more time with my kids who desperately need it.”

It’s important to take abuse charges very seriously. And at the same time to recognize that few who are persecuted are perfect, that saints are also sinners, that our just causes reside in fragile, mortal flesh.

King David was a man “after God’s own heart,” yet he committed public, penalizing sin. We can dare to be a Daniel, remembering the King David who lives within. The Abedini saga may hurt the cause of persecuted believers jailed for their faith, may in fact come back on Saeed himself. But that doesn’t stop a savior God stepping into the middle of the world’s wickedness, and reminding us to take heed where we stand lest we fall, but, mercy of mercies, we don’t write the end of the story.

Email mbelz@wng.org