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We arrived in Kabul in June of 2005; my wife and I were joining an international NGO helping the Afghans rebuild their lives through multiple projects. Living in a war torn country where you have 2 hours of electricity every second day and must be self-reliant on bore holes for water was a challenge, but we knew very well what we were getting ourselves into as we had visited before. We learnt the language, used local taxis as transport and lived among the Afghans as our neighbours and friends for the next 4 ½ years.
We met Werner, Hannelie, Jean-Pierre and Rode when they were invited to dinner at the guest house we were staying while we were finding an apartment. It was the start of a friendship that lasted to this day. Jean Pierre and Rode were still very young, about 8 and 6 respectively. They went to the international school in Kabul like many other foreigners’ kids and some Afghan children.
Werner and Hannelie were very dependent on external funding (friends, family, organizations in SA and USA). There was no large USD salary involved and the NGOs they worked for relied on voluntary services. Hannelie worked at the public hospital called Cure where her services were mostly voluntary. She also served as our doctor and never asked for compensation. In the last 2 years Werner had to consolidate his family house and the PAD office, as funding was so low that they could not afford a separate family house. Hannelie worked at a private hospital to supplement their income to survive and gave the children home schooling.
My wife and I many times affirmed to ourselves that should any of us two be kidnapped, no ransom money was to be paid. I cannot pay evil to perpetrate more evil to save my own life. Similarly Werner and Hannelie had to make the conscious decision and calculate the cost for being in Afghanistan and serving the Afghans. They included their children in the decision and the kids always had the option of staying behind in SA and go to boarding school. They decided to remain with their parents, also counting the cost. Jean-Pierre was 17 when he was shot in November and would have written his matric in SA in 2015. He wanted to become a pilot and return to Afghanistan, clearly demonstrating his decision.
Counting the cost started earlier than we thought. We lost our friend Gayle Williams who was shot by the Taliban in October 2008 for her faith. We lost our Pakistani friend Sayed who was shot by the Taliban in the back of his head. We lost Daniella who was shot by the Taliban while serving in a mobile eye-clinic in the countryside. Last month Werner and the children had to make the ultimate sacrifice, living out Werner’s own resolve he shared with us only 32 days earlier, when we saw them for the last time as a family: "We only die once, so it might as well be for Jesus."
I spoke to a non-Christian friend of mine yesterday who asked me how do I make sense of this tragedy. It reminded me of the comments I read online where people asked all kinds of questions about this incident:
· Why would a deeply Christian Religious family go to a country which is clearly not Christian? That is madness and irresponsible
· Why not work in SA?
· You just don't take your family into hot zones... It's your duty to look after your family...your kids...and keep them out of areas like this
· People should stop helping where help is not appreciated.
The answer lies squarely in what Werner and his family believed to be absolute Truth. They believed in the Bible, in Jesus as their only purpose in life and in eternal spiritual life after physical death. We live in a fallen world where evil still rules and we try to protect ourselves from it as far as possible. But seen from an eternal perspective, for Werner and his family, this life was nothing to hold on to. The sacrifice-free theology of comfort and security is not what Jesus called us for, in fact he promised we will have problems in this world. Rode was 15 when she died. Is living a comfortable and secure life for another 75 years’ worth comparing with an eternity of joy in heaven, when that short life lived had eternal significance for others? Werner and his family freely chose to follow God’s calling on their lives to Afghanistan. They accepted the risk and counted the cost. Where they irresponsible? No, to the contrary, they believed being disobedient to God is irresponsible. They went to non-Christian Afghanistan to be witnesses of Jesus though actions, love, caring and sharing. In SA anybody is free to investigate and believe in any faith. The Afghans do not have that freedom and they have the right to experience Jesus through the Groenewald family. Many Afghans appreciated the family and their witness and for them it made all the difference for eternity.
Why did God allow this? Would it not have been better to keep the family alive in Afghanistan to continue their good work, than to allow their death?
God Himself sent His Son Jesus to earth (a hot zone) to die for us a cruel innocent death and in so doing take the punishment for our sin away to inherit eternal life with Him. Was Jesus’s coming to this hot zone and dying worth it? Absolutely, for those who believe God’s Bible as the truth. When a seed dies in the ground, a harvest much bigger than the seed resounds. So it was with Jesus (one man died to give eternal life to millions), and so the harvest resulting from Werner, Jean-Pierre and Rode’s deaths will be much larger than their 3 lives. Their deaths have made Afghan Christians stronger. It has clearly demonstrated where and how love and truth operates in a country that has only experienced the opposite. Their story and witness have travelled around the world, speaking into many hearts. While we will not be able to fathom or understand the complete impact now, we (including Hannelie) will know, when we enter eternity and meet Werner, Jean-Pierre and Rode once again.
Jesus: “Be faithful to me, even if it means death, and I will give you life as your prize of victory.” Revelation 2:10
“For Werner and his family the route to martyrdom lay not only in the fact that their lives were witness to the Truth but also the fact that they found themselves amongst people who hated the One they represented. As a family they knew this and they prepared themselves to be witnesses, come what may. They understood that genuine martyrdom involves the commitment to a truth that is so overwhelmingly important that justice is better served by suffering than it is by evading it, if that means abandoning the truth.
“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Mat 5:10
It has been a year of relentless and unprecedented attacks on Christians. According to Pew Research1 more than 5.3 billion people (76% of the world’s population) live in countries with a high or very high level of restrictions on religion. Pew noted that these figures were “up from 68% as of mid-2007.” The Pew study further confirmed that Christians are "the most persecuted religious group in the world" and that their persecution is occurring primarily throughout the Islamic world. In the category of "Countries with Very High Government Restrictions on Religion," Pew lists 24 countries of which 20 are Islamic and where the overwhelming majority of the world's Christians are being persecuted.” (http://incontextministries.org)
1 http://www.pewforum.org/2014/01/14/religious-hostilities-reach-six-year-high/
Jean-Pierre and I discovered this song by Bill Drake during our last visit this past October: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mmnu_D--Xg. Jean-Pierre loved and sang it from his heart.
We attended the funeral for Werner, Jean-Pierre and Rode on Friday. It was an extraordinary day of God-inspired hope for the future.
