Greeting to PROK
Dear sisters and brothers,
On behalf of the Protestant Christian Church in Bali I greet all of you, participants of the 99th General Assembly and the whole members of PROK, in the name of our common Lord and savior Jesus Christ. It is really a great honor for me that I am invited to come here and may say some words of greeting to you. I’m sure that many of you have heard or even know about the island of Bali in Indonesia. May be some of you have been there already.
Indonesia is a country with the biggest number of Muslim populations of the world. Among 250 million people of Indonesians population, around 80% are Muslims. Christians are around 10%. You can imagine the difficulties and problems of Christians, who live among Muslims majority. This time we are aware about the influence of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) which already exist in many places in Indonesia. We are very thankful and appreciate our Indonesian Government for their quick action to combat the influence of ISIS in Indonesia. Thanks also to our Muslim friends in Indonesia, who took a clear position against this kind of organization. But we are still unsure about how the outcome will look like.
In Bali itself, we face another problem again. The island of Bali is very special among thousands islands of Indonesia. While in the whole of Indonesia Hindus are only 2%, but in Bali they are more than 85%. In Indonesia Christians are around 10%, while in Bali we are less than 2%. It is very hard for a Balinese become Christian because of their traditional understanding about religion.
Ones you are born as a Balinese, you are considered as Hindu automatically. And you will be counted as hypocrite if you are a Balinese but not Hindu. If one of a family become Christian she or he will be declared as no longer exist or dead. So you have no right to stay among the living people. If in a village a family became Christians, the villagers will come, burn their house and take all of their belongings. This family has two choices: back to their old religion or go away and leave their village.
That is the reason, why more than 75% of Balinese Christians live outside of Bali island. With this picture you can imagine how difficult it is to be a Christian in the island of Bali. And at the same time you can see how hard the work of mission in this island will be. But there are still possibilities among these difficulties if we dare to take risks.
Sometimes we have to help the new becoming Christians by creating a new home for them. Sometimes we have to wait until many people from the same village became Christians before we baptize them. Thousands of them are non baptized believers and still registered as Hindus because they do not want to be blamed as trouble makers. That is our home and at the same times also our mission field. Until now we do not send missionaries out of our island because we believe that we are called to save our home first and there are a lot of works there.
We are spreading the Good News especially for the people who are in need such as the sick and poor people. Many of them were healed in the name of Jesus and become believers although many of them do not become Christians.
I bring greetings to you from all Christians in Bali and hope for a closer relationship with you in the future. We have been praying for you for a successful General Assembly, for a peaceful life in Korean Peninsula and for peaceful reunification of North and South Korea.
In conjunction with the theme of your General Assembly I just want to quote a comment of a non Christian mayor about the church. He said: “Three things we know about the church. They are pride people, greedy / selfish and love division.” So let us repent. In the name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen!
Bishop Ketut Waspada
Moderator of the Protestant Christian Church in Bali
[이 게시물은 관리자님에 의해 2016-11-03 21:39:53 총무 칼럼에서 이동 됨]
