China's Olympic Village Bible Ban: Good News?
Category: Faith... News Commentary... Society & Culture... The Persecuted Church... Thinking Allowed...
Posted Wednesday, November 07, 2007 at 09:38 AM [GMT-6]

Reports of China's prohibition of Bibles inside the Athlete's Village at next year's Beijing Olympics are slowly trickling out (do a Google News search for the topic and see how many mainstream media outlets are not reporting on it), it occurs to me that this action serves to highlight the power of the Gospel, and the fact that the Chinese government is operating not from a position of strength, but in abject fear.

That the iron-fisted government of one of the world's superpowers would simultaneously recognize and fear the power of God's word enough to ban it, while thinking that such a ban will actually be the slightest bit effective in blunting that power would be laughable if it wasn't so pitiful.

What the Chinese government seems to be incapable of grasping (or perhaps it's just in desperate denial) is that whether or not the Word is present in paper form, it will still be carried by thousands of visitors and athletes in their hearts and souls, and it will be shared by the millions of Chinese Christians for whom the term "freedom" has a connotation that many of us in the comfortable West can scarcely begin to imagine.

Some are reporting that the Koran will not be subject to a similar ban. If this is indeed true, it seem to indicate that the Chinese government doesn't fear the power of that book. Again, Christians should be flattered by the comparison.