The antidote to fear - Recalling a hair-raising incident from days in Indonesia

It was Christmas. We were in Central Java. Alongside our work with the Javanese Church, both of us taught at a Christian university.

Our students presented us with an unusual Christmas card - a banner strung across the street immediately outside our front gate. Its greeting: 'The spirit of Christmas demands that we kick to death all colonial imperialist dogs'.

At one end of the bold red lettering stood a crudely-painted Union Jack; at the other, the Stars and Stripes.

This vocabulary was everywhere during the years of President Sukarno's revolution. The banner had been hung there by Christian students from the university. With the inscrutable courtesy of the Javanese, they had asked our permission to put it outside our gate. They were at great pains to assure us it was nothing personal. They did not want us to feel upset.

Identity crisis

Poor souls, they had an identity crisis and our presence as Westerners in their university did not help them. We were, after all, representatives from a nation that enjoyed the most hated nation status in their latest propaganda war. It would have been hard for them to understand that perhaps we could feel just a little threatened by their Christmas greetings. But then, we had to try and understand the problem from their point of view. We did what we could, and invited them in for Christmas cake.

The Communists were strong. Indonesia, under Sukarno, was pursuing its anti-colonialist revolution. The USA was in Vietnam to the north, and it was an atrocious mess. The so-called 'domino theory' predicted that before long Indonesia would also fall to Communism. Any Christian student who did not show enthusiastic support for 'the revolution' against colonial imperialists was suspect. So our Christian brothers and sisters had to chant the latest political slogans as loudly as they could to avoid the accusation of being unpatriotic.

It really looked as if the world's largest Islamic nation was about to turn to Communism. At the time, it was hard not to believe they would succeed. Britain was in the process of helping Malaya, Sarawak and Borneo, along with Singapore, to form a new nation to be called Malaysia. That, in Indonesian government propaganda, was a neo-colonialist plot orchestrated by Britain to break up the Jakarta-Phnom Penh-Hanoi-Beijing axis of the 'new emerging forces'. As Brits we were not popular.

Nor was our embassy. It stood to one side of a great round-about, opposite the Hotel Indonesia. A great seething mass of humanity gathered there to hurl their insults and demand an audience with the British ambassador.

Secret weapon

In his wisdom and years of experience in the diplomatic service, the ambassador realised that he couldn't negotiate with a mob. So he produced his secret weapon - a Scottish soldier, complete with bagpipes.

Our brave Scot was later to be given a medal for his courage for what seemed to us to be nothing but an act of sheer diplomatic folly. He marched up and down in front of the embassy and released all the pent-up power of the pipes. The result was predictable. The rampaging mobs burnt the embassy down.

I had to go to Jakarta to visit the temporary consulate that replaced the burnt-out embassy. The British ambassador had been withdrawn and a skeleton staff remained. I met the consul. His advice was, in a sentence: 'Get out - leave the country!'

I remembered a recent conversation with the principal of the Christian university, in whose house I was living.

'Would you be better off if we left? Are we a danger to you, staying here on campus?'

He had taken his time to answer. When his response came, it was very moving.

'Yes, of course it would be better. Better for you. Better for us. As Christians in Java we have an identity crisis. We are a minority hemmed in by Islam on one side and Communism on the other. But you and I are brothers in Christ. You identify with us and take the consequences and we will identify with you. We are members of one family.'

Given that bond, my answer to the consul was clear: 'Thank you, but we have decided to stay put'.

At that the consul became angry: 'When I give advice to businessmen, they follow it. You missionaries give me more trouble than anyone else! You think God will take care of you. Now you are on your own. Is that understood?'

It was. He had a job to do. He was acting in our best interests. We were choosing to ignore his advice. He had to protect himself. We did not blame him. But given the nature of our relationship with the Javanese Church, in Luther's words, it was a case of 'Here I stand, I can do no other. So help me God!'

God's answer

At that point, the BBC Far Eastern service began to send hourly broadcasts to all British citizens in Indonesia. The RAF was sending Hercules aircraft to Jakarta to evacuate all UK citizens. We were told to make our way to the airport and take a plane out to Singapore. It was tempting. Life in Java was far from comfortable, and it was hard not to be fearful.

All day we had been listening to instructions through the BBC as to what we should do. That night it was our weekly prayer meeting and we were working systematically through Isaiah for our Bible readings. High on our agenda as we came to prayer was how we should respond to the advice we were being given. In our Bible readings it 'just so happened' that we had come to Isaiah 31.

'Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the LORD... But the Egyptians are men and not God; their horses are flesh and not spirit.'

Faith not flight

For us, the message could not have been clearer. Our natural inclination would have been to take up the offer of a free flight to safety. But what could be safer than to be where God had put us? We prayed through the passage. The challenge was to faith, not flight. We were there because we believed God had put us there to do a job. His promise was that he would be with us. We were to stay put. The outcome was in his hands.

It is not our politicians who control the destiny of the world but our sovereign Lord. The devil wants us to fear him. He is delighted if we think of him in equal terms with God. But it is a lie. The scale of the deception is enormous. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, not preoccupation with the devil. Godly fear is the antidote to fearfulness.

This article is an extract from David Ellis's new book 'Nothing else to fear' published by OMF/Monarch.