Iran -- Desperate for God

Yesterday, I downloaded the book Iran -- Desperate for God ($6.00 from Amazon) and finished reading it in 2-3 hours.  The book consists of 8 personal stories of Iranian men and women who were desperate for God, despite religiously following all the tenets and practices of Islam all their lives.  One woman was even equivalent to what we would call a "nun" in her dedicated lifestyle from childhood. 

The first story was written (or told to a scribe) by Hamed; his story begins in the 5th grade, with his search for success.  He loved history and reading about people who had succeeded in life.  His parents had told him that if he wanted to follow a religion, he would have to study very hard to see which one was true (they themselves had no religion before the 1980 revolution in Iran).  Even as a child, he began reading about Communist philosophy, because he was searching for truth.

Someone gave Hamed a little book about Jesus when he was ten years old.  It became his favorite book, and he immediately began searching for this God of Jesus Christ.  He read all about the religions of Iran, Japan, India, Lebanon, China, and Brazil so that he could compare them.  Then he started studying space, stars, hypnotism, spirits, and telepathy.  He found emptiness everywhere -- even Lenin, an atheist, swore by "God" when he was cursing.  The one book that Hamed could not get his hands on was a Bible, but he did find a magazine from England called The Good News.  He was able to get the magazine for two years before Iran blocked things like this.  He would tear out passages from the Bible from the magazine and read them over and over again.

He was so desperate for understanding that he went to see one of the mullahs to ask questions.  The ayatollah hated him because Hamed asked this question:  In the Koran, chapter 3, the verse says, "If anybody wants to have salvation and enter heaven, they have to believe in Torah and also in the Bible and in the New Testament."  Hamed asked more questions about Jesus, also from the Koran.  The mullah got very angry and said, "I don't want to argue with you.  Your ideas are not interesting, so I can't talk to you."  and so Hamed had to leave the house.

All the stories in this book are fascinating, especially (to me) those of the women, who were supposed to cover up from head to toe and cry all the time, mourning the dead prophets of Islam.  The more they cried, the holier they were supposed to be.  So, of course, whenever they met Christians who did not cry all the time, but who were joyful, they were intrigued.  The men did not cry, but beat themselves with chains in community worship as a sign of their holiness.

What is most interesting in all 8 stories is how the good news was spread from person to person, how Bibles were cautiously and secretly passed from one person to another, and how good the people felt when they read the Bible.  Even though they knew they could be imprisoned and tortured for possessing a Bible or a religious tract, they still passed them around and carried bibles to one another.  Whenever a visitor came to the house, however, they were careful to cover or hide the Bibles. 

The Christians and those interested in knowing about Jesus had to find ways to meet miles outside of the city, in orchards, on picnics, etc. to share their faith.  In fact, this book so resembles the conditions of the early church as described in the Acts of the Apostles that it is uncanny. 

If anyone wants an inspirational book for $6.00, you probably can't do better than to read Iran--Desperate for God.