In a world increasingly shaped by forces like guns, militias, propaganda, and raw intimidation, the most countercultural idea today may be endurance without retaliation. Across conflict zones, from Nigeria to parts of the Middle East, believers are being hunted, displaced, and silenced not because of what they do, but because of what they believe. Churches are burned, villages emptied, and worship criminalized by violent actors who assume fear is stronger than faith. Yet again and again, that assumption fails. Faith communities persist, not because they are armed, but because they are sustained by a power that does not exhaust itself.
This persistence stands in direct contrast to the logic of violence. Extremist groups; from Boko Haram to ISWAP factions, have relied on terror slogans and ideological chants to assert dominance before killing, believing brutality can erase belief. History suggests otherwise. Violence can clear territory, but it cannot conquer conscience. What it often produces instead is moral clarity: a sharper distinction between coercion and conviction, between power that intimidates and power that preserves.
The Apostle Paul articulated this distinction with striking simplicity: “But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3). This was not abstract theology. Paul wrote to a community under pressure, reminding them that security does not ultimately come from walls, weapons, or political favor, but from divine faithfulness. The promise was not the absence of danger, but endurance within it; a strength that outlasts siege.
That distinction matters deeply in places like Nigeria, where insecurity has become normalized and faith-based violence is often reduced to statistics. When communities survive repeated attacks yet continue to gather, rebuild, and believe, they are making a statement more powerful than protest. Their survival exposes the limits of terror. As Václav Havel once observed, “The attempt to suppress the human spirit is doomed to failure.” History confirms his insight: empires fall, militias fracture, ideologies decay; but belief, when rooted in conviction, adapts and survives.
This endurance also raises uncomfortable questions for governments and the international community. If unarmed civilians can persist through faith, why do institutions armed with law, intelligence, and resources struggle to protect them? Silence, denial, or political convenience only strengthen persecutors. When violence goes unnamed and victims are blurred into abstractions, injustice gains ground. Moral clarity, not neutrality, is what interrupts cycles of persecution.
Ultimately, the survival of faith under violence is not a mystery, it is a testimony. Human force is finite, reactive, and self-consuming. Divine power, by contrast, sustains without spectacle. As scripture, history, and lived reality all suggest, what is kept by God’s power does not depend on permission from men. In an age where fear is weaponized, endurance itself becomes evidence: faith is not merely surviving violence, it is outlasting it.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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