Christianity Today: My Family Resisted Iran’s Regime. My Hope Is Not in Foreign Intervention., by Sara Afshari (Oxford):

In recent weeks, Iran has been plunged deeper into war. Airstrikes have hit cities, energy infrastructure, and residential areas. Reports—fragmented and difficult to verify—suggest widespread destruction of homes, hospitals, and public spaces. Communication blackouts have made it nearly impossible to know what is happening on the ground.

For those inside—and for those of us with family there—fear, uncertainty, and waiting are a lived reality.

And in the middle of that waiting, I found myself returning to a familiar passage: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’” (John 20:19).

John’s gospel does not hide the fear of the disciples. After the Crucifixion, they are not bold or triumphant. They are hiding. Their fear is a reasonable response to violence. They have seen what power can do, so they lock the doors.

That image, behind locked doors, has followed me in the weeks since the war began. …

As a young student leader, I identified as a Communist and atheist. I believed structural injustice required structural change. … When I later became a Christian, my concern for justice was reoriented. Faith did not silence political awareness; it deepened its grounding. …

When Jesus appears in John 20, Rome has not fallen. The empire remains intact. The disciples remain vulnerable. And the risen Christ shows them the scars in his hands and side. The scars remain visible, a reminder of the violence. Yet resurrection carries it forward in transformed form. …

John’s narrative resists two temptations: It does not deny fear. (The doors remain locked.) Nor does it promote retaliation. Instead, Christ speaks peace into a room shaped by fear. This peace is an invitation to a different way of being present. “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (v. 21). The disciples are commissioned to embody power rather than taking it.

Today, responsibility cannot be reduced to simple alignment with a regime or foreign power. It calls for discernment. As part of the Iranian diaspora, I am conscious that those inside the country have endured sustained repression in ways many of us outside have not. Our voices must therefore be careful: How do we speak responsibly about a country we no longer live in—but still belong to? …

When Jesus says, “Peace be with you” (v. 19), it is not the peace of empire. It is not the peace of silence. It is the peace of wounded hands that did not retaliate.

I am Iranian. I am Christian. I carry scars.

John 20 also speaks of breath. Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (v. 22). Breath recalls creation: a new beginning. It suggests that renewal begins with interior transformation and shared vocation rather than dominion. Applied to Iran, it suggests that lasting change emerges from dignity, accountability, and resistance. It resists the reduction of our future to pure power calculations.

Christ enters the locked room without dismantling the door. He does not rebuke the disciples for their caution. He neither glorifies fear nor demands reckless exposure. He stands among them, shows his scars, and speaks peace.

I do not know how Iran’s political future will unfold. Power will shift. Narratives will compete. Nearly five decades of accumulated scars will not disappear overnight. …

The passage in John does not offer escape from uncertainty. Peace is spoken into fear, not after fear is gone. Scars are acknowledged. Commission follows encounter. The locked room becomes not only a place of confinement but also a place from which vocation begins.

Behind locked doors, the gospel reminds us, Christ is present.

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