Jay and Susie Decker moved their young family to Central Asia to share the gospel with the Chon people.[1] They encountered a culture unlike any they’d previously known—one where moral relativism abounded, and sexual depravity ruled. Parents soothed distraught infants by openly fondling them. Girls were routinely sexually violated, and their mothers begged them to quietly endure the abuse out of fear their daughters would be labeled damaged and unmarriable. Infidelity was commonplace. Chon friends even invited Jay to participate in a gang rape.

The Deckers endured this harsh cultural climate because they had not moved to Central Asia with the goal of finding comfort. They had gone in answer to the Great Commission with the hope of sharing the gospel. Susie tells the story of a crossroads night in her heart spent weeping in prayer. In the morning, she was resolved to stay because the Lord had burdened her for the lostness of the Chon people.

It took eight years before there was one Chon convert. Today, God has transformed the Chon believers, transferring them from the misery of moral relativism to the joy of commitment to Christ. God uses stories of change like theirs to shake us out of our own comfort with moral relativism and to lead us to rejoice in the freedom we have in Christ.

Misery of Moral Relativism

We hear of the Chon and we are rightly aghast. How could such sins have ever become palatable? Moral relativism—the belief that morality is fluid and that no standard of absolute truth exists by which to rightly judge—falsely soothes the conscience. Belief systems about family, marriage, and gender sprout like prolific weeds fueled by the winds of moral relativism. As a result, American society descends into chaos, and spiritual deception abounds. The danger of moral relativism is not simply our neighbors possessing these individual truths but that believers find comfortable familiarity in this fact, forgetting the treasure of the hope we possess. Chon sins became palatable in the same way our own cultural sins become palatable. Whether in American culture or Chon culture, the lack of absolute truth produces the same rotten fruit. Our sins may look different than those of the Chon, but the effect is the same: sin separates us from a Holy God. The cure for Chon and American moral relativism is beautifully the same. We need Jesus.

Joy of Sanctification

When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, he could have written it directly to the Chon church. If you scraped the bottom of the morality barrel, you’d dredge up the type of men and women the Lord used to build the church in Corinth. Today no one would pick them for their church plant team. They were the modern equivalent of addicts staggering on the corner, the sexually broken lining up in Pride parades, the guy on TV pretending to have supernatural power to swindle a crowd, and the women gathering at a coffee shop to gossip, ruining reputations with their words. We can assume the Corinth church included their victims. So did the Chon church. This portion of Scripture ends on a brilliant note about identity. It rightly pivots our gaze from what was to what is: “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11). The gospel doesn’t just transform our identities, it changes us from the inside out. The identities of the Chon people before they met Christ were not the same after they encountered his love and mercy. Neither are ours.

When Susie shared in a women’s Bible study how she’d been raped in university and then later found healing in Christ, her story offered the Chon women hope. They saw a God who knew their secret shame and loved them. He sent Susie to model the freedom the gospel offers through forgiveness. When the women’s husbands heard the story from their wives, they went to Jay concerned, asking if he’d known of his wife’s stained unsuitability before he married her. He assured them that he knew his wife’s experience, and it didn’t affect her worth or his love. When asked how much of the sanctification process in Chon believers was due to finally having Scripture in their own language versus one-on-one discipleship, Jay explains, “I don’t think you could differentiate between the two. One must have the other. They are inseparable.” The process of discipleship took place in many stories like this, walking the Chon through the truth of Scripture and asking them to consider culturally held beliefs in its glorious light. Discipleship for American believers encountering moral relativism looks the same—everything is submitted to Scripture’s standard of truth.

As a new Christian, Lin sat at Susie's table listening to the story of Paul’s encounter with Christ. As she heard the story, her eyes began to glow with excitement beside her bandages. “Yes! This is what my husband needs! Jesus will do this for him too, won’t he?” Lin’s husband, like most males of the Chon culture, was a drunk. At the time, he was locked in jail for beating and stabbing Lin in the face so severely that she had been hospitalized. Lin knew her husband needed a complete change, just like the one she heard Paul had experienced. The new believers began praying together for Lin’s husband. Like Paul, everyone in the community knew his reputation. Lin’s prayers, shored up by her faith in Christ’s miracle working power, were answered. Her husband was completely transformed by the power of the gospel.

After Jay and Susie had ministered among the Chon for a decade, 15-year-old Ana began to attend a Bible study in their home. At first Ana sat in the warmth of Jay and Susie’s living room to escape home life. As she listened to the Bible stories and heard the gospel narrative, she began paying more attention. Eventually, she excitedly accepted Christ. When she told her father of her decision to be baptized, he kicked her out of his home into a frigid, minus 30 degree F night. It was past midnight when an elder from the newly established Chon church drove to get her. He took Ana home to join his family. “Every Chon believer lost family and employment when they accepted Christ,” Jay explains. “When Ana was baptized, we expected tears. The price she paid was costly. Instead, we watched as she glowed like a bride on her wedding day.”

Stories like these from Chon believers remind us of the hope we have in Christ, our freedom from moral relativism, and the transformative power of the gospel. Their stories encourage us to engage in the good work of discipleship. “You’ve not seen joy until you’ve encountered Chon believers,” Jay shares. “Their lives before Christ were completely dark and filled with fear. The moment they accepted Christ, that fear melted into perfect joy.” May our joy in the freedom Christ has given us be as complete.

[1] While the information relayed is true, ‘Jay,’ ‘Susie,’ and ‘Chon,’ are all intentional pseudonyms to protect their identities and not open them further to unnecessary persecution.