(CNN) I've lived and worked in the Middle East for a decade, providing medical care, emergency relief and economic opportunity for refugees. Growing up in American Baptist churches, I was awed by missionaries: those larger-than-life heroes who go into hostile territory, risking body and limb to tell the Jesus story in countries where doing so is dangerous at best and illegal at worst. In order to get inside these "closed" countries, some missionaries pose as aid workers, teachers and business owners. Under the guise of work they think a hostile government or population will find valuable, they sneak in, concealing their true aim: to convert as many as possible to their religion.Jeremy Courtney: Missionaries should stop posing as aid workers, teachers and businesspeopleIt undermines religious freedom and puts Christians at risk, he saysCNN's "Declassified" reveals U.S. rescue of Christian aid workers held hostage: Sunday, 10 p.m. ET/PT
But there's another question we should ask: "Why can't we provide enough value to society that it outweighs the perceived threat of our _ identity?".