Persecution
I hear complaints from time to time that American Christians are persecuted. Usually this means some minor annoyance, such as being ridiculed for some belief or another. I’ve even heard the complaint when someone is challenged to provide a defense for their faith.
One of the best ways to get our balance, and to realize how privileged we are in America, despite any minor annoyances, we have but to look at places where Christians are currently actively persecuted, where a threat to their livelihood is the most minor of persecutions, where, in fact, Christians may be killed for their faith.
World Prayr, an organization with which I’m associated, has been highlighting persecuted Christians on their blog in their daily devotional posts. (You can find today’s post here.)
I’d like to add one thing here. In America, we are in the majority as Christians. We may complain about nominal Christians or Christians in name, but churches are ubiquitous, and well accepted. As a majority, we need to resist the temptation to behave as persecutors. As an example, I’m referring to opposition to allowing Muslims to build mosques, and to opposing minority religion representation amongst military chaplains. If these things happened to Christian minorities in other countries, we’d regard it as persecution. We need to do unto others as we would have them do to us.
Several years ago I was on a message board where one individual popped up who fantasized about taking all Christians out and shooting them. I was surprised he included me in that, as liberal as I am. I had proved myself evil to him by writing that our greatest enemy was in the mirror (my paraphrase of Matthew 7: 1-5). How dare I try to impose my judgment on him like that? Well, yes, it’s a tricky business to comment on anyone’s behavior, even mine, but how would silence be better? This man would say that it would be better that no one tell him what to do, so shooting all Christians would be part of that.
If this were a common opinion, commonly put into action, then I’d agree with conservatives who claim Christians are persecuted.
Instead I hear it called persecution that creationism isn’t taught in schools, that Christian prayers aren’t mandatory in public schools, that any Christian rhetoric is ever called nonsense or evil, and that Carrie Prejean finished second in the Miss California pageant. In part this is the same complaint as that man who wanted to kill Christians. He thought it an outrage for anyone to tell him he’s wrong. Of course, when it comes to the teaching of evolution and the banning of state-mandated prayer, that’s more than people saying Christians are wrong. This is people with authority mandating that evolution be taught as fact, because it is, and that establishing prayer in public schools in unconstitutional. Carrie Prejean wasn’t just ridiculed for giving an awkward answer about same-sex marriage, she suffered a tangible consequence of her switching in mid-answer from being PC to Christian. She lost the pageant despite having the bigger breasts and everything.
Now it’s not hard intellectually to say that real persecution is more than being told you’re wrong or even losing something tangible in the marketplace of opinion. I wish conservative Christians would use something else for their “we deserve better” speech than the label “persecution”. Where it has lost in the USA, I think Christianity has lost fair and square. People who whine about that are giving testimony to their own pride and idolatries. Others will perceive that as they will.
Shooting Christians would be persecution. Lesser defeats deserve a different label, but who’s going to listen to that?
Oops, it just hit me I made a mistake. Carrie Prejean won the Miss California title, but lost the Miss USA title for being a “persecuted” Christian.
You know, it is better to find your own mistakes before someone else tells you you’re wrong, however loudly and harshly it takes to get your attention. Unfortunately, how often do we do that? It seems to me that a lot of people are wrong about a lot of things and are much more often defensive about that than open to correction. At the same time many people who try to correct others are wrong, too. It’s a problem as hard as this that gets me thinking of Matthew 7: 1-5. It’s rare that anyone wants to kill me for saying that. Fortunately God doesn’t make me share what God tells me to do about this. I’m sure I’d be told I’m wrong about that by some people. But I’m not persecuted. It’s just the price we pay for living on a planet filled with human beings, with their human nature, regardless of their religion.
Precisely!
Thank you, Henry, for being brave enough to say this.