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.
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