Stay the Course, Persecution or Not
It is said and written that suffering persecution is a Christian’s lot in life. That may be, but these days there is typically a discernible political motive behind this assertion, namely, that Christians should accept losing political battles to people with liberal or left-wing views.
Accepting deteriorating neighborhoods, perverted school systems, and manifest insanity is not the same thing as standing up for your convictions and getting persecuted by fanatical Romans.
If we are honest with ourselves, those in danger of actual persecution are those Christians the government and media call “Christian Nationalists.” Which is to say, the Christians in danger of persecution include anyone who is actually a Christian nationalist, anyone who just thinks traditional morals are better than progressive morals, anyone who doesn’t think all religions are equal, and then, of course, every genuinely evil violent person the media can muster who isn’t already a member of Antifa.
While I am relatively certain no actual persecution will be meted out—I mean, no Roman-style violence—I am equally certain that the only way a Christian will ever get himself persecuted, really persecuted, is by declaring that he does not deserve any persecution. To get persecuted, a Christian will have to assert that he is a son of God and has the truth on his side, and that the people in power are estranged from God and do not deserve to have any influence over the minds of others.
No Persecution Today
As things stand, no violent persecution will be forthcoming. Why? Because no one in power needs to take Christians as seriously as the Romans did. Are the people in our government and media more foolish than the Romans? No. Rather, the Christians of today are not poised to overthrow the entire secular world as the Christians of Rome were poised to overthrow the entire pagan world. The rulers of today do not persecute Christians because they do not need to persecute Christians.
That Christians are not being persecuted today is not a good sign. When it seems like every facet of government and “high” society are anti-Christian, the worst that happens to Christians is that they are “marginalized” or “discriminated against”—i.e., the people in power do not like Christians but do not feel threatened by them.
While it is true that Trump sends the cultural communists into hysterics and that Trump must rely on the Christian vote, nobody thinks Trump is a specifically “Christian” answer to the anti-Western, anti-White, anti-Christian coalition running our country. There is no Christian man or movement that has the sort of scary power that Trump and MAGA have.
When An Idea Cannot Be Beaten
Persecution can and does work. I mean: sometimes persecution works and sometimes it doesn’t. The prevailing view today is that it never works and always backfires.
Persecution backfired against the early Christians because they were in possession of the truth and were offering a way out of stifling Roman rule. They were doing real work.
Persecution of Christians has not always backfired because the circumstances are not always the same. It’s historically illiterate to assert that Christianity is always and everywhere profiting from persecution. If this were so, Christians would be duty bound to ignore and maybe even give aid to the miserable little tyrants all around the world that persecute good ideas and the true religion.
Christianity has been irresistible and benefited from persecution, no doubt. Christianity today, however, does not represent such a movement. That’s not to say it cannot become so, but it is best to admit the truth of the matter if we’re to change it. And it is not Christianity’s fault that this is the condition of things. When Christians become conquerable, when they talk incessantly about being persecuted but cannot find anyone even willing to persecute them, Christians have lost possession of the truth; the truth is always dangerous to lies. If ever a large number of people have the truth, they will be attacked by those who do not have it.
I am not saying there are no more genuine Christians in America. The point is that Christians, as a group, would be seen as a genuine threat if they genuinely bore the truth on the altars of their hearts. That no one in power can be brought to treat them that seriously is evidence that today’s Christians are not bringing the truth to bear on the essential issues, or do not possess the truth at all. “And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision” (1st Samuel 3:1).
Holding onto a conviction is important but it doesn’t make Christians dangerous. Consider the cultural questions being fought over today. It is one thing to hold to one’s convictions and so live according to traditional morality. It is another thing to make traditional morality dangerous by explaining truth and attacking error.
Oftentimes, today’s Roman rulers can rest assured that Christians collaborating with the regime will silence genuine dissent long before the rulers have to take notice.
Persecution is Only A Sign
Those who are good will always be attacked or persecuted by the bad. Not everyone who gets persecuted is thereby good. Life would be much simpler if only the good were persecuted. Unfortunately, there are many examples of groups of people getting persecuted for depressingly flippant reasons. I believe governments, from time to time, persecute minorities merely because the news cycle needs a scapegoat.
Nor is all coercion persecution. Sometimes bad things are outlawed for good reasons. What do we think of the polygamist variety of Mormonism? And there are other religious pretenses our law doesn’t respect. If a state government outlaws intoxicating drugs, some drug-using “religion” might claim they are being persecuted, but sensible people would not heed their complaint. Any illicit activity can be made into a “religious observance”; that’s meaningless.
Since persecution is meted out to both the bad and the good, we must admit that even if some Christians did manage to get themselves persecuted today, it would only be a sign that, well, maybe they were the good guys posing a genuine threat to the reigning errors of today. But it could also be completely and frustratingly meaningless persecution, persecution for the sake of persecution.
Since persecution is not a sure sign of goodness, it’s madness to desire it as a sign of goodness. Reasonable men and women will not think Christians who get themselves persecuted are thereby the good guys.
Don’t Have a Persecution Fetish
Christians are told they will be persecuted for the truth—the point being they should adhere to the Christian way of life and uphold the truths of the faith, no matter what. Christians should not seek out persecution. Standing up under persecution is a badge of honor. Getting persecuted isn’t. What are Christians to think about their persecuted children, friends, and community? While Christians will be persecuted for the truth, it is the responsibility of husbands and leaders to do something about this.
There seem to be people today, many Christians included, who do not believe they can be authentic if they are not in some way oppressed. The image of a well-dressed congregation singing hymns genuinely strikes many of my contemporaries as aesthetically un-Christian. Does being a good person require poverty and persecution? To think so is to trade truth for an aesthetic pose.
There are many who are afraid of what will happen if the good guys aren’t powerless.
Fighting For Christians and Christianity is not Un-Christian
When conservative Christians are told they should not wish for a more friendly government, they are usually denied a straightforward debate. Conservatives want to debate the core issues. Their left wing compatriots want to avoid the debate.
For example, Christians will say the LGBTQ+ way of living and propaganda are sinful, misguided, un-Christian, and so on. What can a leftist-Christian say to this? The conservative is obviously right. What can be done is deflection: instead of debating the issue, the liberal will debate the prudence of debating the point at all. As I mentioned earlier, liberals sometimes resort to saying that Christians must let the government do what it wants because Christians should expect to be persecuted:
If Christians are not hired because of their morals? “Accept persecution.” If young Christians are denied admission because they are white? “Accept persecution.” If the government demands your institution support left wing causes? “Accept persecution.”
Basically, if there is any desire to fight against being relegated to second class citizenship, Christians are told to accept persecution.
Conservative Christians want to continue fighting for the Christian faith and Christian morality, and there are liberal or leftist Christians who, knowing they can’t really say traditional morality isn’t Christian, prefer to avoid having that debate. Liberals say that Christians need to stop promoting Christianity because doing so can lead to abuses, might turn other people off, might endanger unity in the church. They also say, as I’ve discussed here, that Christians shouldn’t promote Christianity because the thing Christians should do is get persecuted.
Here is the liberal-Christian’s strategy: “You don’t spread your faith by telling other people they need the faith, or that other religions or ideals are not true; you spread the faith by getting told you’re wrong by bullies and psychotic tyrants. It’s when a tyrant is after you that you get the real sympathy points with tenderhearted souls and reasonable minds.” But why would a tyrant ever come after people who acquiesce in his will? The only way to get persecuted is to tell the tyrant he doesn’t deserve the authority he has.
A Neutered Gospel
The good news of the gospel includes a rejection of the popular culture and other ideals. Consider the case of a man who suffered persecution for the Gospel:
“Some tell me ‘Preach the pure gospel!’ This reminds me that the Communist secret police also told me to preach Christ, but not to mention communism. …
I don’t know what this so-called pure gospel is. Was the preaching of John the Baptist pure? He did not say only ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!’ (Matthew 3:2). He also ‘rebuked [Herod] … for all the evils which Herod had done’ (Luke 3:19). He was beheaded because he didn’t confine himself to abstract teaching. Jesus did not preach only the ‘pure’ Sermon on the Mount, but also what some actual church leaders would have called a negative sermon: ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! … Serpents, brood of vipers! (Matthew 23:27, 33). It is for such ‘impure’ preaching that He was crucified. The Pharisees would not have bothered about the Sermon on the Mount.
Sin must be called by name. Communism is one of the most dangerous sins in the world today. Every gospel that does not denounce it is not the pure gospel.” – Richard Wurmbrand in 1967.
Christians have a work: spreading the Gospel. They cannot do this without including denunciations against pharisaism, hypocrisy, and other biblical evils. The good news of Christ has to be made clear. If people hear that “Jesus saves,” but have no idea that means they are free from moral errors of the age, then the good news is not good news at all. They are still trapped. A Christian cannot believe he is saved and a child of God and at the same time beholden to the opinions and dictates of a Human Resources ogre. The Gospel frees Christians from fake worldly concerns. If a Christian speaks the truth in love and is rejected, the Christian shakes of his feet and moves on. The good news will always, or at least almost always, involve a denunciation and mockery of whatever prevails in the popular mind. Otherwise, the popular mind prevails. Christians should not set limits to their thoughts based on popular ideologies contrary to the freedom of the Gospel. The freedom of the Christian is what leads to the persecution of the Christian.
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What Simmons seems to miss is the other side of the coin dealing with Christians and persecution. While he deals with Christians being persecuted, he neglects to talk about Christians persecuting others. And that is where Christian Nationalism comes into play. For Christian Nationalism teaches that the Church should use the government as a proxy for punishing sinners–though not all sinners. Christians being persecuted for having persecuted others should not be confused with Christians being persecuted for their faith.
What is troublesome from the above article is the following paragraph:
‘If we are honest with ourselves, those in danger of actual persecution are those Christians the government and media call “Christian Nationalists.” Which is to say, the Christians in danger of persecution include anyone who is actually a Christian nationalist, anyone who just thinks traditional morals are better than progressive morals, anyone who doesn’t think all religions are equal, and then, of course, every genuinely evil violent person the media can muster who isn’t already a member of Antifa. ‘
One of the problems with that paragraph is that Christian Nationalists are not the only Christians who believe that traditional personal morals are better than progressive ones, Christians who prefer a democracy with equality to an authoritarian Christian ethnocracy do too. Such Christians simply believe that evangelism and Biblical teaching within the Church alone, not in addition to legislation, are not just the best ways, they are the Biblical ways to address progressive personal morals with the exception of abortion. But then again, abortion deals with the taking of human life.
But second, Is the quoted paragraph suggesting that Christian Nationalism is a fuller expression, a more Biblical expression of Christianity? And since most, if not all, of the grounds used to support Christian Nationalism comes from the Reformed traditions, how could such a claim be made? And how can such a claim be made since Christian Nationalism doesn’t revolve around Christ?
My claim on this website has always been that Christian Nationalism is the product of using an authoritarian thinking approach to interpreting the Bible. And the disdain that many Christian Nationalists have for Christians who are not Christian Nationalists lends evidence to my claim–here see Dunson’s article objecting to the invitation given to David French to address the PCA GA.
Good SHOULD persecute evil. Is a ruler “persecuting” a murderer when he sentences him to death?
Either you believe Christianity to be true or you do not. If you do, then it follows that you believe that government should rule in accordance with God’s will and what HE says is right and wrong. You cannot continue to hedge your bets on the premise that Christianity might be wrong.
I’m sure there are a myriad of examples of Christian rulers doing unjust things. Those things can and should be criticized. That, however, does not negate the idea of what is good and evil. Human rulers are not always going to get it right. But Christians can and should demand their leaders rule in accordance with God’s will. If that’s Christian Nationalism, then so be it.
Dylan,
If the Scriptures define what is evil and good should persecute it, who will be left to persecute the persecutors?
You start with an ideal and absolutize it so that it becomes canon. But the problem with your canon is that it is not supported by the New Testament. The Church isn’t called to persecute all evil either by itself or through the government; the Church is called to preach repentance as part of the Gospel so that evil, which includes all of us since we all sin, have time to repent. God graciously gives all time to repent. Under your scheme, since all sin is evil according to Scriptures, people are not given time to repent.
In addition, you’re calling for a theocracy. It is Christianity that determines good and evil according to the Scriptures and so idol worship would be included under evil. After all, those who worship idols often try to lead others astray. Isn’t that evil when one considers the consequences of being led astray? And so you’re calling for the end of both the Establishment Clause and the freedom of religion. But did the Apostles call for?
Absolutizing our our ideals can put us at risk of contradicting the Scriptures or even adding to them. And so we need to stay within the confines of the Scriptures and their paradoxes especially point to that need.
And since all sin is evil, we become hypocrites when we call for the persecution of others but not of ourselves.
Your arguments here are full of logical fallacies and the logical trajectory of your last point leads to anarchy.
“If the Scriptures define what is evil and good should persecute it, who will be left to persecute the persecutors?”
Those who execute the law are not above the law. There are plenty of other rulers/magistrates in a republican government to prosecute such violators.
“The Church isn’t called to persecute all evil either by itself or through the government; the Church is called to preach repentance as part of the Gospel so that evil, which includes all of us since we all sin, have time to repent. God graciously gives all time to repent. Under your scheme, since all sin is evil according to Scriptures, people are not given time to repent.”
The Church is made up of people and those people have dual citizenship, as members of the nations they belong to in addition to the kingdom of Heaven. As citizens of their nations, they owe their allegiance and service to the good of their nation insofar as it does not call them to disobey God. Paul was a Roman citizen and as such he used the benefits of his citizenship to his advantage.
Government is established by God to punish the wrongdoer and good government does so. You think by not punishing evil you add days to someone’s life for them to have more time to repent? Are you God? Can anyone add days to his own life, much less someone else’s? “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me.”
Jordan,
Please identify the logical fallacies I am using. After all, logical fallacies are structural flaws in an argument. And those flaws have names. So please identify the structural flaws I am using.
The problem I am responding to is Dylan’s definition of evil in Romans 13. Why? Note what Dylan wrote:
‘Good SHOULD persecute evil. Is a ruler “persecuting” a murderer when he sentences him to death?
Either you believe Christianity to be true or you do not. If you do, then it follows that you believe that government should rule in accordance with God’s will and what HE says is right and wrong .’
Dylan starts with an ideal and makes it an absolute and then draws conclusions from that. But He fails to show what he implies to be true. What did he imply?
‘If you do, then it follows that you believe that government should rule in accordance with God’s will and what HE says is right and wrong.‘
He implies that if I believe Christianity to be true, then I should believe that the government should rule in accordance with God’s will and what he says is right and wrong. And so isn’t what God says is wrong is sin? Thus, according to Dylan, if government should use God’s definition of wrong to define evil and the government should persecute evil, then the government should persecute everyone who sins.
But since we all sin, then, according to Dylan’s logic, I should believe that government should punish everyone. But everyone in government sins too. And so who will be left to punish the persecutors?
The problem is Dylan’s definition of ‘evil’ from Romans 13. At face value, all of us and everyone in charge of punishing evil also deserve punishment because we all sin, we all do what is evil. In fact, that was Paul’s argument in Romans 2 when he commands those who are religious not to judge the people whom Paul talked about in Romans 1. And so the question becomes are Paul and Dylan using the same definition for the term ‘evil’ as used in Romans 13? Here we might want to read I Cor 5:9-13:
‘9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people; 10 I did not at all mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the greedy and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to leave the world. 11 But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person, or a greedy person, or an idolater, or is verbally abusive, or habitually drunk, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a person. 12 For what business of mine is it to judge outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? 13 But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the evil person from among yourselves.‘
Does that passage make it sound like Paul is using Dylan’s definition of evil? After all, Paul just listed sins that are serous enough to require the Church to shun certain people. But is Paul even concerned about the sins he listed there as being punished by the government? Does Paul sound like he wants the Church to punish those sins when committed by unbelievers either directly or indirectly through the government?
The fault in Dylan’s argument is his working definition of ‘evil’ in Romans 13. For the conclusions that Dylan draws from his working definition of evil do not match the conclusions that Paul has drawn, as showed in this comment, nor the conclusions that any New Testament contributor drew. In addition, Dylan’s conclusions for what government must do are not even feasible.