I left off in my last post in the middle of a chapel sermon by one of our student body chaplains. Cognitive dissonance and all that. Things I don't understand. Right.
So after all this, that still wasn't what actually stuck out to me the most about her sermon. Because at that point, she started talking about persecution. She went on to say that we as Christian brothers and sisters need to call each other out on things even in the face of persecution and in the face of the possibility of persecution. "We are still called to stand fast as a bold Christian witness." And she went on to mention a pastor in Pakistan who was put in jail for standing up for what he believed in and then sentenced to death for not converting to Islam.
This next part is a transcription of most of the last part of her sermon (brace yourself, it's a little long):
"Being a disciple of Christ means that you will be persecuted, and that you might possibly die. And intrinsic to this idea of discipleship is persecution because in the book of Mark we see Christ is our example of what it means to be a disciple. And Jesus was persecuted, he was arrested, he was beaten, and he was killed. And nobody in the room says, 'Sign me up for that.' But that is what it means to be a disciple of Christ, to live that bold Christian witness in the knowledge that we might be persecuted, and we might get arrested, and we might get hurt and we might get killed. But that is how we inherit the Kingdom of God -- by standing fast. And that's the call to this church of Thyatira is to hold on to what you have, hold on to your faith, stand firm in being a Christian living in a context in that pagan culture where it is hard to be a Christian and where you might lose. Stand fast, stand firm. Christ is calling us to be set apart.
And, no doubt, the church in Thyatira would have been persecuted. No doubt that those people who lived there would have been persecuted for their faith, they would have been ostracized. They probably wouldn't have been able to do very well financially. But the God who created the universe is able to handle our financial needs. And he is able to protect us in the face of persecution. And he will protect your heart and he will protect you and he will protect your family. Our God is bigger than this world and he is able to protect us in the face of persecution and that is why we don't need to fear. We don't need to fear living out that bold Christian witness because we know that our God is bigger and that he is on our side and he is fighting for us. And we may still get hurt, and that doesn't mean that our God isn't bigger. But God uses persecution -- look at Christ -- God uses persecution and execution in order for his Kingdom to come. And one of my favorite things about this idea of being a bold Christian witness is that we're not doing it alone... Because isn't it so much easier when it's not just you? When it's you against the entire world and you're just feeling the persecution and people coming against you for being a Christian -- life just gets a whole lot better when there's another person next to you. When we live out our faith, when we stand fast as a disciple of Christ, enduring persecution, others know that there is a God who is great."
I left chapel wondering, "When it's you against the entire world and you're just feeling the persecution and people coming against you for being a Christian?" Does this happen to people here often? This is not the first time that I've gotten the overwhelming sense that some people walk around with a persecution complex.
Persecution complex: I found a wiki entry that sums it up pretty well -
"A persecution complex is a term given to an array of psychologically complex behaviours, that specifically deals with the perception of being persecuted, for various possible reasons, imagined or real.
It is also commonly displayed by people or groups whose beliefs actually are comparatively widespread, such as fundamentalist Christians.
Christian fundamentalists in the Bible Belt feel persecuted or oppressed whenever they find someone that doesn't share their particular worldview (such as creationism...). On closer examination of such claims it's more commonly the case that claims of persecution are better explained as annoyance at the removal of privilege or the curtailment of their ability to force their views on to others. The controversy over classroom prayer is raised as a case of persecution to prevent Christians from observing their religious beliefs, when in reality the rulings made in the 1960s and 1970s forbade state schools from sponsoring religious observances. Students are perfectly free to pray on their initiative and in their own time, yet it's easier for conspiracy nuts to bond if they can describe these rulings as being an attack on freedom of religion for Christians."
I'm sorry if "conspiracy nuts" offended you - I didn't write the entry, just posted it. I'm not making a blanket statement that no one around here has ever experienced legitimate persecution for their faith, but odds are, most people haven't. And yet some walk around feeling like they have or like they will the second they graduate and leave here.
Not long ago I also heard a vaguely similar sermon preached in which the pastor talked about a bill that might be on the national table in the not-too-distant future which might mean that churches would have to start paying taxes and that giving tithes would no longer count as a tax deduction. He used the word "persecution" to describe this. I can't even tell you how many sermons or talks or conversations I've heard where the term "persecution" has been applied to any minuscule pressure or discomfort that an individual Christian has felt in a situation in which they were a minority.
I can't emphasize it enough:
Just. Because. You. Are. Not. In. The. Majority. Does. Not. Mean. That. You. Are. Persecuted.
Based on just the number of chapel messages about or relating to this topic, I get this sense that lots of IWU grads might be going out into the world with a chip on their shoulder assuming that everyone they meet who does not agree with them one hundred percent is going to persecute them. Or that every time that someone disagrees with them in the realm of personal belief it means they are being persecuted.
I just don't get it. How dare we compare our pampered, privileged selves to that Pakistani pastor on death row? How dare we?
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