Browsing Tag

persecution

Theology

“Radical” review: 161-182

We are approaching the end of Radical, finally– there’s only one more chapter after this one, and then we’re moving on. On that note, recommendations for the next book review would be wonderful. I’m thinking about tackling a purity culture book this time around– maybe something like I Kissed Dating Goodbye or When God Writes Your Love Story? Is there a book that’s really popular in purity culture circles today?

Today’s chapter of Radical— “Living When Dying is Gain”– is one of the few chapters where I agree with the starting premise. It’s happened a handful of times through this reading (more often than any other book I’ve reviewed with the exception of Zimzum, I should note), but each time I ultimately disagree with the final conclusion, because David and I are working with very different theological underpinnings.

He focuses this chapter around Matthew 10, which, to be honest, has a bunch of contradictory and perplexing stuff in it. Jesus forbids the disciples from going to Gentiles and says “I do not bring peace but a sword,” but just a few chapters later he condemns those who take up swords. Needless to say, there’s a few things that seem to complicate this chapter that David just breezes right over– most noticeably here:

Out of all the amazing statements in Matthew 10 this one may be … the most important: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

… Jesus was telling them–and us–that we need to fear God, not people. God is the ultimate judge, and he holds eternity in his hands. (175)

The problem with this is that even the most cursory glance at the commentaries would tell you that we’ve argued over who exactly “the One” is for centuries. Some say it’s God, some say it’s Satan, and some people argue that it’s neither. But David ignores the contested nature of this verse and the translation difficulties and spends the last seven pages building his argument off this interpretation. Because he personally reads the text as “fear God who can [and will] destroy your soul and body in hell,” he extrapolates from that to argue how we need to see death as the ultimate reward and how this physical existence doesn’t matter (179).

Obviously that is where David and I definitely part ways. However, our paths diverged a long while before this because our basic assumptions about Matthew 10 are radically different. He reads the instructions Jesus gave to the apostles there and decided to see it in terms of the Christian missionary movement (175-78). He views Matthew 10 through the lens of missionary biographies and stories about Christian persecution. When he reads Jesus talking about how he’s “sending you out like sheep among wolves,” the way he thinks about it is colored by a life spent reading about Jim Elliot and Fox’s Book of Martyrs.

Except when he says that “It’s Christian history. Persecution and suffering as we see today in the Middle East, Asia, an Africa have marked followers of Christ from the beginning of the church” (168), he’s speaking ethnocentrically. He’s blithely ignoring the “Christian history” of things like the Crusades, or the Protestant campaign against Catholics that frequently led to burning priests. Modernly, Christians spread hate against Muslims that frequently lead to their deaths, to American Muslim homes being destroyed, and their Mosques attacked or defaced. In fact, he does that himself when he says “The tribe was 100 percent Muslim. Talk about sheep in the middle of wolves” (165).

Christians aren’t the only persecuted religious group. Far from it. Buddhists persecute Muslims in Myanmar, atheists are persecuted, sometimes killed, for their lack of belief in many countries, and Muslims persecute Hindus. David is either ignorant of this– something he cannot afford to be considering his work in global missions– or he is deliberately misleading his readers.

He puts forward that “if we really become like Jesus, the world will hate us. Why? Because the world hated him” (167), but he never bothers to ask the question why did they hate Jesus? The traditional evangelical understanding is that people hate Jesus because they don’t want to feel guilty about their sin. They want to live their lives in peace, unbothered by any attempts by Christians to tell them that what they’re doing is wrong and they could go to hell for it. They don’t like feeling convicted, so they hate either Christ or his messenger.

I read this passage differently. Because my view of the Bible is rooted in liberation theology, I read “I send you out as a sheep among wolves” and I’m reminded of the protests in Ferguson, or the protests against Trump rallies in Chicago and Kansas City last week. To me it’s clear that standing up against oppression and hatred is what Christ has called us to do, and few things earn you more hatred and revilement in this country than daring to take a stand against bigotry. Don’t obey, don’t comply, don’t keep your head down and keep walking– you could be assaulted, arrested, tear gassed, shot.

I agree with David that proclaiming the life and message of Christ can be dangerous to live out. We just fundamentally disagree about why. I believe there is something in the message of the Cross that many find deeply challenging because I believe that the Cross is a subversion of power. I believe that Jesus’ life flies in the face of Empire and systemic, institutionalized oppressions. If I am called to be like him– which I believe I am– then yes, I’m going to be hated, because Empire hates resistance. Those in power will always try to dominate and control the ones who have no power, and will always be shocked and then vengeful when we rebel. When we do not contort our faces when the old men say “smile,” when we step off a sidewalk at a protest, when we stand proudly in the face of a heil führer salute, those in power will loathe us.

Like Jesus said, we should not be surprised by that. We should not be surprised when our friends and family abandon us when we fight against racism, when they betray us and spread lies about us because we’re a feminist, when we’re disowned and thrown out into the street for being LGBT+ . . .

However, unlike David, I think that our resistance matters. I have hope that each time we fight can make a difference. I believe that participating in Jesus’ vision to bring the kingdom of God to earth is the whole point of the gospel.

March 14, 2016 by
Theology

the sky is falling, overreactions, and facts

sky is falling

If you have conservative Christian friends on facebook, then you’ve probably seen this article on how Christians are about to be court martialed for talking about Jesus. The first time I saw this article appear in my news feed, my eyebrows shot up into my hairline. A few years ago I would have begun immediately panicking and doing everything I could to stop this terrible atrocity from taking place (i.e., signing this petition). But, that was then. Today, I searched for the headline, realized that there wasn’t a legitimate news source reporting on it, and I also noticed that most of the places running the story were . . . well, corners of the internet I’m familiar with, and no longer trust. Yesterday, the Washington Post covered it, and they actually went and obtained some facts. Like, an actual statement from the Pentagon, instead of the inflammatory, inciting words of a rather intense political idealist.

But, my instantaneous thoughts when I read all of the original articles were tempered by my own personal experience. I’m a military brat, so I have a passing familiarity with military procedure and policy, and military culture. It has been long-established military procedure to reprimand anyone who gets pushy about their faith– or non-faith. It’s just not allowed, especially because of the rank system. That’s one of the first things people miss: military life is absolutely nothing like civilian life. We don’t even operate under the same court system. Military personnel are required to live by a stricter code; they still have First Amendment rights like every other American, but the practice of those rights is a helluva lot more limited than it is for say, someone like Westboro.

And, as someone who feels a tear-jerking patriotic swell anytime I see a “God and Country” bumper-sticker, I can tell you, honestly, that the Christian culture in the military can be obnoxious at times. Just like Christians everywhere else, we can get pushy and demanding and get carried away and do or say something ridiculous. Which is what Weinstein, the man who called proselytizing “treason,” is reacting against. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it happen, and it’s not pretty.

In short, the sky is not falling.

So why did so many people run around acting like it was?

The answer lies in something called the persecution complex. This is not a new idea, and it’s certainly not limited to Christians. I’ve seen it happen in pretty much any group of people who collectively feel passionately about something. Sometimes the concern is valid, and should not be dismissed as merely the persecution complex when that’s not what is happening. Marginalized groups who talk about racism aren’t reacting to nothing, and when feminists start talking about the War on Women, we’re not making it up. But, sometimes, our passion and fervor can run away with us and we start jumping at shadows.

In my experience, however, conservative Christians are almost entirely reacting against a perceived threat that just doesn’t exist. Just because our government isn’t operated purely on fundamentalist views of “biblical principles” doesn’t mean that Christianity is under attack.

One of the problems with the persecution complex and how it shows up in Christianity is that there’s a couple of verses that have been twisted in order to teach that if you’re a Christian, you should expect opposition:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” — Romans 9:33
“Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.” — I John 3:13
“If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” — John 15:19

There’s a tactic that shows up a lot in Christian sermons and discussions, and it’s illustrated by the above. When there’s more than one verse that sounds like they’re talking about the same thing, then, suddenly, it’s perfectly alright to ignore context– having more than one verse means that you are using Scripture to “comment on Scripture,” and that’s supposedly sound hermeneutics. Wrong, but that’s worth its own post. So, before we move on, let’s look at context.

John’s passage is in the middle of Jesus’ explanation of the role of the body here on earth, where he uses the Vine & Branches metaphor. He follows that depiction of grace, growth, community, and love with a warning: our life isn’t going to be a bed of roses, and sometimes, people are going to despise us. On occasion, whole governments have tried to expunge Christianity. This happens, I’m not going to deny it (although Christians aren’t the only ones singled out for their beliefs). This passage, however, does not give Christians free license to believe that simple disagreements are persecution. Just because someone doesn’t think the way we do and feels strongly about it doesn’t make what they’re doing “hate.”

I John, 3:13 is in the middle of verses that are focused entirely on the body of Christ loving and caring for each other. In my Bible, the section is headed “Love One Another,” and its concluded with an entire portion dedicating to laying down our lives, and not closing our hearts to the needy. So, it seems pretty clear that if the world does hate us (and again, disagreement is not hate), what’s our reaction supposed to be? Run around screaming and Signing All the Petitions? Not exactly– we love,  and we continue on with our lives.

The Romans passage is probably the one that’s been the most twisted and the one most harmed by terrible applications. This is the verse a lot of people turn to when they start talking about the Gospel being inherently offensive (which, problems), and the fact is that the context has nothing to do with how it usually gets applied. First of all, it’s in the middle of Romans 9, which I will be honest and say I barely understand. But, it appears at the end of the chapter, after a thorough dissection of justice and the law. And, verse 33 follows Paul’s question about how some have conflated the Gospel with the Law. He’s making a reference to Isaiah 8:14, which, ironically, is preceded by this little gem:

For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warmed me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, “Do not call conspiracy all that his people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.”

So, a verse that in the New Testament, completely removed from any context, has been used to say that “the Gospel offends people,” is actually a reference to not believing in conspiracies and living in dread.

Huh. Irony.

I’ve seen the damage that this “persecution complex” can do. It allows people who claim to be Christians to be filled with vileness and hate. It’s been used to justify the actions of so many preachers and evangelists who use this verse as a “get out of jail free card” anytime they want. Oh, you’re offended? Obviously, it’s not me and what I’ve said and how I’ve treated you, it’s the Gospel! You’re just offended by Jesus, and the Bible, and you think it’s foolish. That’s not my problem, it’s yours. And oh, poor me, the world hates me and says I’m a bigot and a hater, welp, the Bible said they’d say that! I’m just preaching truth here!

Things like this are why it’s hard for me to stay quiet. Because this, this is wrong. Not every single person who posts conspiracy articles on facebook are like this, and I’m not accusing them of that, but this is where that mentality leads. This is how Scripture, which is overflowing with love and grace, has been used to hurt and wound. Because of three verses surrounded on all sides by a call to love, Christians have formed an entire system for evaluating each other: how persecuted are you? Because, after all, a good Christian is one who everyone hates.

May 3, 2013 by