I once remember sitting around a table with an experienced pastor who said, “One needs the skin of a rhinoceros.” Tough skin. Fairly impervious to hurtful words, etc. I’m still praying and trying to develop that within myself, and I feel many Christians here ought to follow suit if they want to be impacting their community for Christ. Doing such will be difficult if one struggles to maturely handle persecution.
We should never be surprised by persecution. Jesus himself warned us about it, and all the Church’s founders experienced it. But persecution isn’t just a test to see if a Christian will denounce his/her doctrine. It’s also a test to see if said Christian will stay true to the values found in Scripture, namely grace, humble servanthood and biblical love.
Yes, I know (and am heartbroken, too) about the mockery Tim Tebow receives, the sitcom GCB, and the various ventures to remove religious imagery from the public square. One can’t deny that, as a Times columnist once said, our country’s strive for equality has a “blind spot for evangelicals.” There’s inequality in America. Believe me, I get it. But I really doubt airing concerns on television will change that.
How we respond to persecution is key in our strive for contagious Christ-likeness. Old Testament law virtually forbade retaliation, and punishments were very mild compared to other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. While the Romans persecuted and inadvertently eroded Jewish traditions and pride, Jesus spoke with a strong theme of loving non-resistance to evil. One intrigued atheist wrote of the early Christians in Rome, “They are mocked and bless in return. They are treated outrageously and behave respectfully to others.” Despite the failures of the Church, Christians have a subtle history, based on the exhortation of our doctrine, of standing out in love and grace amid violent dog-eat-dog societies.
And we need to show that love and grace during our seemingly many opportunities in persecution.
Let’s bless in return. Let’s not complain when we sense condescension from the media (Tebow didn’t). Let’s refrain from any aggressive knee-jerk reactions that fight to put our loving Christ’s name back in department stores during Christmas season. Let’s avoid giving any type of heated and disrespectful rhetoric, even if it’s ironically meant to preserve the Church’s reputation as a mature and loving community. A gracious, slow-to-anger, rhinoceros-skinned response of servanthood will help us to rightfully stand out as a Christ-like community.
But we don’t do this. Church leaders spend more time on Christian and conservative talk shows talking about the persecution we suffer in this country, rather than talking about how we’re looking to better pray for our leaders and love our neighbors. When we seem unforgiving and embittered in our persecution, no matter how just and righteous the cause, we’re not portraying ourselves as Christ-like, or even biblically loving or gracious.
Usually, as it turns out, our soapbox plan backfires. We shoot ourselves in the foot. The book/movie The DaVinci Code, as historically unfounded as it was, would not have had as big an impact on perceptions of textual criticism as it did if we hadn’t constantly ranted about it in the press. We portrayed ourselves as paranoid with a weak faith. Rob Bell’s book Love Wins would not have impacted the doctrine of Hell so much if there weren’t so many unwarranted, public, condemning tirades (from within the Gospel-sharing community!) on cyberspace. The media feasted on this fiasco and said that two-thousand-year-old theological views were being shaken (when they weren’t), and we looked irritable and unaware of our own theology.
In contrast, imagine if we, as Christians, didn’t retaliate or rashly react. Imagine if a Christian selflessly spoke against the persecution and neglect of others (e.g. the poor, the sick, the widow, the oppressed). Imagine if a Christian responded kindly to persecution and continued submitting, respecting, and praying for the sometimes disagreeable government, all the while serving and advocating the less fortunate, truly striving to be, as Paul calls it, “blameless and pure children of God.”
Let’s strive to be “not of the world” in how we react when we’re persecuted, mocked, or seen as less than equal. Our faith, from which flows our biblical, loving and charitable lifestyle, is meant to survive persecution and temptation from its own maturity and empowerment from Scriptural Truth. It needs no favors from the government or its resident cultural perception. It also will call us to a life of humble servanthood and at least some suffering.
And it will require us to have the skin of a rhinoceros.
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