The Chaff

Thursday, December 2nd, 2004

Persecution Complex, Part 2

More exploration on why Christians feel constantly under siege:

Christianity is a religion for the underdog.

The rejected, downtrodden, broken souls found comfort and hope in Jesus’s message. The Beatitudes can pretty much be summed up as “Blessed are the losers, for they shall win in the end.” Endurance, patience, turning the other cheek–all these traits belong to a religion engendered in an abused people in an occupied nation.

Christianity taught the sinners, the lepers, the dregs of society that God loved them, that they had value, that they would be happy in the afterlife. Christianity caught on among the slaves and poor classes in Rome; one of the accusations against the early Christians was that they were fomenting a slave rebellion.

Most of the saints were martyrs. Suffering for your faith is really what it’s all about. The whole “sell everything you have” and “take up your cross and follow me” ideas exhort Christ’s followers to persevere, to keep the faith, no matter what. Christians can’t be spiritually fulfilled unless they are bravely soldiering on in the face of remarkable adversity. They don’t know how.

Is it any wonder that Christians must maintain the persecuted stance even when there is no one out to get them? They don’t have any other paradigm to look to. All of Jesus’s message is targeted at the persecuted; there is very little advice for those who are in power, no rules for how the king should govern.

So is it any wonder that every time the Christians get into power, they attack the “enemies of God” with a viciousness born of desperate paranoia?

Christ didn’t come for kings.

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