Most stories of Christian persecution are really just acts of self inflicted premeditated martyr

When I was fifteen, I hopped on a plane with my girlfriend and best bud to head off to Mazatlán, Mexico. This was not a field trip or spring break; we were off to evangelize. We would be little disciples carrying out the Great Commission. Sure, we didn’t speak Spanish or have any notable skills whatsoever to help anyone, but was that really the point? This was Colonization 101, so we didn’t need anything special; it was just a learning exercise.

As the plane took off, my buddy Aaron looked over at me and said, “Do you think we will be persecuted?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

When we finally landed, a huge bus picked us up and drove us to a resort hotel where we were served some of the best food in the world. This was the first I had tasted flavors like this. Whatever they were selling at Taco Bell was not Mexican food; I knew that now. I looked at Aaron and said, “If this is persecution, sign me up!”

And I think that was precisely the lesson our church was trying to teach us.

Unholy Sh+t: An Irreverent Bible Study

Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Today’s Reading: Matthew 10:26-33

There was a recent social media trend where Evangelicals would make videos of themselves in different fake persecution scenarios. I saw a video of a dude with a shoe on his hand pretending someone was stomping on his head and another of a woman with ketchup all over her face like she was being beaten by an invisible enemy. It would all be kind of funny if it wasn’t absolutely terrifying. In the West, most leaders of our respective counties claim to be some variable flavor of Christian. The number of Jews, Muslims, and atheists in positions of power is pretty marginal. So who do they think will be doing all this persecuting? 

Jesus sent out his twelve into the known world to go tell everyone that “the Kingdom of God is here!” And not everyone was particularly thrilled to hear that message. Right before he told his disciples to go on the first-ever short-term missions trip, he said to them that things might get messy and even violent. 

If you think about it, that makes a lot of sense.

When he tells the apostles that they are supposed to go out to preach the good news, he gives them all the powers he has: they can heal the sick, raise the dead, and (presumably) multiply fish sticks. Jesus has taken twelve dudes with sketchy pasts and given them superpowers. More importantly, they are disrupting the healthcare and deathcare industries while giving food away for free. Basically, they are walking-free clinics with a drive-thru menu. I would imagine that this was pretty frowned upon by every business person in the towns they were visiting.

Imagine you are a funeral home director in some backwoods town, and suddenly you aren’t selling any more tombs. You wonder what’s going on, and then you see some dude who used to be a lowly fisherman providing preventative healthcare, reducing the number of people dying, and then he goes on and raises anyone he missed from the dead. That would probably make you pretty mad. Instead of being like, “I’ll be fine; they are giving out free food, so it’s not like I’ll starve or anything,” you would probably think, “I’ve got a tomb with your name on it, pal.”

Humans are kind of short-sighted like that.

Jesus was telling the disciples that they would be making people angry because they promised a new way of life, and on the whole, humans really f+cking hate change. 

Not to mention, they are living in a society with a pretty bleak class system. If someone has something bad happen to them, it is because they or their ancestors did something that made them deserve it—born blind? I guess your grandad did something sh+tty. Dying of leprosy? Well, maybe you shouldn’t have been doodling your neighbor's wife! But then Jesus just rolls up into town, saying, “Who you are, where you're from, don’t care what you did, as long as you love me.” Now, he is telling his disciples to go do the exact same thing. People have already tried to unalive Jesus multiple times, and so he presumes that the exact same thing will happen to his homies. So he gives them a little heads up that things might suck a bit.

You know what Jesus doesn’t say, “Listen, you are going to go to all these places, and sometimes, people aren’t going to like what you have to say. So here is what you are going to do. First, I want you to be strapped to the f+cking teeth, and if you even think someone will give you lip, blast ‘em. Second, run for the senate and try to pass as many laws as possible, making yourselves the dominant superpower in the land. Finally, when you have accomplished these goals, I want you to make anything that causes you to feel icky illegal.”

Nope, he didn’t say that at all. What he actually said is that “Don’t be afraid of any of those people. What is the worst they can do to you? Kill you! That’s nothing to be afraid of. My Daddy can do way worse than that; he could destroy your soul. So be more worried about doing right by God than what other people think of you or do to you.”

Jesus spends an entire chapter going on about all of the different horrible things that could happen. He says, “Everyone will hate you, even your family. They will betray you, throw you out, and disown you. But don’t worry about any of that. Oh, and people are definitely going to kill me; they will probably try and kill you too. Don’t worry about that, either. This world just doesn’t understand caring for your neighbor and making sure they are happy and healthy; that will probably piss off a lot of people. So buckle up, buttercup; it’s going to be a wild ride.”

I guess this begs the question of who is really living in the image of God; the people passing the laws or the people on the wrong end of the law? If being persecuted is a sign that you are aligned with God, I imagine being the powerbrokers means you are pretty far away from the will of God. 

Whenever I see Jesus doing something in the scriptures, he is not standing with the people in power. He surrounds himself with tax collectors, SWs, and people suffering from every ailment considered a curse. Jesus is out there holding hands with lepers, chatting alone with women, and lifting up anyone who is an outcast of society. To me, that means it’s pretty clear who Jesus would be hanging out with today: the drag queens, cam girls, and anyone else society was trying to pass a law against.

Listen, if you are out there kicking someone and then they shove you, that isn’t that you were persecuted. That is called self-defense. 

When people are just living their life, you say, “Nope, definitely that should be illegal; even though it doesn’t affect me in any way whatsoever, it goes against my own opinions, and so you shouldn’t be able to do it!” That is, by definition, persecution. 

What is there even to persecute Christians over? What are we disrupting in society? Are we providing free healthcare? Fighting the prison industrial complex to set the captives free? Closing down restaurants because we’ve made sure everyone in the world is being fed? Have we confronted injustice and inequality? Did we make sure everyone has a seat at the table so that everyone has representation? No, we aren’t. So there is nothing to persecute. We have utterly failed at our mission. No one hates Christianity for doing things that Jesus told us to do. People have Christianity because they are just living their lives, and we’ve come in and said, “Not on my watch, pal! I’ve misinterpreted the Bible to say that I’m supposed to stop you from doing things that make me feel funny in my pants.”

We aren’t worthy of persecution. Instead, we have become the very thing we were warned about. Christianity has turned father against son. Christianity has disowned our children and stoned our neighbor. 

Jesus told the disciples that when persecution comes, we are supposed to hold the line and stay firm until the end, but he also warns us, “Whoever disowns me, I will disown before my Father in heaven.” Earlier in Matt’s gospel, Jesus said that “Whatever you do for the last of my siblings, you do to me.” That means that if you have disowned someone for being gay or a drag performer or whatever legalistic ideology that would compel you to stop loving someone who has harmed no one else, that means you’ve disowned Jesus.

We learned the wrong lesson from Jesus warning us about persecution. We were supposed to continue to love people, even when it hurts. Instead, we decided we could legislate ourselves to the top. And I think that firmly makes us no longer Christians but the ones Jesus warned us about.