A\u00a0couple months ago, a man speaking in chapel claimed that Christians in the U.S. were being persecuted more than ever. Our ideals and traditions are being challenged and dismissed, according to the long-time preacher.<\/p>\n
His claims sparked my interest. Often, I leave chapel with only a slight remembrance of the day\u2019s thoughts (due mostly to the fact that I\u2019ve just awoken 30 minutes prior), but my retention of that day\u2019s message stuck with me when I went to sleep that night.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still thinking about his claims a month or so later, too, and I can\u2019t help but disagree with his notion that we\u2019re being persecuted more than ever.<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, worshippers at a church in Pennsylvania clutched AR-15s in their church service, one that doubled as an advertisement for the Second Amendment. The church-goers claimed an AR-15 symbolizes the \u201crod of iron\u201d in the book of Revelation, according to a Washington Post story.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, evangelicals overwhelmingly supported a presidential candidate who has made multiple derogatory comments regarding minorities. He\u2019s used crude words to describe women, and he\u2019s faced multiple accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct.<\/p>\n
Christians increasingly send people to Latin American countries, quite joyfully and often, to share the gospel. Touting mission work in these countries, Christians claim monumental work, but want nothing to do with undocumented Latin Americans hurting in our own communities.<\/p>\n
We alienate people with taboo sins \u2014 like same-sex attraction \u2014 instead of making sure they have a place of community, refuge and love, like we would for someone who identifies as an alcoholic.<\/p>\n
Should I go on?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not being persecuted more than ever; instead, we\u2019re radicalizing ourselves against common sense, reason and humanity.<\/p>\n
I want to be clear, I know a large majority of Christians don\u2019t resemble any of these three examples. However, we are all certainly not doing our job in holding the church accountable to its systemic failures in an increasingly secularized culture that demands we love more people more often.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, to say that we\u2019re being persecuted more than ever in the U.S. adds insult to injury in communities where Christians are risking death to speak out about the gospel and against systems that do not embody Christ. While people in these countries are literally being forced underground to sing hymns together, we\u2019re alienating people from our pews and then crying persecution.<\/p>\n
If we\u2019re going to claim genuine persecution like this chapel speaker did, we first have to make sure we\u2019re doing our best in forming a church and a culture where we hold people to a standard of love that accepts them as they are, upholds them to the standard of God\u2019s word and and supports them in the process.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve become the church that cries persecution, and when the time comes that we actually need help, no one is going to take us seriously because of how we\u2019ve radicalized ourselves against a culture that needs us so badly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A\u00a0couple months ago, a man speaking in chapel claimed that Christians in the U.S. were being persecuted more than ever. Our ideals and traditions are being challenged and dismissed, according…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14705,"featured_media":10472,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14705"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10473,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10471\/revisions\/10473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}