The Good Christian Persecution Complex
Hey there bloggerati! It’s been a while. I’m afraid this months blogging effort has lapsed far behind others but I’m telling myself there’s a good reason for that. I’ve finished the first major redraft of a book I’m ghostwriting. I got a short-notice request for a coffee-table book of layman-friendly research articles that ate through a week, and in between, there has been man-flu, 2-year old molars and various kinds of growth spurts to hit Casa-Kennedy. In amongst this, something has been burning in my mind: the good Christian Persecution Complex. I want to take a moment to talk about it.
The truth is, it has been on my mind because we’ve been covering my least favourite book of the Bible at church recently: The Book of Revelation.
I hate it. I think I was put off it when I viewed a Kirk Douglas rapture film of some description when I was a touch too young, and thus my yearning for writings regarding apocalyptic prophecy died then and there. But there’s no denying it. Revelation exists. The powers that be saw fit to put it in the final cut of the Bible. So we’ve got to look at it, right? Nestled in Revelation chapter 2 is a reference to the church of Smyrna: the persecuted church. In his letter to the Smyrnaans, John encourages them not to fear prison, tribulation, poverty, or blasphemy, and promises they will overcome “the second death” and be given the crown of life. (Rev 2:12ff). Now, this is a beautiful note of encouragement to the persecuted church. But here is my strong feeling on it: we can’t call any opposition we might experience ‘persecution’. And perhaps not for the reasons you think.
Discomfort and bullying vs. persecution proper
Persecution is defined as “hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs; oppression.” Among its synonyms are victimization, maltreatment, abuse, tyrannisation, torture, torment, discrimination and other such terms. Over the course of the last five or so years, I’ve observed a lot of good Christians cry “persecution” when someone challenges their ideals on Facebook (which, oddly, seems to be where ‘real-life’ plays out these days. Weird.). While I do concede that cyberbullying is very real and also agree that for some, it takes real guts and incites real anxiety when they put their faith out there for the world to judge, I do have to offer up a caution: we can’t claim the martyrs crown because someone disagreed with our belief system.
Society is becoming increasingly pluralistic if you ask me. We don’t have one faith that everyone needs to subscribe to anymore and thus we can expect a bit more pushback when we say things like “Because the Bible says so.” Even if we look at Christianity alone, there are increasingly diverse ways of looking at our individual and collective efforts at following Christ. Two people who are well-educated, well-read and genuinely searching for the best way to live a Christian life can arrive at two very different conclusions. This means a lot of people can disagree with us, and even within the Christian faith alone, a lot of us can disagree with each other.
The results can often mean conflict, even nasty conflict. But here in this complicated and uncomfortable zone lies a truth we need to acknowledge: Discomfort, bullying and persecution aren’t the same things.
For clarity, I’ll offer up a qualification here: bullying is bad! I’m not a fan of bullying! Don’t do it. Don’t take part it in. Don’t stay silent if you witness it and can safely speak up and help the target. But don’t equate it with persecution. There may be overlap, but it is not the same thing. Persecution is often systematic and wide-spread. Bullying is more often one on one. Persecution involves large groups or power structures bearing down on minorities or marginalised people. Bullying is more targetted and nuanced. Persecution may involve bullying, but the reverse isn’t necessarily true.
And then there is discomfort. Discomfort is good sometimes. I’ve heard countless motivational speakers remind us that no growth happens inside our comfort zone, and I have to agree! We shouldn’t fear discomfort. It is part of life and sometimes good things come out of it! Persecution, however, is crushing, life-altering, and in so many cases, life-threatening. Open Doors USA, an organisation that exists for persecuted Christians, has this to say on the matter: “While Christian persecution takes many forms, it is defined as any hostility experienced as a result of identification with Jesus Christ. From Sudan to Russia, from Nigeria to North Korea, from Colombia to India, followers of Christianity are targeted for their faith. They are attacked; they are discriminated against at work and at school; they risk sexual violence, torture, arrest and much more.
In just the last year*, there have been:
Over 245 million Christians living in places where they experience high levels of persecution
4,305 Christians killed for their faith
1,847 churches and other Christian buildings attacked.
3,150 believers detained without trial, arrested, sentenced or imprisoned.”
These numbers are mind-boggling. But a further look into them (which came from the 2019 World Watch List) is this: Saudi Arabia didn’t even crack the top ten in terms of persecution against Christians. China didn’t crack the top twenty. The United Arab Emirates sat at number 45. Open Doors only carried the top 50 countries in terms of persecution on their list: The United States of America, Australia, and Great Britain did not make the list. Yet, at least from my observation, there is a growing idea that Evangelical Christians are being persecuted, and we seem to buy into this rhetoric all too easily.
The idea that we, in our privilege as some of the richest nations on earth, with our human rights advancements, our employment anti-discrimination laws, and our religious freedom acts, might be persecuted ignores the very real systematic targeting of our Christian brothers and sisters in other countries like North Korea, Somalia and Afghanistan – places where confessing Jesus as your saviour may cost you your life or your safety and livelihood.
The worst I will face here, in my white Judeo-Christian privilege, is someone calling me names on the internet. Bullying or harassment, but not high-level stuff that makes me legitimately fear for my safety. Not systematic torture, displacement and even murder of my people. I feel for those who face bullying because of the effects it has on them. I pray for them because that hurt is real. But it isn’t necessarily persecution and its unhelpful to confuse the two.
I have to make another distinction here: there may be many of us who have faced a bit of harassment, especially online, because of a “Christian” argument. This could be taken as a lesser form of persecution, and perhaps it is, but if you don’t have to worry that someone will even find out that you are a Christian (regardless of your thoughts on certain doctrines or current events), the odds are you aren’t being persecuted. I used to get called a “churchy” at work. I learned to take it in good humour. Later on, there was a swear jar at work put up for people who swore around me (because their assumption was that I would be offended. If only they hung around me now!) It made me a bit awkward in the beginning but then I took part in the game. I’ve been involved in my share of debates, but when I changed my posture from one of dogma to one of debate (with a particular bent towards connection and understanding rather than making the other person wrong), I found the world was a much softer place than I originally thought.
Why am I pointing it out? For a couple of reasons. One is that it is sometimes the abrasiveness in the delivery of our message that gets peoples backs up. People sense when someone is trying to make them wrong, and automatically defend their status quo. But the second reason is one that I find gravely concerning – There is a difference between persecution and the persecution complex. Both are harmful, one unspeakably so. But the persecution complex is something that can isolate and divide unnecessarily, especially if a person believes they are suffering persecution when they aren’t.
As I said a few paragraphs up, I’ve seen Christians cry persecution over Facebook stoushes they willingly waded into. I’ve seen mindboggling claims that the President of the United States is being persecuted (i.e. victimized on an international scale). Like…wow! While repeated efforts at convincing an unwilling world of an unpopular opinion (especially on social media) may reap repeated disagreements or arguments that certainly have a negative effect on a person’s state of mind, it is not necessarily persecution. Nor do I think you can claim persecution when you are the most powerful man in the free world. Holding that position of privilege is the antithesis of persecution.
Of late, I’ve started listening a little harder to my friends who are people of colour, or who belong to the LGBTQ+ community. I’ve been confronted by something I noticed here: we straight, white, cis-gendered, Judeo-Christian, middle-class westerners can be blissfully unaware of our own profound privilege and, by virtue of this, confuse the loss of that privilege with persecution. A better word for what we are feeling would be, I don’t know, crestfallen? Uncomfortable? But systematically victimized and oppressed, not so much. We might find ourselves needing to learn resilience a bit more, but the answer to this problem is compassion and self-development not fear.
Alan Noble, in an article for The Atlantic, pointed out some very real flaws in the evangelical tendency to buy into the persecution complex. He said: “Persecution has an allure for many evangelicals. In the Bible, Christians are promised by Saint Paul that they will suffer for Christ, if they love Him (Second Timothy 3:12). But especially in contemporary America, it is not clear what shape that suffering will take. Narratives of political, cultural, and theological oppression are popular in evangelical communities, but these are sometimes fiction or deeply exaggerated non-fiction—and only rarely accurate. This is problematic: If evangelicals want to have a persuasive voice in a pluralist society, a voice that can defend Christians from serious persecution, then we must be able to discern accurately when we are truly victims of oppression—and when this victimization is only imagined.”
But the last thing I want readers of this article to do is mock those who are suffering from a persecution complex. Here’s why:
The Persecution Complex is a Worrying Mental Delusion
The Merriam-Webster Complex Medical Dictionary calls it “the feeling of being persecuted especially without basis in reality.” In individuals, the persecution complex may be called a persecutory delusion and fall within a range of “delusional disorders’ in the DSM V (the diagnostic handbook of the psychological profession). In groups though, it is an interesting and perhaps dangerous phenomenon. I found a study resource online that helpfully described a persecution complex in the following way: “A persecution complex is a type of delusion. A delusion is a fixed, irrational belief that one is convinced is true despite evidence to the contrary. In the case of people suffering with delusions of persecution, the fixed irrational belief is that others are plotting against and/or following them. Signs that someone may be struggling with a persecution delusion include:
Increased isolation.
Paranoid behaviors
Verbal statements that make little sense or are not rational.
An increase in angry outbursts.”
If we were to witness this in a friend, we would have the right to be very concerned. But with the rise of cultural and political discourse in the public sphere (i.e. media), it isn’t uncommon for people to face off against a strong or emotive and opposing viewpoint. When this hit to the ego (and we all have an ego, or a sense of self) is combined with a persecution complex, things can get ugly.
So what happens when a group of people holds to the same ideals and experiences similar opposition? You have the potential for a group persecution complex to develop. You have the potential for the group to isolate itself, to believe society is against it, to develop an “us versus them” mentality, and for verbal statements rooted in the persecution delusion to be met with confirmation bias and thus become part of groups’ folklore. My fear is that this can then become the narrative of their lived experience and entrench the persecutory delusion even further.
Let me be real here: this is a terrible situation. Imagine believing society is against you, and the only people who truly understand you are part of a particular group. Imagine constantly thinking everything people write online is geared at you. Imagine the mental and emotional toll that would take. I could unpack this a lot further but I hope the case is clear: Even if the persecution is imagined, the effects of the persecution complex can be very, very real.
What do we do about it? I can’t give you all the answers, because I’m certainly not the authority on this issue. I write this for awareness and reflection more than anything. But I can say this: start with compassion. Regardless of whether someone is going through persecution proper or experiencing a persecution complex, something is going down here. You can’t fix the former easily. You can pray, and donate to good causes. You can be part of organisations working to end persecution. But if a friend of yours is experiencing a persecution complex, you can’t tell them they’re idiots and should get over it. That may just reinforce the delusion.
There could be something a lot deeper going on. The persecution complex isn’t uncommon in cults. It can also be part of mental illness. It may simply be a way of externalising some deep internal unrest. Either way, its tough stuff. It might require professional help to shift.
Approach it with care. But know this: we can’t fix a problem if we can’t accurately diagnose it. If it isn’t persecution, if its a persecution complex, then the system isn’t the problem. The problem is a lot closer to home.
Just some thoughts! Hopefully thats writer’s block out of the way! lol. I’ll return next week friends!
Is Preaching Still Relevant?
This instalment of the “Relevance” series is a bit of a treat – because I didn’t have to write it! First guest blogger! Let me introduce you to Tom Postlethwaite. Tom is one of my favourite people to kick around ideas with. He’s been a Christian since he was 14 and is currently studying a Bachelor of Theology, after having felt the call towards Pastoring – a call which was seen first by a bunch of people around him (often a good indicator/confirmation)! He lists his hobbies as “cricket and Netflix” and neglected to mention in his bio that he’s a pretty handy drummer who has the rare knack of being able to run a worship service from the drum kit. So there’s that too. When I kicked off the “relevance” topic on the blog, he mentioned to me that he had thoughts about preaching…aaaand I hadn’t even thought about it. So here it is! Why preaching is still relevant today. Thanks Tom Pos!
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“A sermon often does a man most good when it makes him most angry. Those people who walk down the aisles and say, “I will never hear that man again,” very often have an arrow rankling in their breast.”
– Charles Spurgeon –
When was the last time you heard a message you disagreed with? Not because it was theologically bad, but because it really challenged you about how you go about your life. How often have you made a big change in your life when a preacher confronted you with the truth found in God’s Word? I would say far too seldom in this day and age.
The preaching of yesteryear, by impassioned people like Charles Spurgeon, has seemingly been lost – lost to the instant-culture we are now a part of, lost to people who want to be comfortable and not challenged, lost to the money-grab that has become some mega-churches. Pastors begin pleading with their congregation not to go elsewhere, rather than pleading that people hear the gospel and be changed by it.
We may not want to go back to being pricked by a sermon’s challenging sting but, if Christianity is to thrive in a post-Christian world, we need to.
Preaching has two main components to it: teaching and proclaiming. It seems that, in this individual-centric culture, teaching is being prioritized over proclaiming. It is easy to see why: teaching is far easier than proclaiming. Teaching appeals to the audience’s idea that we have control over the message we hear. Half-an-hours’ worth of preaching summarized in one, or a few, neat take-home lessons – packaged with a live concert and the promise of a comfortable seat awaiting us next week.
Is that not what preaching is supposed to be about? Is that not how Jesus did it?
Like I said, this is a part of good preaching. Jesus taught all the time, using parables and stories as his main teaching method. He desired for his audiences to learn truths about the world and the kingdom, and teaching them via stories was a great way to do so. Take Jesus’ section of parables found in Matthew 13, for example. When we read it in our Bibles today, we find it broken up into neat little sections – one labelled ‘the Parable of the Sower’, another ‘the Parable of the Weeds’, and so on – all so that Jesus’ teaching may be easily comprehended and understood.
But if Jesus’ preaching was all teaching, then he either wasn’t the Messiah, or we are completely misrepresenting his words.
Paul Scott Wilson claims that the second part of preaching, proclaiming, is just as important as teaching – and has mostly fallen by the wayside [1]. Again, it is not hard to discover some of the reasons why the art of proclamation has become a little lost. It is completely focused on God. Using the example of a tour of an historic house, teaching would be like viewing the house but proclaiming would be like meeting the owner. The owner of the house of the Word of God, being God himself, and I should think there are some people in our congregations who would be very keen on delaying that interaction as long as they could.
When we take proclaiming who God is seriously, people will be introduced to the Author of the pages we are teaching from. It is this that will take preaching from being a declining Sunday tradition to a powerful vehicle of transformation.
This is also what will rub people up the wrong way. God is unapologetically God, unapologetically holy, and unapologetically offended by sin. When we proclaim this holy God – this sin-hating God – people will surely feel challenged and uneasy in his exposing light. Mostly because they have not been introduced to Him for quite some time, if not ever.
That is where the pastoring comes into the equation, when people are uncomfortable with the sin in their lives, where will they turn? But that is another point for another day.
When preachers become passionate about proclaiming God from the pulpit, that is when our churches will change and Christians will become ignited with the Spirit. The passion from the preacher will keep the art of preaching alive.
Not just a fake, transparent passion, but a true unrest with the lost souls that a preacher is confronted with every week. A deep frustration that time is running out and each message preached is important. Not a desire for bigger congregations, but deeper congregations. Not comfortable audiences, but audiences that are driven from the easy lives they are living and desire the truth. A hunger and thirst for a crowd that hungers and thirsts for more of God.
And this is driven by the preacher. Philip Brooks says this [2]:
“Preaching is the bringing of truth through personality.”
When the preacher adds themselves to the teaching of the Word and the proclamation of God himself, the congregation gets to see the truth in action. Zack Eswine makes the claim that [3]:
“Biblical preaching will meet this challenge (of reaching people in a “post-everything” world) only when a generation of preachers remembers where they have been.”
Preaching is essential to the Church because it puts into human words the heavenly truths we find in Scripture. The power and passion that testimony provides is a crucial tool in teaching congregations and proclaiming the character of the God we serve.
Ultimately, preaching is not relevant because the preacher is powerful. Preaching gains its relevancy as we proclaim the power of God.
“If I only had one more sermon to preach before I died, it would be about my Lord Jesus Christ. And I think that when we get to the end of our ministry, one of our regrets will be that we did not preach more of Him. I am sure no minister will ever repent of having preached Him too much.”
Charles Spurgeon.
Bibliography:
3Eswine, Zack, Preaching to a Post-Everything World: Crafting Biblical Sermons that Connect with Our Culture (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2008).
2 Merida, Tony, Faithful Preaching: Declaring Scripture with Responsibility, Passion, and Authenticity (Nashville, B&H Publishing Group, 2009).
Smith, Steven W., Dying to Preach: Embracing the Cross in the Pulpit (Grand Rapids, Kregel Publications, 2009).
1 Wilson, Paul Scott, Setting Words on Fire: Putting God at the Centre of the Sermon (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2008).
[1]Wilson, Paul Scott, Setting Words on Fire: Putting God at the Centre of the Sermon (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2008).
[2]Quoted by Tony Merida in his book, Faithful Preaching: Declaring Scripture with Responsibility, Passion, and Authority.
[3]Eswine, Zack, Preaching to a Post-Everything World: Crafting Biblical Sermons that Connect with Our Culture (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2008).