It’s been said that American evangelicals have a persecution complex, that we are hyper-sensitive to even the smallest slight against our religious beliefs. The accusation is that we are quick to claim that we are being persecuted, even in relatively mundane situations where no violence has occurred. For example, we often equate dismissive comments by atheist professors with persecution, but is it? Granted, the power structure and knowledge differential between teacher and student is significant, and dismissive or incendiary comments from the person at the top of that structure carry a special weight, but we shouldn’t see this as persecution. We tend to view any opposition to our faith as the persecution of the righteous, but maybe we aren’t always being opposed by people because our love for Christ and Christlike behavior are so evident to them. Maybe we’re opposed and “persecuted” because we’re being jerks — because, all too often, we actually fail to be like Christ. We need to be careful with the word persecution.

Real persecution is a program to exterminate a group of people because of their religious or ethnic identity. It involves violence (though it is not always murderous), oppression, and subjugation. In the case of religious persecution, the goal is for the religious person to renounce his beliefs and adopt whatever beliefs his persecutors think he should have. If the believer refuses to recant, then the penalty is either death or imprisonment. Persecutors operate with the power and permission of the state (or, at least, enact their violence while the state looks the other way) because the aim of persecution is the extermination of a particular group or belief. Many Christians around the world are experiencing this right now, perhaps more than ever before. You can learn more about what the violence and oppression that our brothers and sisters in Christ are experiencing today at The Voice of the Martyrs.

Understanding the Times

Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John all told us that we should expect to suffer for our faith, but not all suffering is equal. It dishonors the real suffering and martyrdom of these saints when we call what we experience in America persecution. The devil and the world have many ways to achieve their goal of seeing Christians renounce their faith. Sometimes they use violence. Other times they use intimidation or opposition. Other times they use seduction. American Christians are far more likely to be seduced away from the faith than intimidated or oppressed out of it.

Do you remember when you first became a Christian? Or, if you’re like me and were raised in a Christian home, can you recall that time in your life when you made the faith your own? For many of us, those are the moments of the birth of new life in our souls, of freshness and forgiveness, of a passionate love for Jesus burning in our hearts. It’s the moment of first love, when God reveals himself to us with grace and clarity, and we finally understand how deeply loved we are by our Creator — that is when our love for God explodes out of our hearts and flows out into the world around us through our words and actions. We love God so much that we just can’t hide it!

Let’s be honest: It’s hard to stay in that place. It’s difficult to maintain that level of passion and emotion over the course of our lives. I told Jesus this in prayer the other day. I said, “Look, it’s hard to love you when you’re not physically present on the earth. I don’t mean that you’re hard to love, because your character and the things you’ve done for me — how can I not love you? I’m just saying that it’s difficult to maintain this love in your absence.” I’m not trying to make excuses for myself, I’m just trying to guilt Jesus into returning right now! (It’s not working.) I recognize that I was speaking purely from an emotional level (frustration, disappointment) in that prayer, and that Jesus’s absence is no excuse to not be present to the passion of our love for him. After all, he has given us the Holy Spirit to be with us, and he is always urging us back to our first love.

But the world tends to distract us from our love for Jesus. The tedium and monotony of our daily routines, the triviality of consumerism, and the banality of entertainment have a way of dulling the senses — especially our deepest feelings for our Savior. The more that our love for God is at the surface of our souls and not buried beneath the anxieties and distractions of modern life, the more we will feel a passionate love for him. I am not as passionate about God when I spend a lot of time on my phone. There’s something about that screen that can pull me away from the One I’m supposed to feel most passionately about. Love isn’t a feeling, of course, but we do feel love. We have an emotional response to love and our presence to it, and the more in touch with that love we are, the more we will feel it on an emotional level. Love is like heat, and the closer we get to it the more it triggers our spiritual senses.

What Jesus is after from the Church in Ephesus, and from us, is that they become present to the passion of their love for him. It’s not that they don’t love; it’s that they have grown cold to love. Their souls have become distant from their first love, and a great chasm of fear and rule-keeping has opened up between them and Jesus. They didn’t fall off the path, necessarily, they just forgot why they were walking on it and who they were following.