Even though the Bible does not explicitly define what is persecution, we can all spot it as we read along the Bible, can’t we? Since the days of the Old Testament, God’s people have always faced persecution. Prophets were persecuted whenever they carried messages the people didn’t want to hear. They were reviled, tortured, and killed. The persecutions did not stop in the New Testament. Stephen became the first martyr in Christianity when he was stoned, and executed, in front of the Sanhedrin. The Apostle Paul was beaten with rods, jailed, and stoned because he refused to stop preaching Christ.
Persecution in the Bible is the harassment, unfair or even cruel, treatment of a person because of his or her beliefs in God. Today, there is persecution against Christians happening in North Korea, Somalia, Sudan or Iran. According to Open Doors’ World Watch List, some 317 million face very high or extreme levels of persecution every day for their faith in Christ Jesus. But persecution does not have to be torture, imprisonment, even death. Lower levels of persecution, such as being victims of insults, slander and lies, are forms of persecution too. Although they are lower in intensity, they are still persecution, nonetheless. For this reason, when I think of persecution, I like to think of things that one does to make life harder for the person who walks with God. A reply to what we wrote about our faith on social media. When someone enters a room, he or she speaks to everyone in the room, but not us.
It is not fun to talk about persecution, is it? We all wish we can be left alone to follow Christ, and skip the persecution part. But that is not likely to happen. Why do I say this? Because the Apostle Paul wrote, “all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” The reason why he wrote this is because when we live our lives differently from that of the people of this world, they don’t like it, and they need to make our lives difficult in order for them to make themselves feel better. We try to live our lives driven by the love of God. They, on the other hand, live their lives driven by the love of sin, and worldly things. The idea of living holy lives makes no sense to the people of this world. They can never understand why anyone would want to live this way. As you can already see, this naturally creates a tension for Christians living side by side with the people of this world.
When Paul said, “all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”, he probably didn’t mean if we desire to live lives true to what we believe, we are to expect persecution. It may, or may not, happen to us. Rather, he probably meant we shouldn’t be surprised if we are persecuted. We shouldn’t feel as if something strange is happening. Paul warned us this would happen. We are doing it right. It is unlikely you and I face persecution daily for our faith living in Federal Way or Northeast Tacoma. Regular persecution is already happening in parts of our world, but not where we live, at least not yet. On the other hand, if we live our lives day after day, and we don’t face any persecution, we are probably not doing it right.
None of us should say we enjoy being persecuted. Being persecuted is not fun. We get upset when someone tries to make our lives harder. We feel sad when someone decides to end their friendship with us, because of our faith. For this reason, some Christians choose to live in ways so as to avoid being persecuted. Unfortunately, the only way to achieve that is to live like the people of the world. If we want to avoid being persecuted by the world, the answer is easy. Pretend we think like them, talk like them, copy our lives after theirs, and be them. We hide under the radar so no one knows Christ is our Savior and Lord. I guarantee you we will not see any persecution.