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CHRISTIANS' RESPONSES PROMPT PERSECUTION -knee-jerk reactions and civil suits aren't biblical
By Dorothy Anne Seese

Christians had it so easy in America for so long they have no idea how to face what they perceive as "persecution" for their faith. I'm not saying it isn't there, but the knee-jerk reactions to every perceived slight is exactly what the opposition wants, and Christians never fail to disappoint the gainsayers.

This group of Christians would never have made it in the early church when persecution was the rule rather than the exception. Some are so rabid about the idea that the United States is a "Christian nation" that they want to go back beyond the New Testament to the Law of Moses, something never even given to the Gentiles and a system of laws that ended when the veil of the temple was rent in two at Christ's death on the cross.

The issue should never be that Christians fear persecution. The sole issue is whether there is discrimination against one faith as opposed to other faiths in violation of the First Amendment, both the establishment and free exercise clauses. The issue is that of constitutional law and application, not Christians' so-called rights. We have no rights because our citizenship is in Heaven. As humans we should have constitutional rights, but not as a church, not because we are Christians.

The church did not grow because of victories in courts and the success of litigation, it grew because of the power of the gospel itself (Romans 1:16) and that power has not changed. Christians are the worst for forwarding wild hoaxes via email about some new law being passed to persecute them and begging for signatures to a nonexistent petition to go to some network station or government agency. ...

...Most Christians today will speak at length about how this nation was founded for the purpose of religious freedom. Then they turn around and want state protection for the church. Say what? God won't do, we need the state? Oh my. I fear for my brethren who have that view. I also fear that it is the flagrant lack of love being displayed by the church people, the engagements with the world's values, the strange interpretations of the Bible being proclaimed, and the abuse by preachers of note that have brought Christianity into ridicule. Our silent suffering would doubtless command more respect and wonder from judges than our fiery blasts at the heathen in our midst. Jesus bewildered Pontius Pilate with His silence. Isn't He our example?...

...Either way, God is in control or He is simply not God! Forcing a heathen to stop one sin makes him no less a candidate for Hell or will in any manner make him a candidate for salvation, only God can and does do that. So all the Christians running around trying to cure America's ills when they cannot get together on how much water is required for baptism merely generates strife. It engenders more hatred among the heathen because we set ourselves up as targets by our actions. Then rather than going into serious prayer, we run to the lawyers who are by and large members of the ACLU. That is weird behavior, and must make the heathen wonder just how seriously we do take our faith and how large our God really is. Get to the end of your rope some day, as some of us have, and find out what great things God can do.

Let the heathen alone! For mercy's sake,...