“The ugly seeds that will one day bring forth a harvest of grave public injustice”

by Tom Goodman

Today’s LeaderLines was on preparing people to face hostility. When American Christians complain about persecution in this country, some think that such complaints ring hollow in light of the sufferings of believers in more oppressive parts of the world.

Denny Burk has a good response:

In what I’m about to say, I do not wish to suggest an equivalence between their suffering and the suffering of American Christians. We do well to recognize that some Christians suffer to the point of shedding blood, while others do not (Heb. 12:4). Nevertheless, Jesus spoke of persecution in terms that embrace the whole spectrum of human suffering and mistreatment. For example,

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me. Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. -Matt 5:10-12

Clearly, Jesus includes public insults and social marginalization underneath the aegis of persecution. This is not to say that suffering insults is equivalent to being murdered. It is to say that the hatred that leads to insults is on the same spectrum as the hatred that leads to murder (Matt. 5:21-22). Failure to acknowledge this fact blinds people to the ugly seeds that will one day bring forth a harvest of grave public injustice. We need to be clear-eyed about how those seeds are being sown right now before our very eyes. And we need to bear witness to injustice when others refuse to see. Losing the language of persecution to describe what is happening now in America will not serve us in that task.