"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you."
John 15:18 - 19
We have it easy in America. We don't face the type of persecution our brothers and sisters in Christ face in many other parts of the world, the kind that can, and often does, result in loss of life.
What we do face is a more insidious persecution, one that is calculated to make us lose not our lives, but the strength of our witness and the convictions of our faith.
Two news stories recently dramatically point this out. Julea Ward, while enrolled in a graduate program in school counseling, consistently refused to counsel gay and lesbian students based on her Christian belief that homosexualtiy is morally wrong. The school ordered her to attend a "remediation" program - essentially a behavior modification program designed to "change her views" - and to begin to counsel homosexual clients, or face expulsion. She was expelled, and took the University to court. A second, similar case has been filed in Georgia.
The U.S. District Court just dismissed Ms. Ward's case. In part of the ruling, the judge wrote, "the university had a rational basis for requiring students to counsel clients without imposing their personal values". How can she be imposing her personal values if she never meets with them?
The ruling is in effect pouring a ten gallon vat of cooking oil on a slope that was slippery to begin with. An ongoing trend in our country has been the demonization of Christian beliefs - any Christian belief, not just those that define homosexuality as sin. We are no longer entitled to have our beliefs and as a result be branded as lunatics by the rest of the country - now we are to be "reeducated" whenever possible.
While the facts of both cases blur the issue a bit (both students should have foreseen what would happen when they enrolled in the program - the guidelines were clear), the trend is very, very obvious. It is hoped that Christians will either change their views in order to get along with the rest of society (and note how these cases are in effect putting into place economic sanctions (loss of career) on those who speak up about their faith beliefs), or simply shut up and go underground.
The problem with that is that neither option is an option if you really believe what you say you believe. We are called to be a witness both in what we say and how we live.
That witness can be eroded in large ways - like the cases above - and also in small, day to day ways, in the things we encounter on a small scale in "real life".
How well are you standing up for your faith?
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