Persecution in USA: Part I - Christian Foundations

The principles of genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations, are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority.  The man, therefore, who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that Book may be accessory to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer...

- Noah Webster, 1833

In the last post, I briefly mentioned Christian persecution.  We often think of persecution abroad because, quite frankly, we do not find ourselves suffering much for our faith here in the US.  However, the tide is changing.  Fox News reported that Pentagon officials met with Mikey Weinstein, of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  He is urging the military to make proselytizing of one’s faith a criminal offense subject to court martial.  He characterized the sharing of one’s faith as unconstitutional calling it “spiritual rape” by “fundamentalist Christian religious predators.”  The story is also covered here.  

There is a lot that could be discussed and argued regarding this horrific statement.  Since space is limited I am going to discuss this news report in two parts.  This will be a mult-part series as we first, examine our American Christian Heritage.  Future posts will examine the Biblical principles of persecution and evangelism in the face of persecution, for I fear it is coming soon.   

A Slave of Christ

I have been offline for several years.  After being spiritually challenged I have come back online.

I attended a Voice of the Martyrs conference a couple of weeks ago.  My wife and I have been a supporter of this ministry for a while now as I have had compassion for those suffering in the name Christ, but honestly I never really fully comprehended the extent of their suffering or how it should affect me.  After the conference I felt my heart bound to our brothers and sisters around the world and have been intensely studying the persecuted church.  If we are the body of Christ, consider this analogy -

The Brotherhood of Fellowship!

Recently I was speaking with another officer to ask him how things were going. He has been on the department for less than a year and is working midnight shift. We spoke of the troubles of adjusting to strange work hours, the impact of shift work on families, and how to personally deal with the stress of constantly witnessing the evil that humans perpetuate against each other. At the conclusion of our conversation, I reflected on how important it is to remain in fellowship with each other.

What is fellowship? The brotherhood of the blue line is well known. I can go anywhere in the country and find an instant friend in anyone who wears the badge – that is the Police Brotherhood. However, that brotherhood is not the type of fellowship to which I am referring.

Love is a verb!

How many times have police officers gone to a home for a domestic violence call and been told, “I don’t love him anymore, I want a divorce.” How many fellow officers do you know who have said the same thing about their spouse? We approach love as if it is emotion that we cannot control. If love is uncontrollable, unpredictable, and based upon our emotional whims we are in serious trouble when we are instructed by God to love others. So what is love? Is it an emotion or an action? This is what we will explore in this posting.

Loving those you arrest.

At the end of the last post I challenged you to view everyone you contact on the street through the eyes of Jesus Christ and consider, “Can I love them?” In nearly every station house in the country one could walk through and hear police officers talking about the people they arrested. Generally, the terms they use for their arrestees are not nice. Consider the following descriptions: collar, dirt bag, scumbag, lowest of low, long hair, pervert, sex offender, “those people”, “it’s us verses THEM”, meth head, tweeker, doper, smoker, gang banger, banger, pot head, and many other descriptions that would be in bad taste to even post. What about you? Examine yourself. (2 Cor 13:5)