Christian Persecution Complex?

With the recent firing of the Mozilla CEO for supporting Christian marriage and the increasing demonization of Christians in society there are more than a few people wondering how far we are from persecution of Christians. The response from secular people is often a psychological diagnosis. They say Christians have a persecution complex. It is common for non-Christians to speculate that Christians might be crazy. That was true of Jesus and many saints. Still they might be right. We might be a little to eager to take the role of the martyr. We need to watch out that we don't read into people's actions more anti-Christian sentiment than is actually there.

The problem is that Christian persecution is often done by people who don't see themselves as being unfair or intolerant. It is a subconscious thing. They think their opinion of things is simply right and to tolerate Christianity is to tolerate evil. It is always that way. Communists knew communism was simply right so to tolerate Christianity was wrong. Queen Elizabeth I knew Catholics were simply trying to overthrow her so executing them was needed for the good of the nation. You look at Mexico in the 1920's, you look at Nazi Germany, you look at Rome and the early church. They all thought attacking Christianity was a good and reasonable thing to do.

So the concern actually grows deeper when secular people don't see a problem. When they are so oblivious to the potential for a modern western society to drift into really serious human rights abuses. That is when it is likely to happen. When it is based on assumptions that are so deeply held by the intellectual elite that nobody dares question them. They believe their ideology won't blind them to immorality the way other ideologies have blinded other societies. 

That is precisely why our society is capable of great evil. They feel we have progressed beyond evil so there is nothing to worry about. Abortion can't be evil because it is accepted by the liberal elites. Same with pornography and divorce. It is progress. Anything that society labels progress has to be good. It is the secular version of infallibility. Yet there is no reason to believe we are moving towards good other than the fact that many others believe it.

Human rights is still quite sacred to most secular people. Even those that have doubts about abortion and sexual morality don't think we are capable of forgetting basic freedoms. Yet we do forget. The government searches personal information without warrant and without limit. Nobody seems concerned. The government executes people without any legal process or public disclosure. What could go wrong? The government seeks to narrow religious exceptions on laws to the point where even an order of nuns can't qualify. Who cares?

Will the courts be any different? Will they play their constitutional role of protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority? The trouble is they seem as blind as anyone to the problem. They can't see that establishing secularism as the only right way to think might violate the non-establishment clause. Why? Because they think that way. So forcing people to accept gay marriage is not considered religious discrimination. So far that is only true if you want to arrange adoptions or make wedding cakes. Still the precedent has been set. Christians can be excluded from any role in society if it can somehow be connected to gay marriage. Even if the connection is as thin as "you might have a gay person working for you" like it was for Mozilla.  

The truth is man is still capable of great evil. John Allen just wrote something on world-wide persecution of Christians. In the west we are not above it. In fact, the road we are on leads there. Will we go there? Either we do or we have a major conversion. Right now we are on a path of sin and we no longer believe in sin. We no longer see a need to come to God and beg for forgiveness. We need to get that back. If we don't society will just continue to get worse. Eventually grace prevails. Yet it often gets very ugly before it does. Have we really progressed? We will know when we find out how quickly we are able to see the error of our ways. Seeing the problem will be hard for many because secularism has no way to deal with sin.