Getting off on nonbeliever aggression

Rachel Held Evans recently wrote about the "Persecution Complex,"* a very real issue many Christians seem to embrace in the midst of what they call our "anything-goes" culture. While RHE focuses on how misplaced and distorted the "Christians vs. gays" dichotomy is, I think the same is true for any of the often fabricated "Christians vs. them" arguments. I fervently agree with what RHE has to say, but I must admit there was a lengthy period of my youth during which I bought into the mentality of the "Persecution Complex."

First, flashback to early adolescence. At twelve, my fantasies--particularly during a history unit on slavery--revolved around imagining myself to be an abolitionist that toured the country and spoke out on the horrors of an institution that reduced human beings to property. I composed great monologues full of sensationalized rhetoric based solely on what I learned from reading Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry** and listening to an Adventures in Odyssey episode on the Underground Railroad. Of course, this was okay since the persecution that I abhorred in these speeches was indeed real (though the fantasies were a bit problematic due to the "White Savior Complex").

The point is, I tended to latch on to persecution because there was something dramatic and satisfying about pretending to convict the world of a certain injustice. Again, not a bad thing and definitely something that shaped my perspective on social justice today.

Now, flashback to freshman year at a secular university in the most liberal area of Iowa. I'm not sure that I ever thought of my experience that year as persecution per se, but I definitely entertained thoughts of myself as oppressed, assuming that everyone was making negative assumptions about me because of my faith.

I remember whining to my mom because I felt that nothing I said in class held any significance with my professor and peers because I'm a Christian and therefore have no academic capital. Never mind that my professors probably didn't know that I was a Christian (after all, I never told them, and at that point it wasn't tattooed on my face and definitely was not evident in my actions***). And even if they did know, it's unlikely that they cared.

But I was so quick to assume my professors and classmates would hate me for being a Christian because I secretly wanted them to hate me. I wanted to be oppressed so that I could say, "Poor me. Look at how I'm mistreated for being a Christian." For a time, I even fantasized about raging atheist professors (à la God's Not Dead) whom I would inevitably prove wrong in front of my peers and the world. How good it feels to be persecuted in one's mind and not actually in real life.

I call these thoughts fantasies because I believe that we, the most privileged, lust for the chance to point out how we are being treated unjustly. We lust for an opportunity to protect what we believe to be our right when it is, in truth, a privilege, setting us apart from those who are truly persecuted. We get off on imagined aggression from an unChristian "other" because it provides a platform from which to disseminate our own beliefs.

Ultimately, I think the root of the problem lies in the culture of "me." It's discouraging to think that even Christians, whose faith centers around a man of complete selflessness, could be so self-obsessed, buying into today's culture and, frankly, making it difficult to even distinguish between the us and them of "us vs. them."

I'll conclude with Jesus' words in Matthew 16:24-26, which reminds us that we are to reject this self-centered culture. So that no one misses the point, I have replaced the word "life" with "rights": "If any one wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his rights shall lose them; but whoever loses his rights for my sake shall find them. For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul?"

*http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/persecution-complex?
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**not even entirely convinced I read this one--I may have simply stared at the front cover on a few occasions
***still not tattooed on my face, but I do hope it's a little more evident in my actions that Jesus is my #1 role-model

When loving Jesus becomes more important than living like him

The best Christian is the one that loves Jesus the most, right? It’s why we’re so obsessed with loving Jesus and making sure that everyone else loves him, too. And yes, loving Jesus is important, but I’m realizing that it doesn’t make any difference whether we love him or not unless that love means that we want to be like him.

When we want to know whether a person is a Christian or not, we say, “Does he/she love Jesus?” as if this were the sole factor of our faith. Every girl knows the conversation that begins with “So there’s this guy...” and every Christian girl knows that this is always followed by “Does he love Jesus?”

But this past year, I’ve met people who love Jesus and do not do as he did, and I’ve met people who do not claim to love Jesus but live as he did. And let me tell you how much easier it is to love the latter than the former.

I get it though. In the church we’re taught at an early age that the bottom-line is loving Jesus (actually, that the bottom-line is believing in him, but that’s a different issue). I get so frustrated with this because for me, the bottom line is being Christ-like, which doesn’t always have anything to do with loving him (although it certainly helps).

Think about it this way, you don’t have to love your mother to be like her. For many, that likeness occurs naturally. In the same way, we can be committed to loving others (“the least of these” in Jesus’ words), without necessarily loving Jesus, who has modeled that love for us (certainly, though many would argue that Ghandi did not love Jesus in the evangelical Christian sense, few could claim he wasn’t Christ-like). That said, I do think that a love of Christ can lead to a more complete love and commitment to his ways, his service to the poor and powerless.

What doesn’t make sense to me, then, is why so many people that profess their love for Jesus seem so uncommitted to—and even unaware of—the ways in which he served others. Maybe this is because it’s so easy to say we love Jesus and so hard to actually do what he did. We are quick to proclaim our love and slow to show it.

This is why Jesus has to ask Peter three times, “Do you love me?” John 21:15-18 says this: “‘When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs.’ Again Jesus said, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He answered, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Take care of my sheep.’ The third time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep.’”

Here, Peter tells Jesus that he knows that he loves him. But how should Jesus know unless there were proof by his actions? If we were unable to express our love in words, how then would anyone know that we loved Jesus or others?

Ultimately, Jesus never asks us to love him. He asks, of course, that we love God and love others (our neighbors, our enemies, etc.), but most of his commands are that we follow him—that we take his way—serving the poor, the fatherless, those trampled on by the rest of society. I think if Jesus were a bottom-line type of guy (which he is not, thank goodness, because of grace), he would want us to be like him more than he would want us to love him.