Do Not Think it Strange

Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you. 1 Peter 4:12

Peter knew about fiery trials, all the original apostles did. And we cannot forget the First Century believers that came after them. They knew what it meant to be identified with Christ. They were tortured, beaten, fed to wild beasts, burned at the stake, imprisoned, all for simply doing precisely what the Lord commands all of His followers to do.

Jesus made it clear that following Him would not be a walk in the park. He said that His followers would be hated and persecuted. He made that abundantly clear. So, why do we modern, American Christians seem to think persecution and fiery trials are strange? Do we not even read what our Lord said? Or maybe, we assume it doesn’t apply to us. Maybe we think we are special in some way, that we are somehow His favorites.

Look around the world. Believers in China are arrested and tortured. Churches are burned to the ground and Christs followers have to meet in secret, exactly like the early Christians. Christianity is illegal in most Middle Eastern countries. Christian persecution is rampant all over the earth. We know about it. We read the news stories. We see some of it on TV, however, it’s easy to ignore because it’s been happening half a world away. Do we believers in America really expect to be spared? Why should we?

For 350 years, the church in America has enjoyed relatively little affliction for her fidelity to the Scriptures. This nation, though, is an anomaly in church history. And those days seem to be passing, more quickly than many of us expected. In fact, persecution has reached our shores. It’s no longer happening on the other side of the globe. It hasn’t reached the same level yet, but there’s no denying that it’s increasing at an alarming rate.

But panic should not be a Christian response. For two thousand years, this has been what it has meant to identify with Christ in the world, the normal experience of those who follow a man who was crucified. Suffering for the gospel was not just tolerated in the early church; it was expected.

For now, we may be prone to think it strange. But soon enough, the expectations of American Christians will adjust to what is normal in other times and places. We will realize that when we proclaim a gospel like ours, and make the sort of claims we do, the world won’t receive it well. For Christians, it really is strange not to be persecuted.

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