How Much Do We Own?

A recent interaction was fruitless like so many others. I'm the bad guy; he's the good guy. If only you Christians would think like the rest of us then you wouldn't be such idiots. That kind of thing. And the other day I got to overhear a room full of people eating lunch and discussing how much they hate Christians. "If I want to go to Hell, just let me go to Hell. Don't push your religion on me."

Now, I think that there are answers, but I had to wonder. How much of this do we own? My recent antagonist accused me of "playing the victim card". How often do we do that? I know I've heard it from Christians far more than is reasonable. "Oh, we Christians in America are being persecuted." Heaven help us if what is happening to Christians in America is "persecution". We'd never survive what is happening to Christians in, say, the Muslim world. We say we're persecuted because NBC wants to remove references to God from Veggie Tales. Oh, yeah, that's persecution. In fact, I've known people who use "persecution" as a measure of accuracy. If people are disagreeing with them (That's "persecution"), then they're obviously right because Jesus said they would be hated by the world. It never occurs to them that maybe people are disagreeing with them because they're wrong. "Narrow is the gate," they'll say and see the fact that 99% of Christians disagree with them as vindication.

Then there's the "in your face" types. "Hey, man, do you know Jesus?" That's perhaps the least offensive approach from these well-meaning Christians. They'll range from that to strings of expletives explaining how wrong you are for what you believe. They'll argue that Jesus is in favor of torture if the torture is against those who attack Christianity. These types can go so far as to make me seriously question the reality of their connection to Christianity. I mean, "God hates fags" does not represent the Christ of the Bible. Do these types actually know Him?

I know. The Bible promises that the world won't like us. I know. Many times it seems as if we're singled out merely because we're Christians. It seems, to be sure, that people don't spend nearly as much time assaulting Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism as they do Christianity. I don't mean to minimize it. But I have to wonder how much of the time the attacks we experience are brought on by our own attitudes and the attitudes of others who claim to represent Christ. Denying the reality of that embarrassing fact does nothing to ease the problem when I go to talk to someone who has questions about Christ. Maybe we are looking at Christianity with rose-colored glasses, when reality is more important.