“False Accusations”

Sunday, May 10, 2020

We’ve all heard or read stories of Christians being exiled, beheaded, crucified, fed to lions, or burned alive as punishment for their faith in the first few centuries of the church’s existence, but in this day and age we don’t see such extreme examples of persecution on a regular basis.  Most of what we see is financial, social, or psychological, and while it would be irresponsible to equate such minor impediments with the horrific acts perpetrated when the church was young, we also shouldn’t ignore the impact or depth of the toned-down version we see today.

Amid the pandemic that has hijacked our lives, there has been a widespread movement to help.  Misguided though much of it is, the generally quasi-Biblical values held by much of the population of the United States, and the broader Judeo-Christian tradition undergirding western civilization, have taught our society that it is good to help others without recompense.  Leaving aside Jesus’ note that “they have received their reward” when they do these sorts of good deeds “that they may be praised by others” (Mt 6.2), we may still generally approve of the results, when the needy have their suffering alleviated, and the wealthy deliberately and willingly relinquish some of the material blessings God has given them. 

Charitable deeds

Thus, for example, I’ve recently heard of a charity campaign in which hundreds of thousands of dollars were donated to help provide food—as well as ways to store and prepare it!—in impoverished neighborhoods in Detroit where the norm for many people was a daily trip to the grocery store for that day’s food, exacerbating the risk of the virus spreading.  I’ve also heard of a member of the Jewish community in the D.C. area who realized that a) front-line medical workers who keep kosher often had no food options readily available during their busy shifts, and b) the already struggling kosher restaurants in the area would likely all go under due to the lockdown conditions, and so she organized a campaign to collect donations and order food from the local kosher restaurants, to be delivered to the hospitals employing kosher-keeping workers, helping both sets of people.  And, of course, I suspect everyone has heard of the grassroots efforts being made to manufacture masks, face shields, respirators, ventilators, etc. in an effort to fill the gap in the supply chain so that everyone who needs them, has them.  This is all great to see.  It’s minor in comparison to the spiritual needs, many of which are going unfulfilled, but it’s also evidence of people making a concerted effort to do good, and we should applaud that.

Punishable deeds

However, it should not be a surprise that some of these stories haven’t ended so cheerily.  There’s an explicitly Christian organization called Samaritan’s Purse (a nod to Luke 10.35), which set up a field hospital in New York City’s Central Park—ground zero for the pandemic in this country—in order to provide, for free, medical care for virus patients.  They treated hundreds of patients.

Now, at this point it is incumbent upon me to mention that I have serious reservations about the way in which this group is organized, and how they go about doing this work.  I don’t know for a fact, since like most of you I have more pressing matters on my plate, but I suspect the funding is coming primarily from churches, that it blurs the lines established by the New Testament if not erases them completely, and that as a whole it is misrepresenting the role God intends for his Church to play in the world, in a way for which God will one day hold them accountable.  However, while I’m sure there was plenty of room for improvement in the way this organization went about doing this work, we shouldn’t condemn the spirit in which it was done, which by all appearances was a desire to “do good to everyone” (Ga 6.10).

Not everyone is so disposed, though.  A member of the city council, the mayor, several members of the United States Congress, and others vilified these people who put their own health and lives on the line in order to do a good deed, eventually prompting the hospital partnered with them to cut ties, and pushing the organization out of NYC ahead of schedule, no longer accepting their help.  Why?  Because they believe in the Bible.

Chiefly, this comes from a strange cognitive dissonance that holds that Christians are evil if they believe what the Bible says about homosexuality—that it should not be practiced (1Co 6.9-10, 1Ti 1.8-11, and Ro 1.26-27, for example)—while it seems to be just fine in the books of these same critics that homosexual behavior commonly receives the death penalty in most Islamic countries, for instance.  There’s no evidence that this organization did anything to harm anyone, or to withhold care from anyone on the basis of sexual orientation; yet they’re being called evil, not because of what they do, but because of what they believe.  Good is being called evil, and evil is being called good, and not even based on a consistent standard, since the reaction depends on who holds the belief.  It is difficult to paint this as anything but a deliberate attempt to persecute Christians for being Christians.

This was, of course, expected.  Jesus said in Matthew 5.11, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”  This acknowledgment that the social and psychological persecution is real and meaningful, coming from Jesus himself, should keep us from downplaying the instances we see in the world around us.  On an individual level, of course it’s better to be insulted and hit with false accusations, than to be murdered; however, on a societal level, this notion that it’s ok to write off, mock, smear, and otherwise damage the reputation and standing of God’s people, is perhaps worse than simply killing them, because it’s more dangerous to the message Christ wants to be spread throughout the world.  Christianity thrived amid deadly persecution in the first few centuries, but today it is a struggle to maintain, let along grow, in part due to this dismissive attitude toward Christians, replacing God’s will and orthodoxy with a humanist orthodoxy that says Christians really should know better than to be involved with such antiquated notions of right, wrong, and salvation.

Jesus calls us “blessed,” when we incur this kind of treatment, but we’re also given some instructions on how to behave when faced with such persecution, in 1 Peter.  Peter echoes what Jesus said, “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1Pe 4.14), but he also says, “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (2.12), and that we should strive to maintain “a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil” (3.16-17).  Sure, we could vociferously denounce the denouncers, and defend ourselves loudly, but it’s more effective to simply behave in an unimpeachable way, so that any reasonable person, on seeing against what kind of people such accusations are being made, will see the truth, and glorify God.  

It’s a sad predicament, when public officials state that they’d rather their constituents die, than receive help from Christians, but while it’s a strong indictment of society, it only serves to bring glory to God, and for that we should rejoice.

Jeremy Nettles

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