Be Intolerant

The letter to the church in Smyrna is one that we might be tempted to bypass. This is often called the letter to the persecuted church. We don’t think of ourselves as a persecuted church, no one is being arrested for worshiping, Christianity is legal and we can worship where and when we want. You may have read books about when Christians were rounded up and killed or tortured, you may be familiar with the inquisition, when those who spoke out against the Roman Christian Church were burned at the stake but we don’t have anything like that here. Have you ever wondered how they got there, how did Christianity become illegal or how did arguing a theological point become a reason for killing someone. The answers might surprise you. First lets look at the letter to Smyrna in Revelation chapter 2

Revelation 2:8–11 NASB95

“And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: The first and the last, who was dead, and has come to life, says this: ‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich), and the blasphemy by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. ‘Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.’

This letter is obviously talking about persecution and tribulation. It is a warning that it is coming and promise that Jesus will never leave you alone when tribulation comes. It should be a comfort to all of us to know that Jesus promises he will always be there. It should also be obvious that Jesus wanted them to know what was coming. The persecution he talked about was not ongoing at the time the letter was written but it was in the future. Jesus wanted the church to prepare itself, to get ready, to stand firm and true to the faith. He knew that it would be hard and that they would be tempted to give up and give in and so he warned them of what was to come and he stated that he would be with them. He promised that if they endured they would be rewarded. So what was going on?

Well in that day Christians were being accused of a lot of things that just were not true. Some of it was due to ignorance and some of it was due to the enemies of the faith attacking the church and everybody associated with the church. Did you know that many Romans believed that Christians killed their infant children, ate their flesh and drank their blood. Because of the infant baptism people knew that early Christians had ceremonies involving infant children, they didn’t know what those ceremonies were like but they had heard of a ceremony, (what we call the Lord’s Supper) where everyone ate flesh and drank blood. Since many in the church then believed like the Catholics do today that the wafer literally becomes the flesh of God and the wine literally becomes the blood of Jesus the misunderstanding seems almost understandable. But it was all wrong. Whether this idea started as a misunderstanding or as a deliberate attempt to make Christians and Christianity seem horrible is unclear, I suspect some may have passed on this rumor to destroy the church and some may have done it out of ignorance or misunderstanding.

Today we live in a world where I believe the majority of people misunderstand Christians and Christianity. According to society, one of the worst things you can be today is intolerant. We are a very independent people. We don’t want anyone telling us what to believe or how to act or what we can and cannot do. Since we want to do and say what we want we expect everyone else to leave us alone. To be tolerant of us. To allow us to live our lives the way we want to live our lives. Anyone who says that we can’t live how we want to live or that we shouldn’t live how we want, that certain things are wrong and other things are right is seen as intolerant or even prejudice. We pass laws and make rules that try to keep people from passing laws and making rules that might keep us from living however we want.

One of the big areas that this is taking place in our country right now is in the LGBTQ area. We debate what the definition of marriage is and who can be married. We argue over what gender is and which bathroom to use. Now I am not planning to get into these debates here but they are real and ongoing in our country today and you may not realize it but people like us are often seen as the bad guys. I don’t support same sex marriage and I think you should go to the bathroom that God equipped you to go into. In the eyes of many people in our country today that makes me bigot, or small minded, or antiquated. People say that everyone has the right to live how they want and if I try to keep them from getting married or using the other restroom I am just discriminating against them, and we have all been taught that discrimination is wrong, therefore I am wrong in their eyes.

The idea that everyone has the right to live however they want without anyone else’s interference has even grown to include children living however they want without the interference of their parents. You may or may not know that lots of people watch California as a trend setter in regards to lawmaking in this country. Many of the safety laws and environmental laws that we have today first originated in California law. Another area that California seems to lead the country in is human rights laws. Many of these laws are good and true laws, but I believe that some go too far. Did you know that there is a bill right now in the approval process in California (bill 541) that would require all public high schools in California to provide free condoms to their students. The bill has passed the senate in May and the assembly in September and now is waiting to be signed into law.

Understand that the people who oppose such things and want those decisions to be left up to the parents are usually seen as the bad guys here. I know that truck stop bathrooms have made attaining these things easy for years but I disagree with schools passing them out. You might say that it is not big deal, that you don’t care one way or the other. So lets look at something else.

Abortion is a pretty serious thing. It is the taking of a human life. It leaves emotional scars on the mother and father and the whole family. So what do we say about abortion in America? Whatever it is we are saying it a lot. Since Roe vs. Wade was overturned there have been a lot of changes to abortion laws but I want to concentrate on something that is closer to our topic. Does a minor child have the right to get an abortion without involving their parents. When I looked into this subject I found websites that were written to the minor child explaining how to go about getting an abortion or how to go about getting birth control without parental consent. Many of the laws are changing and being changed today but let me give you an idea of how this works.

About half of the States in the U.S. require parental consent for a minor child to get an abortion. Only a handful of states require both parents, most just require one parent to consent. In two states a grandparent or a sibling over the age of 21 can give consent. In about 10 states parents must be notified but don’t have to give consent. In about 15 states no parent involvement is required at all.

There are government run organizations that are tax payer funded which put out public information making parents who want to know about and have a say over their own children’s sexual activities to be the bad guys. The ones who are wrong. The CDC Center for Disease Control puts out on the web an endorsement for giving away free birth control .

More and more christian values are being labeled as intolerant socially unacceptable. I don’t think many American Christians have experienced a lot of persecution yet. We hear of a baker who was sued for not wanting to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding and we hear a lot about bathroom usage and other issues today, at least a lot more than we used to. Are we beginning to experience persecution. Are we in the early stages of a tribulation, maybe so. I still don’t think many of us have had to change our lives much or endure any real hardship because or our faith or because of how we choose to live our lives. It may be that it is coming but for many of us it may never come.

I believe that most of us will probably escape real persecution and real tribulation. I wish I could say that this is because America is a Godly nation or because we are being protected by our saviour from suffering such things. I think the reality is much simpler though. I think we avoid a lot of potential persecution by going along. Many of the early Christians were persecuted because they acted differently and lived differently than those around them. They refused to eat meat sacrificed to idols or to worship other Gods. They didn’t go to the parties everyone else went to, they didn’t eat what everyone else ate, they didn’t buy what everyone else bought, they didn’t act how everyone else acted. So they stuck out like a sore thumb.

I think most of us will avoid persecution because we just don’t look that different from the people around us. Everyone says that we live in a godless world and that the morals of our country are going south, we all acknowledge that hardly anyone follows Christian morality or has Christian values anymore. We all talk about how godless or even evil people are becoming today but the people around us, our friends and neighbors don’t seem to notice that we are completely different. We don’t stand out or cause a fuss. There is no reason to persecute us because we are not that much different from everybody else.

If the world is really as bad as we say it is, and we are striving to be what the world is not shouldn’t there be some obvious differences between us and the world? Shouldn’t we stick out? Maybe we are not being persecuted for our faith because it is so hard to tell one of us from one of them. Maybe it is because the divorce rate seems to be the same in the church and out of the church, maybe it is because we find pastors and priests committing horrible acts at about the same rate as we find unchurched people doing so. Maybe it is because to the outsider we are just not that much different from them.

The Christians in Smyrna were being persecuted, they were being attacked by people the Bible refers to a the synagogue of Satan. They were being attacked by false Jews, false members of the church of their day. Why were so many angry with them, attacking them, because they made others feel uncomfortable by what they said and what they did.

We are now approaching Christmas. A time many people in our country refer to as the holidays, or the holiday season. We are greeted with happy holidays so that no one gets offended if they don’t believe in Christmas. Are we insulated from persecution because we have become so adept and not offending anyone. Have we mastered the art of hiding our beliefs and making sure we don’t offend anyone? Are we without persecution because have compromised again and again in order to not give offense. Are we not attacked because we have become not effective giving the enemy no reason to attack us?

I am not saying that we should be offensive. We should never go out of our way to upset someone or to be difficult to get along with. Then again we should not compromise what we believe in order to protect someone from getting offended.

I say Merry Christmas because I mean it is a happy time because of the birth of Jesus Christ, if you are not happy over the birth of Jesus then I am sorry for you, but I still say Merry Christmas.

I talk about divorce like it is a bad thing because it is a bad thing. I think anyone who has been through a divorce will recommend that you avoid getting one yourself. There is a lot of pain and suffering involved. That doesn’t mean I don’t love divorced people or want the best for them, it doesn’t mean I don’t love them or show that love, I am sorry for their pain and wish they didn’t have to go through it, in fact I don’t want anyone to go through that pain so I preach and teach against divorce and against marrying the wrong person and sex before marriage and a lot of other things. I don’t hate divorced people or think of them as unworthy, I have my own sins to bear my own shortcomings. But if I can prevent one divorce and all of the pain that goes with it I will.

I don’t hate homosexuals or transgenders. I don’t think it is right and I think it causes a lot of confusion, a lot of anger and a lot of pain. I would love it if no one had to go through all of that. Pick any other sin you want to name and the answer is the same. I don’t hate people who sin, there aren’t any other kind of people. I do hate the chaos and the pain that sin causes. If I can prevent sin I will. If I am confronted with sin I call it sin.

If I live my life as a christian should it will offend some people, that’s OK, otherwise how would they know the difference. It it makes it harder on me to do the right thing when others don’t that’s OK, how else will they see the contrast? If doing the right thing makes me unpopular or gets me picked on then I am being a witness. Doing the right thing usually has a cost, and a reward. So does doing the wrong thing.