It is so easy to be a Christian

It is in America at least, and especially today. I am not talking about living up to what we are called to do for Christ. As I study the implications of being a Christian, I am realizing that part is harder and harder everyday. But to live as a Christian in the good old U.S. of A. we don’t face too much backlash.

The reason I started thinking about this was the news of the attack on the Christian villages in Nigeria earlier this week. Around 500 Christian Nigerians in 3 different villages were attacked by members of a Muslim tribe. The attackers used machetes to butcher 500 men women and children to death. I don’t want to over sensationalize this event. There is a sense of tribal warfare that has been going on for quite some time. The attack was not solely because the people were Christians. But that does play into it.

I decided to pull up some websites about modern day martyrs for Jesus. We go about our daily lives and show up on Sunday to punch our ticket and have no understanding of what happens to believers in other parts of the world. People are rounded up and thrown in jail some executed because they have converted to Christianity. One of the Chapters in Your Jesus is too Safe talks about a man from India or Sri Lanka. I can’t remember. He was put in jail once he converted to Christianity. He was beaten severely. And then the jailers brought in person after person that he had converted to Christianity. He had to watch as all of the people that he helped convert get beaten. He spent more than a year in prison and in an interview he said something to the effect that his time in prison was very beneficial to him. He learned how to counsel people and help them grow in their faith. I wonder how many Americans could deal with that. I doubt myself. I certainly doubt that I would look at something that horrible and say that was very beneficial to me. “It did me good to get beaten regularly and to watch people I cared about get beaten, because I learned something from it.” Seriously!?

I have heard people talk about the persecutions that we have to face here in America. How many of us have faced any real persecution. Patrick and I were talking with some of the guys in the youth group about what might happen if you open up about your faith at school. The guys started talking about people would beat you up, and all of these horrible things that could happen. We asked them if that had happened to any of them or anyone they knew and of course it hadn’t. I came across this quote the other day and I wish I could remember the exact wording and who said it, but I can’t. It was along the lines of this. “Why do we work so hard at pretending that being a Christian in America today is so dangerous?” We have convinced ourselves of something other than the truth. I guess part of the reason for this is because the New Testament from the words of Jesus to the words of Paul, all the way to the end, it discusses the fact that people will face persecution for following Christ.

I guess the point of this post is to just encourage each of us to be thankful that we live in a place that allows us to practice our faith and remember that there are people around the world who don’t have that freedom. We should also pray that we will have the strength if we do face persecution so we can look to it as beneficial for strengthening our faith.

The image below is a map of the world. The areas shaded in yellow are areas that have restrictions against Christianity and the areas shaded red are areas that are hostile towards Christians and Christianity. For more info on modern day martyrs you can go to www.persecution.com or google Voices of the Martyrs.