How to respond to being trampled upon

We are clearly entering a new era in the history of Christendom in the West. The time when the truths of Christianity were almost universally accepted is long gone. Since those days, there has been a transition period when everything—the inerrancy of the Bible, how the Universe came into existence, how man came to be, what is and isn’t morally acceptable—was up for grabs. We are now emerging out the other end of that period with Christianity apparently the loser and secular humanism the victor. For the moment, that is!

So the salt lost its savor and was cast out by men, and now we are being trampled underfoot. And the big questions a lot of us are beginning to wake up to are these: What do we do? Where do we go from here? How do we react to our new status as chief doormats?

I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that as a whole, we really haven’t yet come to terms with this. We’re a bit like an army that has just lost a series of battles, and is quite disorganized, and we are frankly bewildered at the speed that things are going. Yet we don’t really have the time to stand around being bewildered for very long, as the battles continue to come upon us thick and fast.

We could respond in a somewhat trite way and say, “Oh, we just need to trust in God.” Well, of course we need to trust in God, but God gave us a Bible in which He teaches us what trusting in God actually looks like on the ground, and exhorts us to go and practice it ourselves. There are many things that we can and should be doing, but one of the most important of all is this: in order to stop being those who are trampled upon, we need to first learn how to respond to being trampled upon. As far as Christians in the West are concerned, I’m not sure that we have, as a people, really come to grips with this.

In a good many cases that I have read about or heard of in the news where Christians have been persecuted for refusing to comply with one of the new dictates of the great idol “Tolerance and Diversity,” one thing that has struck me is that the people on the receiving end have sounded simply bemused and downtrodden that this sort of thing could be happening to them. Part of the reason for this is that we perhaps still have the mentality which says we live in a Christian country and things like this ought not to happen. But we don’t live in a Christian country anymore and this sort of thing is likely to happen more, not less, frequently.

Now before continuing, I should point out that just as a preacher’s preaching ought to be firstly directed towards himself, so must I direct this piece first and foremost at myself. I know that I am the least likely of all Christians to want to actually apply the principles I am about to set out, should God put me in a position where I find myself in trouble because of my Biblical stance. And so I certainly can’t blame those who have reacted with sorrow and dismay at the treatment they have received, knowing that my reaction in their position could possibly be the same. Nevertheless, despite our entirely understandable natural reaction to ill treatment, we still need to consider how God wants us to deal with such circumstances.

So how does God exhort us to react? Somewhat counter-intuitively, Jesus taught us this: “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets” (Luke 6:22-23).

In the parallel passage in the Gospel of Matthew, most translations use the expression “exceedingly glad” or “be glad” when speaking of how we should react to being on the receiving end of ill treatment for Christ’s sake. It is possible to interpret this as meaning that we are to strive to have an “inner peace,” but while this is certainly something we do need to cultivate in such circumstances, what Jesus is really getting at, as the passage from Luke shows, is not just possessing an internal gladness, but an external gladness, too. And not just a thin, feeble and stoical gladness, but a full-orbed, full-fat, leaping-in-the-air, hallelujah gladness.

This is not to say that this is the only appropriate reaction we are called on to have. The verse before this in Luke’s Gospel speaks of those who weep. Being reviled, or excluded or finding your job on the line is certainly a cause for many tears. But Jesus is clear that while we might weep over the situation at certain times, there are others when we really ought to rejoice.

We might first ask how this can be done and secondly what is the purpose of such a reaction? On the first point, when I try to put myself in the shoes of someone whose job or reputation or future is on the line because of their Christian beliefs, I am filled with a kind of morbid fear. Could I rejoice and leap for joy under such circumstances? Could I get out the fatted calf and hold a feast? Naturally—not a chance! Only the grace and the power of the Spirit of God can produce anything like this reaction.

The key to it, I think, is seeing ourselves in the bigger picture of God’s sovereign purposes. If we look only at our own situation, we will find nothing but dismay and distress. Look at Jesus. Was He fearful and dismayed about what was about to come upon Him hours before the crucifixion? Certainly (Luke 22:44). Was He able to rejoice in the hours before the Crucifixion? Again, most certainly (John 16:33)? How was He able to do both? The fear and the sweat were because of what was about to happen personally to Him. Yet He was able to rejoice at the thought of what this would mean in the grand scheme of things. In other words, looking at the micro picture and seeing Himself being trampled upon was bound to bring trepidation; looking at the macro picture and seeing Himself being trampled upon brought rejoicing.

One of the best known examples of this in church history is the martyrdom of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, who were burned to death at the stake in Oxford in 1555. Had they looked just at their immediate circumstances, they could have felt nothing but fear and horror. As it was, they saw themselves and their deaths in the bigger picture, so much so that as the fires were being lit, Latimer is reported to have cheerfully strengthened Ridley with these words: “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

And this brings us on to the second point: what is the purpose of rejoicing when being trampled underfoot? The theologian Tom Wright makes the following observation in his book Simply Jesus:

The Beatitudes are the agenda for Kingdom-people. They are not simply about how to behave so that God will do something nice to you. They are about the way in which Jesus wants to rule the world. … The Sermon on the Mount is a call to Jesus’ followers to take up their vocation as light to the world, as salt to the earth—in other words, as people through whom Jesus’ Kingdom vision is to become a reality. This is how to be the people through whom the victory of Jesus over the powers of sin and death is to be implemented in the wider world.

If Wright is correct, then the Beatitudes—mercy, meekness, and peacemaking for instance—are Jesus’ way of advancing His Kingdom. Which means that so too is leaping for joy when we are reviled and excluded. In other words, a cheerful disposition in the midst of persecution is not just about the disposition we are meant to possess as Christians; it is one of the greatest weapons we have in our arsenal. Abundant cheerfulness and rejoicing in the face of the mockers and revilers is the kind of reaction that God uses to convince others of the truth and power of our faith.

Right now the secular humanists have the upper hand in the social and cultural spheres, and they are clearly determined to rub our noses in it until we surrender to their agenda. If Christians are to make any progress against this tsunami, we need to learn how to be cheerful doormats.

But the first lesson in this is to know that we cannot do it by ourselves. Rejoicing when suffering the hate and the lawsuits of ungodly men, because of our Biblical stance, is impossible. Impossible that is, but for the grace of God. And that same grace can take a cheerful disposition in the face of adversity and use it as a weapon to convince the naysayers. So pray for those who are right now particularly facing exclusion and revulsion for Christ’s sake, that they will receive the enabling grace to leap for joy before their adversaries and that through their triumphant rejoicing, the Kingdom of God will advance.

Rob Slane lives with his wife and five home-educated children in Salisbury, England. He is the author of The God Reality: A Critique of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, contributes to the Canadian magazine Reformed Perspective, and blogs on cultural issues from a Biblical perspective at http://www.theblogmire.com.