No Liberal Home
by Bruce D Marshall, First Things:
Jesus promises his followers that they will be hated in this world. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18–19).
This passage is not anomalous. Practically every book of the New Testament speaks of the persecution and suffering Christians should expect to undergo for their faith in Jesus and for living as he commanded. Some books, like the Revelation to John, are suffused with this theme. Nor is it merely an end-time warning. Jesus promises the supreme blessing to those of every time and place who are despised and abused by the world because of their love for him. “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:11–12). Baptism is thus an invitation to martyrdom and a promise of suffering at the hands of the world. “Do not be surprised at the fiery trial which comes upon you to test you, as though something foreign were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share in the sufferings of Christ, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet. 4:12–13).
Modern Western Christians have become practiced at ignoring, or domesticating, the blunt insistence of their Scriptures on the world’s enmity toward Christ and those who belong to him. We tend to regard the enmity of the world, like speaking in tongues, as belonging only to the earliest period of the Church’s life. It has, we assume, no universal and abiding application. Perhaps some political arrangements and forms of government are inevitably at odds with the Church—that of ancient Rome, for example, with its obligatory veneration of the emperor, or modern communism, with its institutionalized atheism. But we reassure ourselves that the modern West has developed liberal democracy, a way of organizing political life that poses no obstacles to the Church’s faith and mission, or at least no obstacles that the Church should not be willing to accept.
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