Defining Persecution

In this episode, Nik contrasts the narratives of different community leaders in order to define persecution. What’s the difference between true spiritual warfare and a false persecution complex?

Believers who are experiencing real persecution are to be known by their love for one another (John 13:35), he explains, not by their social stances or speaking prowess. Nik concludes that a defining characteristic of true persecution is that the believer is suffering for who Jesus is – and not for any other reason.

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Spiritual warfare

In persecution, everything a believer experiences is from sharing the gospel in difficult places. Matthew 13 explains that some people will experience the challenge of planting seeds on rocky ground.

A family, that Ruth and I remained very close to, was working with us in the Horn of Africa. They were doing it right, and they had reached four families for Christ among the people group that’s very dear to us – maybe some of the closest to our hearts – because we worked among them, and their famine and civil war, for seven years. We went through a lot of hard stuff with that people group. And four families said yes.

Upon the missionaries’ departure, however, their converts announced that they were reverting back to Islam. Despite their faithful work, Nik’s missionary friends felt burnout and despair.

They took them to the airport, and as they were getting ready to go through security in that airport, those four “Christian” families said to this couple, “We don’t believe you’ll ever come back… so we just want to let you know that we’re going back to the mosque. We’re going back to Islam where we belong.” And those were the last words that were said to them before they got on that airplane.

The disillusionment was real. Nik consoled them. This is the nature of the work, he said. In the heat of spiritual warfare, wherever seed is sown, some plants will be scorched. Some plants will wither in the face of adversity because they have no root.

Fortunately, this story had a happy ending. The next day, the four Islamic families announced they were coming back – not for the mission board but for Christ.

As we seek to define persecution, we look at the causes of a believer’s suffering.

Understanding persecution

In contrast, Nik describes a different group that believed they were being persecuted. This other group begged Nik to study them.

[These two groups thought] that they were the real Christians because they were the ones that had suffered the most. They had been beaten, they had lost their church property, they had gone to jails and prisons… they had been killed. The more I watched them… the more disturbed I got.

He observed them for a week or so. Then Nik admonished them for being “some of the most obnoxious Christians [he] had ever met.” They had a tendency to harass people unlike themselves, speaking about their beliefs with a sense of superiority.

Persecution of any kind is an unfortunate reality for many. Just because someone is being persecuted doesn’t mean it is for the right reasons.

It’s essential to examine the root cause of persecution and its legitimacy before drawing conclusions. While some may be persecuted due to Christian beliefs, others may be targeted simply because they are unkind in some way.

The art of spiritual warfare

“In actions and in words, you’ve got to make Jesus the center of the conversation,” Nik explains. “But even before you get to Jesus and the Old Testament setting, they’ve got to know you love them.” It may be after your death that people fully understand what you’ve done for them.