Persecution and deception

Mandy’s post on persecution got me on a tangent based upon a question Gersom Clark asked:

As Christians, what if we are persecuted, insulted, and falsely accused even if it is not because of CHRIST but simply how the world operates, will that still be covered in this Beatitude?

The specific Beatitude (Blessing) is from Matthew 5:10, which I will quote from Mandy’s post:

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:10 NIV).

These are my thoughts to the question:

 

1. In my interpretation I see the reason for the blessing from God when it comes to persecution is very important; the verse gives us the reason: “because of righteousness.”  I don’t see it God’s blessing as limited to only when others treat us badly because of Christ explicitly since the passage doesn’t say more conditions than that.
2. It seems the best way to think about this question is to think about the parties involved when persecution happens and what each party knows and their purposes.
3. In regards to the recipients of persecution we must acknowledge the limitation of Christians knowing all the instances of when they are persecuted.  Hypothetically if a Christian is attacked in the middle of the night while he or she is asleep and was instantly killed in his or sleep without any knowledge of an attack, that person was persecuted and Matthew 5:10’s promise applies even if that individual didn’t know he or she was persecuted when it was happening.  As human beings Christians also have the limitation of being unable to read people’s heart and mind concerning a persecutor’s  genuine motivation for why he is doing what he is doing.
4. In comparison to the recipient of persecution the persecutor would obviously know more of whether persecution is happening because of hatred towards Christ or righteousness.  That is because the person who is doing the action in most instances knows his own heart and motive.  Yet this can get complicated.  People can deceive themselves as to their true motivation; while they have beliefs against Christians prejudicially or they hate the truth and righteousness they can have wrong “beliefs about their beliefs.”  There can be self-justification going on where one blames the victims.  If you look at history we see instances where people can do outrageous evil because they saw themselves as the victim of the group they are persecuting.  For example the Nazis rank and file saw the Jews as an existential threat.  Something similar to that can occur with the persecutions of Christians.
5.  Also don’t forget historically persecutions of Christians is often disguised with other reasons.  We see in history persecutions being called something else by those in power.  Christians have been persecuted because they are a threat to the society, because they are anti-communists, spies, etc.
6. For Bible believing Christians we believe there is a spiritual realm that exists.  Behind the action of evil doers who persecute Christians there can be demonic activities.  Consider for instance Revelation 12 which record Satan persecuting the woman who gave birth to the Messiah.  I think of the historical manifestation of that involved a human King Herod who killed children under two to try to murder Jesus the Messiah.  But for Herod he might not have understood that he was used by Satan.  Futhermore Herod could have easily seen his motivation for those murder is done simply out of the principle of self-preservation and not to persecute the righteous per se.  Yet unbeknowst to Herod he was used by Satan to persecute the Messiah.  If Satan is out to oppose God’s people because they are Christians would that qualify as persecution?  I don’t see why not, even if we don’t know about it.
7. Of course the one who truly knows for sure when a Christian is persecuted is God.  He’s all-knowing, all-present and all-powerful!  But God doesn’t allow us to know the reasons for what things happened.
8. From these points above I suspect Christians might be persecuted a lot more than we think.  So even if one believes Matthew 5:10 is only talking about explicit Christian persecutions (and not general righteousness, sanctification, etc) keep in mind that oppositions against Christians probably happen more than we realize.
9. Yet we must also not become crippled with fear and paranoia.  We got to remain focus on Christ and do the right thing and somethings we don’t know now but what we do know is God wants us to be faithful to obeying His Word and trusting in Jesus as Savior