A girl in my World Religions class today, while the teacher was talking about the Jewish persecutions and how it has defined them as a nation, asked about the Christian persecution by the Romans. The teacher shrugged off the question by saying that he was talking about Modern Day Jewish persecution. I would like to address her question, though I know she'll never read this.
The first Christian to be persecuted by John the Baptist. Even though Christianity did not really take off until about 50 years after the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, John the Baptist led the first early Christian movement. For his "disobedience" to the Roman Caesar's rule and his alternative teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducee's, he was imprisoned and then executed.
The next in line for persecution was Jesus Christ. For his alternate teachings from the Pharisees he was imprisoned, beaten almost to death, and then crucified.
The years following his Resurrection hundreds upon hundreds of Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire. A Christian's first obligation is to God and the Savior. The Romans did not like that, so they began to ban Christianity, and torture, enslave, and execute Christians. A few of the many ways they did this was through flogging, crucifixion, gladiatorial combat, and lion chow. One of my personal favorites to bring to peoples attention is that Emperor Nero would take a Christian, cover them in pitch, put them in cages, and light them on fire to be lights at his parties. Pretty disturbing.
Now on to a more present day outlook at Christianity. In China, with their more rigid governance of religion, school rooms of children have been gunned down for being at Sunday school, men and women have been executed for their unregulated and underground practice of Christianity. In Saudi Arabia, every religion but Islam is banned. Underground churches have been discovered, and every person taken captive, tortured, beaten, and gunned down because they were Christians. Christian missionaries have been shot on site in Saudi Arabia. Much like this has taken place in India, Africa, and other nations around the world.
So to shrug off a student's question by saying he was talking about modern day Jewish persecution, well I think it was wrong because there are Christians being persecuted even as I am writing this.
2 comments:
did you ever say any of this to your teacher?
I didn't, mostly because he isn't the type of teacher who would've carried this on in class. He would've negated my efforts in some way or another. Thank you for reading.
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