Perspective

 Entitlement in anyone who has no reason to feel entitled is off-putting on the best of days. Spiritual entitlement, doubly so. It’s been established that most people like nice things to be said about them, even if they don’t happen to be true, and if you can weave in some hyper-spiritual declaration that they are the effervescence of sanctification itself, well, you’ve got yourself a lifelong supporter who will tell others how much you blessed their socks off. That brother gets me; he really gets me. He sees what others don’t.

We like being praised even if the praise is undeserved, and we like being esteemed even though there’s no reason for it. We like it so much that we start to believe it even though it’s a lie, and pretty soon, we’re so hyped up on an illusion that we try to live up to the hype and fall flat on our faces.

Self-serving charlatans have convinced many silly people in this country that they are the apex of spirituality, even though they have no evidence to support the claim. They’ve heard so often that they are the apple of God’s eye, little gods, declarers, movers and shakers of the kingdom, and the linchpin in God’s plan for the world, that it’s a wonder they can still fit through a double door given their inflated egos.

A few days back, I ran across an article that should give a little perspective and maybe inspire a little bit of humility. Perhaps it was because I’d just gotten off the phone with my dad, who’d called after finding out I was coming to Romania. We haven’t seen each other in almost half a decade, and he was excited about the prospect of being reunited. He had just called to see if I wanted anything special, like a certain kind of meal or a specific itinerary for when I was there.

After this call, I read about two Ugandan brothers who’d converted to Christianity being set upon by their own family when an older brother had overheard them praying to Jesus. They’d come for their sister’s funeral, and while in their father’s home, they decided to have a prayer.

As their brothers were beating them and kicking them, the father stepped in, and his words, juxtaposed with my father’s reaction at hearing I would be returning to Romania, are what got to me.

“Stop, don’t kill them in my house, just send them away from my home – from today on, I am no longer their father, and they are no longer my children.”

I just read that sentence over and over again, considering the implications. It wasn’t that the father opposed the murder of his sons by their brothers as long as it wasn’t done in his home. It was the inconvenience of dealing with two dead bodies that bothered him, not that his sons were beaten to a pulp.

I know this sort of thing is not unique in a place like Uganda or to Uganda as a nation, just as my grandfather’s torture and privation were not unique during the Communist rule. Christians are being beaten, brutalized, beheaded, abused, and dehumanized every day in various parts of the world, yet, somehow, American Christianity and the way the West practices it is the best it can get?  Whole congregations waving rainbow flags on sidewalks celebrating perverts and perversions as they march down the street are now deemed the pinnacle of Christianity?

While men and women are being martyred for their faith in Christ, mega-church pastors are musing aloud whether believing in Jesus really is necessary for salvation, yet, somehow, we see ourselves deserving of waiting in the first-class lounge until our exclusive shuttle is ready for boarding.

While Christians are suffering loss and dying, we’re entertaining fantastical stories about pet dinosaurs and unicorns in heaven, yet, somehow, we demand priority access and early boarding because some nutter came up with an indulgent theory about never having to endure anything. It felt good. We felt unburdened. The flesh sang with delight. We bought into it like it was Iraqi Dinars and never looked back.

So what if others are suffering and dying and enduring for the name of Christ? We’re special! We discovered the special ingredient in the secret sauce that they never did, and we’re declaring and binding and loosing so we never have to have our faith tested, not even a little.

The only problem is that no one ever gets around to explaining why. Why are we special? Is it because righteousness runs down like an overflowing stream from this nation? Is it because the churches are packed with humble, righteous, sanctified souls determined to preach the gospel of Christ to the nations?

Why? Why do we, in America and other Western nations, feel entitled to be spared what the rest of the world is experiencing while being so arrogant in our position as to declare those being martyred as having less faith than Creflo Dollar because they couldn’t manifest themselves a Rolls Royce?

The comfortable lies and fanciful tales have already started to ring hollow to some, but soon they will ring hollow to all. All the promises men have made to other men about being spared persecution and hardship will be exposed as nothing more than coping mechanisms and hopeful proclamations. It turns out God doesn’t have to keep promises devious men made in His name after all.

We’ve been told what to expect during these last days by Jesus Himself, yet what we’re being told by those claiming to be His representatives is the polar opposite. We hear brothers and sisters in Christ suffering for the faith yet fail to have enough self-awareness to inquire why we should be spared when they aren’t.

John 15:8-20, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.’”

Matthew 24:9-10, “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.