Falsely

 I always find it off-putting when men of supposed spiritual renown attempt to use a carefully edited piece of scripture to defend their actions. Usually, it’s something gnarly enough that it leads to tears, divorce, defrocking, and federal indictments.

There’s evidence of some kind, most often the video with crystal clear audio, so they can’t deny it. They’re not politicians; they don’t yet have the gull to insist people don’t believe their lying eyes.

And so they take a Bible to the butcher block, and just by removing a handful of words from a passage, they can change the entire meaning. Because they trust that their flock is biblically illiterate and the only time they touch a Bible is to wave it in the air on a given Sunday, they speak lies with confidence and conviction, usually to the raucous applause of their parishioners and spoken promises of standing with him in this time of persecution.

Getting caught being a dirty birdy with a secretary half your age is not being persecuted, Bishop. Getting caught using the church’s building fund for going on island adventures with ten of your closest friends isn’t the devil attacking you, Deacon.

If we bothered to read our Bibles, we’d see that Jesus was specific about what qualifies as persecution. Why does this matter? Because if you are truly being persecuted, it’s a good thing, and Jesus even goes so far as to say you are blessed.

Matthew 5:11-12, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Usually, it’s that first part people quote with passion and conviction, not so much the second part. For you to be blessed when you are being reviled and persecuted and when all kinds of evil are said against you, it must be false. All the nasty things they say must be false, and for His name’s sake, for you to qualify for blessing.

If what is being said is factual and accurate, then it’s not persecution. The individual is being exposed for being a duplicitous windbag who exploited the Word of God and the people of God for filthy lucre and took advantage of their position as a spiritual authority to destroy innocent people in his orbit just because he couldn’t deny his fleshly urges.

You can’t conflate the two and place them under the umbrella of persecution.

If Bishop Earl got caught being a perv on Skype after the online service, that’s not persecution, that’s not someone you should defend, and the only prayer you should pray on their behalf is that they find repentance, not that the matter gets swept under the rug.

My grandpa had a story he liked to tell of a city fellow going to a fish market, trying to pick out a fish, and pretending like he knew what he was doing. He walked up and down the aisles, with stalls to either side and the fishmongers keen for his business. He’d nod occasionally but never broke stride, and the men grew eager, waiting for him to stop and pick a fish.  He stopped by a stall with a handful of pike sitting on crushed ice, then bent forward and began to sniff the tail of the biggest one on offer.

His curiosity getting the better of him, the fishmonger behind the stall bunched his eyebrows and said, “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing, sir?”

“Why, checking for freshness,” the man answered.

“If you want to check for freshness,” the fishmonger said, “you don’t sniff the tail; you sniff the head. The head is always the first thing to go bad on a fish; if the head is rotten, the rest is not far behind.”

If someone is claiming victimhood and that they’re being persecuted when what they’re being accused of is demonstrably factual, that head is already rotten. Don’t defend a rotten head because the disease will spread to the rest of the body, and all you’ll end up with is another statistic. All you’ll have is another story the godless can play on a loop, point fingers at, and mock, and we’ve had plenty of that to last us a lifetime just in the past couple of months alone.

Real persecution is a given. Jesus said when, not if, but that’s another thing the contemporary church has conveniently overlooked because it stands in opposition to their version of the gospel, that is another gospel and not the Gospel of Christ.

It’s hard to prepare a congregation for persecution when all you’ve ever preached is prosperity, yet Jesus said, blessed are you when they revile and persecute you. As far as Jesus was concerned, persecution is a matter of when.

You’ll know it’s real persecution when what you are being accused of is a lie and also when it is being done for His sake. Your association with Jesus, your allegiance to Him, and your worship of Him will ignite the hatred against you.

Those who do not serve Him have nothing to fear of real persecution, but they have every reason in the world to fear standing before God one day and hearing Him pass sentence. I would rather endure persecution today and rejoice in it, knowing I will hear well done than align myself with those who will be told to depart just to spare my flesh. That’s just me, though; everyone must make their own choice.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.