Am I being "mistreated like Jesus" - or just for being a jerk?

How the "Christian persecution" complex fuels extremism

What is the difference between being “persecuted for righteousness’ sake” (Matthew 5) - and suffering the consequences because you screwed up or were just behaving badly?

This is a question which - I hope - most self-reflecting Christians have pondered at some point.

Persecution of the “good guys” is a big theme in the New Testament. Jesus told his followers, essentially: look, they persecuted me, so they’re going to persecute you, too (John 15).

And certainly, sometimes people are mistreated - badly - for doing the right thing. I saw Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird this weekend, and I was reminded of this again in the legendary character of Atticus Finch - whose decision to stand up for justice brought derision and danger from many in his community.

But does it follow that whenever you run into opposition, it must automatically be because you’re one of God’s favorites? Or, just a thought experiment here, do bad consequences sometimes just result from…bad actions?

AI prompt: “Jesus trying to explain his teachings about persecution to Donald Trump”

The idea of persecution - its place in Christianity dating back to the earliest centuries CE, and its power as a political idea among white evangelical Americans today - was the focus of a conversation I had this week with Candida Moss, a theology professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK, for NPR’s Consider This podcast.

“Being persecuted in Christianity - because Jesus died in this unjust way, because the martyrs were executed - just being persecuted is a sign that what you are doing is right and good and that you have the support of God. And that means that this is a very powerful rhetorical claim. If Christians are succeeding politically, commercially, practically in their lives, then that's because God loves them and supports them.”

~Candida Moss, Theology Professor, University of Birmingham (UK)

This “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” nature of the persecution narrative - success is a sign of God’s favor, but so is being attacked - is part of what Moss calls the “genius of Christianity.” And it can be a particularly useful idea in the hands of political leaders and their supporters.

For one recent example, take actor John Voight’s explicit comparison between Trump’s legal battles - including a sexual assault case and charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election - and the suffering of Jesus Christ himself.

"Can [Trump] be saved with the American people who believe in God’s glory?” Voight asked in a video Trump shared on his Truth Social account several days ago.

Voight went on to describe the former President as the “man that can help this nation - the one man that was ridiculed, destroyed, as Jesus - Trump, can come back and save the American dream for all, and make America great with the dignity, with the power of who she is…God’s land.”

In other news, Nikki Haley - the last person standing aside from Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, made a surprise cameo on NBC’s Saturday Night Live this weekend.

Her appearance during the show’s cold open accomplished, as I see, it three main things:

• First, the segment gave Haley a chance to reiterate what’s become her central pitch: that she’s a younger, more capable alternative to either Trump or President Biden. Ahead of the critical Republican primary in her home state of South Carolina on February 24, Haley’s campaign recently rolled out ads referring to both as “Grumpy Old Men” and raising questions about their mental faculties. She repeated that theme on SNL, asking an SNL cast member portraying Trump, “Are you doing okay, Donald? You might need a mental competency test.”

• Second, Haley directly tackled a major challenge for her campaign: the fact that she appears likely to lose - by a lot - her home-state primary to Trump.

• And maybe most importantly, Haley used the opportunity to do some humorous cleanup from what was probably her biggest campaign gaffe to date - her failure weeks ago in New Hampshire to identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War. Asked about that by a cast member portraying an attendee at a presidential townhall, Haley acknowledged, “Yep, I probably should have said that the first time!”

Not to mention that it was funny. At a moment when most Americans say they find politics exhausting or even disgusting, that can’t hurt.

The segment alluded to Trump’s legal troubles in a clever way, with James Austin Johnson as Trump claiming that “women are terrible with money - in fact, a woman I know recently asked me for $83.3 million.”

That was a reference to the amount a jury in New York has ordered Trump to pay to E. Jean Carroll for defamation - which some of Trump’s prominent evangelical supporters including the Rev. Franklin Graham have framed as an example of persecution through the legal system. On X, Graham described the jury’s decision as “using the system…to go after” Trump.

By the way, I have more to say about Graham’s history with Trump, and the ways that evangelicals have often seen themselves as embattled and persecuted, in my forthcoming book, The Exvangelicals - out March 19 and available for pre-order now.