What To Do When You Get Bullied For Being a Christian

Welcome to the New Life Ministries podcast. Have you ever experienced getting picked on or nitpicked by someone who makes fun of your faith in Jesus? Have you ever lost an opportunity because you would not compromise your faith? These experiences can be infuriating. What’s the best way to respond? We know how we want to respond, but what does Scripture tell us and why? Let’s our service as we look at 1 Peter chapter 2. Today we’re going to look at 1 Peter chapter 2, page 1828.

Welcome to those of you listening to the recording. When you were young, did another kid ever hit you? Not enough that they really did damage, but it was certainly an act of aggression. Like it was a punch.

Did you punch back? A non, a non-sibling. Did you? Yeah. Yeah.

I had a sister. There’s no punching her. That would be a death sentence.

So did you punch back? That’s the question, eh? And as a parent, how do you raise your child on this subject? So I like the idea, and I don’t have kids, I have nephews. I like the idea that you can punch back once, because I think a young person needs to learn that they’re not helpless, but they need to learn to control their strength and their power. And they can’t, I don’t think they can control their power if they don’t know their power.

So, but that’s my perspective. Every parent has to navigate this one on their own, or like separately, and how you respond to each kid might be different, and how a dad responds might be different than how a mom responds. But we know what it is to get picked on or attacked unfairly, right? And you have to decide how to respond.

Does, what was that? Punch back. Does it change when you become a Christian? So let me ask, have you ever been picked on as a Christian by someone who has a different value system or a different set of priorities? Because this has happened all through Christian history. People who are not believers try to push our boundaries, or they make fun of what we believe, or they want you to stop being a Christian, so they just nitpick at your faith every day.

Well some, yeah, actually for some people. So today in 1 Peter, the discussion’s about how to respond. Up to this point in 1 Peter, we’ve been talking about how to understand persecution, how to think of God’s purposes, how to be church with each other while we go through this.

Today it moves into what do you do? And it’s actually this week and next week. It’s a huge section, so we’ll just do half today. So let me offer a prayer, and then I will look at chapter 2. Father, help us to hear this passage and to hear its message, and I ask that you would draw each of us to where it needs to apply in our lives.

Help us to hear your grace, help us to hear your abounding love for this planet and for creation, and help us to hear the call to serve you through this. We’ve already heard so much this morning about serving for the well-being of this planet, so continue the work you have already begun doing. Amen.

So 1 Peter 2, starting with verse 11. Dear friends, I warn you as temporary residents and foreigners to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors.

Then, even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world. For the Lord’s sake, submit to all human authority, whether the king as head of state or officials he has appointed. For the king has sent them to punish those who do wrong and to honor those who do right.

It is God’s will that your honorable lives should silence those ignorant people who make foolish accusations against you. For you are free, yet you are God’s slaves, so don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil. Respect everyone and love the family of believers.

Fear God and respect the king. You who are slaves must submit to your masters with all respect. Do what they tell you, not only if they are kind and reasonable, but even if they are cruel.

For God is pleased when, conscious of his will, you patiently endure unjust treatment. Of course, you get no credit for being patient if you’re beaten for doing wrong, but if you suffer for doing good and endure it patiently, God is pleased with you. For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you.

He is your example, and you must follow in his steps. He never sinned nor ever deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered.

He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly. He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross, so we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds, you were healed.

Once you were like sheep who wandered away, but now you have turned to your shepherd, the guardian of your souls. As I read this passage, I can hear the difficulty in this passage, because this passage is telling us that when we are mistreated at because we are Christians, we must respond as Christ did, and that’s not what we want to hear. So I’m going to break this passage up into three sections.

Why does it say what it says to us as individuals, to us as we live in our culture, and then to us as a church? So for us as individuals, in the Roman world, Christianity was not a legal religion. The Jewish religion had a special exemption in Roman culture. In Rome, you were expected to honor Caesar as king and worship him as king, and the Jews had this exception that they were not required to worship Caesar, but they had to honor him.

Rome didn’t know what to make about Christians. Like were they a Jewish sect? Were they something different? So Christians were suspect. What is this about? What’s the agenda? Is this good or bad? Is this an underground movement designed to overthrow the government? What is going on here? So you can imagine how people talked about them, right? You know, you say you help the poor.

Why would you do that? Why would you do that? Look at them. Why would you do that? Or you say you’re forgiven. What about that thing you did two years ago and that thing you did three years ago? What about all that? Or you say you don’t steal, but I want you to fix the bill and overcharge my neighbor.

And you say, I’m not overcharging your neighbor. And he says, I’m your boss, and if I tell you to overcharge my neighbor, you’re going to overcharge the neighbor. And you’re left with people questioning you and provoking you.

How committed are you to this belief of yours? How do we tend to respond when we are nagged and provoked and taunted? We tend to respond, we repay evil with evil. Like that’s the human way. You make my life miserable, I will return the favor.

You don’t pay me what I owe you, and I’ll take it from you in another way. You yell at me, I will yell back. You don’t listen to me, I will increase my power, so you have to listen to me.

Right? That’s the human way. And this passage says, dear friends, I warn you as temporary residents and foreigners, which is his phrase for, you don’t fit in this world anymore. You don’t fit in its ways anymore.

How are you going to, how do I respond? I warn you to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your souls. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.

So those desires that wage war against your soul is the spirit of revenge, and I will get even. And he’s saying, instead of that spirit of revenge, your response needs to be of goodness, being good, so that when judgment shows up, and judgment will show up, they’ll actually have no grounds for accusation against you. So get control of that desire to punch back, so that the non-christian public can see your good behavior, and can see your good work, and they’re actually left speechless.

So imagine responding to anger and mistreatment with kindness, and holding your tongue. Responding to somebody with patience. Imagine forgiving a debt that’s owed to you, when you realize they don’t have the means to pay you back.

Because when someone owes you money, and they can’t pay you back, they will often start talking about you in a nasty way. That’s what we do as people. So imagine forgiving the debt.

Now I understand unjust accusation is infuriating. It is one of my hot buttons. And I think Peter completely understands how infuriating this is, because he says two things.

One is verse 15. It is God’s will that your honorable lives should silence those ignorant people who make foolish accusations against you. You are free, but you are God’s slaves.

So don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil. Like, it’s God’s will that your lives should silence ignorant people. A little bit later, it talks about God being pleased, and the idea is a grace favor.

The second one is verse 21. God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.

So the word example is learning to follow in a footstep. Remember when you’re learning to print? A child’s learning to print. They’ve got a page with large letter A, B, C, D. And the child is a pencil, and they’re tracing A, B. And then as the line goes along, there’s less and less of the A and the B, and finally just a dotted line.

But they’re tracing until they know how to draw that letter. That’s what this word means. That’s what this idea means.

So we have to learn to follow the example of Jesus. He didn’t retaliate. He didn’t retaliate.

He didn’t threaten revenge. Like, that’s exactly what we do, right? He didn’t deceive anyone, and he left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly, which is such a beautiful sentence. He left his case in the hands of God.

You can leave your case, and your complaint, and your injustice in the hands of God, who always judges fairly. So God has a purpose for us in how we respond to injustice as a Christian, and it’s a missional purpose. For the world to understand who Jesus is and what Jesus was about, they need to see the message of Jesus lived out.

So we have to behave as Jesus in order for the world to understand Jesus. So if you’re in a situation, and you think this other person needs Jesus, or it is a come-to-Jesus moment, right? That time of, okay, we need to make things right. You need to experience some stuff.

That other person actually needs to see not the judgment of God in you. They need to see you behaving like Jesus, so they start to get what Jesus is about. It’s a missional purpose in what Peter is telling us to do.

And the struggle is, it’s hard for us to see our lives as being for a purpose other than our own lives, right? It’s my life. It’s now or never. This is my life, my chance to live, and it’s calling us to have your life be part of a much greater purpose, which is God expanding the kingdom of Jesus on earth, saving the planet.

And so I think that leads us to the second part. How does this passage good for the culture and good for the church? So he tells slaves how to respond to their masters, and slavery is a hot topic. Now you are slaves must submit to your masters with all respect.

Do what they tell you, not only if they are kind and reasonable, but even if they are cruel. For God is pleased when, conscious of his will, you patiently endure unjust treatment. Now slavery back in Rome is not the same as what happened in the southern states for a couple hundred years.

It’s a very different type of slavery. Slaves in Rome were often educated. They were teachers, they were doctors, they were musicians, they were also grunt laborers, they were people who moved things.

I think Tom Wright, the scholar, says they do a lot of things, they did a lot of things that we have machines to do now. Slavery in Rome was not always lifelong bondage, and it was a way to deal with owing money, poverty, homelessness, but it wasn’t great either. Like slaves fought and died for their freedom.

So Peter is not saying slavery is okay. The Bible does not support slavery, and he’s not saying that a person who experiences injustice should not pursue justice. He’s not saying that, but he’s recognizing slavery is the situation we are in.

What are we going to do? Slavery was so deeply wound into their culture, you couldn’t just stop it and walk away. It’s kind of like if someone was to say to you, someone, a non-Canadian, was to come up to you and say, why don’t you just end homelessness? It’s like, well, we’re working on it. That’s, it’s a complex problem.

This is gonna take a while. Or if they were to say, you live in a sexually saturated culture, and other cultures from other parts of the world see that we live in a sexually saturated culture. And so they might say, why don’t you just end the porn industry? We’re working on it.

It’s terribly complex. And so slavery in Rome was terribly complex. So he’s not saying it’s right.

He’s just saying, this is where we’re at. How are you going to respond if you are a slave? So I say that, because we can’t just lift that comment about slavery out of scripture and blindly apply it today. And say, see, we have slaves, you should be a slave.

It’s like, we have to think deeply about what is the principle it’s trying to teach us, and how do we apply that principle? And what it is saying is, there are obligations in society. And as Christians, you cannot flippantly disregard those obligations. You are expected to be a good citizen.

You are expected to live in a way that makes the message of Christ attractive in the culture, in the social system you live in. So my friend often says, Romans didn’t like Christians, but they wanted Christians as their neighbors and as their servants. Because Christians didn’t try to sleep with your wife, and they didn’t try to steal your stuff, and they didn’t try to recruit your son to fight in an army where he’d get killed.

And they took care of their neighborhood, and they would take care of people who weren’t even part of their community, and they responded to hostility and unkindness with goodness. So maybe they didn’t like Christians, but they wanted them as their neighbors. And verse 12 says, one day those folks will give praise to God for the behavior that you did.

They’ll give praise to God for you. So for us today, we have obligations. We have authorities over us.

If you are an employee of any business, if you’re a renter, if you have neighbors, if you are part of a family unit, if you are a boss or a manager or an employer, you have responsibilities. In that role, submit to what makes for a good citizen. What does it mean to be a good employee, to be a good neighbor, to be a good manager? Be excellent in those roles, because you represent Jesus, and you are building His reputation.

And He is wanting to expand His kingdom through you. And the Lord sees when you experience injustice and bad treatment. He sees it.

The passage says, submit to all human authority. Have a humble respect for whatever authority it is you’re working with. Now, it’s something you decide to do.

It’s your choice. It’s within your power to hold back that human desire for revenge or to get even or to live with sloppy behavior. He’s not saying, you know, turn to the person beside you and get them to submit to whoever.

He’s not saying that. It’s actually the middle voice. You do this to yourself.

You make the choice because you are free in Christ to make your choice to submit and be a good citizen. And then the third piece has to do with the well-being of the church, because Peter doesn’t want these Christians to behave against authorities and against those who bully them such that it puts the life of the church at risk. If the neighborhood or the authorities see Christians as a threat or that Christians are bad for society, they’ll work to stop church gatherings, or they might shut down the churches altogether.

And that’s going to hinder the spread of the gospel. That’s going to hinder your growth as disciples. It’s going to hinder your support system.

So he’s quite clearly saying, don’t behave in a way that puts the message of Jesus and the presence of the church in your community at risk. So in Canada, when an organization registers to be a charity, and churches are considered a charity, they have to satisfy what’s called the public benefit test, which means the activities the charity says they’re doing has to make life better for the public or for a significant portion of the public. So a charity has to have a tangible, measurable benefit for the neighborhood.

And this is part of Canada Revenue Agency’s charity laws, the public benefit test. I think Peter would love this idea, that as a church, you should be known for being a benefit to your neighborhood, a benefit to the public, a benefit to your city. And churches most often do make life better for people.

They help folks improve their lives because Jesus is in the business of renewing and redeeming lives. And so as we talk about Jesus and people connect with Jesus, lives get better. And so we see in churches that marriages and families improve.

And folks that slip through the cracks of the public support system get caught by churches. Neighbors get cared for. Often problems in society that no one is looking to solve, that’s where churches often start working.

And history, we heard a bit about we heard a bit about it this morning. History is full of the good things churches have done. They’ve stopped slavery.

They’ve educated parentless children. They’ve set up hospitals. They’ve set up crisis centers.

Jesus says the same thing in Matthew 5. Let your good deeds shine out for all to see so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. So being a practical benefit to the neighborhood and to our neighbors is kind of built into the DNA of New Life. And this passage in 1 Peter is saying, yes, actually that’s how it’s supposed to be.

You should be known as people who do good to your world, to your neighbors. So let me summarize. When you experience getting picked on or nitpicked or you experience injustice as a Christian, how are we supposed to respond? Don’t respond with a spirit of revenge and I’ll get even.

Consider how to respond with goodness. And I know injustice and suffering for doing good is infuriating. But God has a purpose behind it.

For the world to understand Jesus, they have to see the message of Jesus and the character of Jesus lived out in front of them in action. And God’s calling us to live our lives for this greater purpose. So we learn from Christ’s example.

He didn’t retaliate. He didn’t threaten revenge. He didn’t deceive anyone.

And he left his case in the hands of God who always judges fairly. And we’re called to be good citizens. Be faithful to your obligations.

Be good with your responsibilities. And being a good citizen means we won’t behave in a way that puts the message of Jesus or the presence of the church in our neighborhood, in our town, in our area at risk. So what prompts in you? How is the spirit prompting you? What catches your attention or challenges your perspective in this text? This is so much the driving theme of my life of late is to learn to do this by doing it, by seeing people who are in need and meeting those needs, by being patient and being gentle and being and I’m not always good at it.

But we came across, and I think it’s in our readings of late, one that stuck with me. And it was Jesus talking about if someone takes something from you, don’t go to get it back. God will provide for you what you need.

And that kind of stuck with me because numerous times we’ve had things stolen, and the very first instinct is I want that back. Why? Because it’s mine. The first thought is not because I needed that.

It’s because it’s mine, and somebody took it. And God says, didn’t I give that to you? Didn’t I make it possible for you to have that? Is it okay if I give it to somebody else? Is it not right for the master to pay the wages that he sets to everybody, no matter how much work they’ve done? And maybe in that person’s life, at that particular time, God was calling them some other way. And they’re a work in progress, just like me.

So yeah, it was a really beautiful thing to hear. Again, the steps to follow, the heart, start with the heart. When the heart is soft and malleable and open for change and wants good for those around instead of just for you, that’s where good starts.

That’s where God takes our heart. Yeah. Nice.

Yeah, I think we all experience some of this in different ways. My biggest problem is that if somebody accuses me of something, having said something when I know I haven’t, that bugs me the most, and I get angry inside. And I’m struggling with that.

I’ve never really struggled that much with people attacking me. You know, when you’re the runt in the classroom, which I was, and when you’re not wise socially, you’re the smallest in the class, you’re going to be the one the most attacked. And that happened to me regularly in high school.

I know what it’s like to be picked on and picked on and picked on. As I read scripture at that time, I felt that there was no way you should respond with violence to violence, even once. I can’t find that in the passage, even the one we read today.

It doesn’t say you can respond physically with somebody who attacks you physically. So what I developed was a defense system that I defended myself against attacks. And that had an interesting impact on those who were attacking me.

Because after a while it’s no more fun to attack someone who’s not responding. Yeah. And so I think it maybe happened half a dozen times that I recall now.

But that’s how I was able to survive in an area where for some reason there has to be somebody who’s at the bottom of the class, or particularly someone who’s also small, which I was the smallest in the class when I was in high school. It seems to be that we pick on those people, or that that happens a lot. And I feel very sorry for those people today and have all my life, because it was very difficult for me to live through that time.

But I really agree with the passage that Curtis helped us read today. It says a lot to us as Christians that we should not fight those people who improperly and inappropriately fight us either verbally or physically. This rings a bell for me.

One time in particular when I was an intern in the States, I was like bottom of the pecking order for sure. We were basically were slave labor, but we were there voluntarily because we wanted to learn what the organization was teaching us. And there was a young fellow, but he was on permanent staff, who for whatever reason just decided I was irritating.

I’m sure none of you could figure out why that would be. Anyway, he didn’t like me. And so when we would be working in similar things, like if we go together to do a project with a bunch of the kids and a bunch of the animals, he was… it was difficult.

I was not allowed to fight back positionally because I was just an intern, and because he was permanent staff, and because he’d been around forever, and he lived in the neighborhood, and he knew the founder and he was completely bulletproof. Do you know what I mean? And even though he was in the wrong, and his attitude was stank, and there was no especially good reason for him to not like me. I think because I wasn’t subservient enough for him, if you can imagine.

I think that was his main problem. I also wasn’t 19. I was already 27.

Like, dude. Anyway, at some point, I was like, okay, well, I can’t. There’s nothing I can do about this.

This is unfair, and your fairness is really important to me, the whole justice thing. And so I really did say, look at this and say, okay, you are… you’re my lawyer, God. You’re my lawyer.

I need you to defend me. I need you to go to bat for me because I cannot do this, and yet it still feels unfair, and it’s affecting my work, and it’s affecting the kids that I’m working with because he’s basically blocking what I’m trying to do. And so I just left it, and I had to pray that like on the way to work every day, sometimes in the middle of work, sometimes on the way home.

Like every day. It’s not like I just said it once, and it magically was done. I had to keep reminding, reminding, reminding myself, and not responding to T.J. poorly.

Just be polite, and be professional, and even a little kind, and have a little bit of humor, and just go around him, and go outside the barn instead of through if he was inside, or whatever. And just let him burn his own self out. And it was really interesting because it totally backfired on him.

Not because of me, but basically his approach just kind of spiraled out of control, got the attention of supervisors, and got him in trouble. And I never said a single thing, not to anybody. And it was fascinating because basically the situation, basically kind of like what goes around comes around.

What he ended up having to face about his own behavior and

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