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It is indeed a sincere question! I'd love to whole-heartily agree with you that our country is a bastion of tolerance and courtesy, and in the grand sweep of h

It is indeed a sincere question! I'd love to whole-heartily agree with you that our country is a bastion of tolerance and courtesy, and in the grand sweep of history we could argue such. But I would also say that we have persecuted the weak from the start - Native populations, African-Americans, Irish, and Japanese to name a few. From a religious and biological standpoint our greatest persecution is our most recent - we have (in my opinion) disposed of 50,000,000 children in the womb during the last 40 years for various reasons. So, while indeed Christians have nothing to fear based on our numbers, I could imagine that in the future that our claim a supernatural relationship with an unprovable entity will be deem us mentally unfit and not worthy of consideration. Oddly enough our Bible acknowledges us as crazy " We are fools for Christ! [...] We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!" in 1 Corinthians. The weird bit - from a Christian perspective, we Christians deserve persecution. We have been given the faith and love of Jesus Christ, and we have not shared that love and kindness with our neighbors. From our standpoint, those that have been given much will be called to account, and (again from our standpoint) we have been given everything in Christ Jesus.

hackuser 11y ago
Thanks for taking the time to answer. There is too little conversation between different parts of the political spectrum, too much of an echo chamber for everyone, and we end up not taking other people's interests into account. Certainly I agree that many groups have been persecuted, and I understand how abortion could be very troubling depending on your beliefs. To me, persectution of Christians seems to be a far-off, theoretical possibility at this point, but it's too easy to downlplay risks that won't affect me. I certainly see that, in some settings, taking a religious approach to an issue would be a non-starter, so in that respect people with strong religious beliefs are marginalized. Thanks again. It's very interesting and enlightening.
- benjohnson 11y ago
  Thank you for the courteous conversation as well!

hackuser 11y ago

Thanks for taking the time to answer. There is too little conversation between different parts of the political spectrum, too much of an echo chamber for everyone, and we end up not taking other people's interests into account. Certainly I agree that many groups have been persecuted, and I understand how abortion could be very troubling depending on your beliefs. To me, persectution of Christians seems to be a far-off, theoretical possibility at this point, but it's too easy to downlplay risks that won't affect me. I certainly see that, in some settings, taking a religious approach to an issue would be a non-starter, so in that respect people with strong religious beliefs are marginalized. Thanks again. It's very interesting and enlightening.

benjohnson 11y ago
Thank you for the courteous conversation as well!