PERSECUTION

MILITANT ATHEISM and theocratism--at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum and implacable enemies of each other--share a lust for conquest and not infrequently the same <em>modus operandi</em>  (Lat. system, method)  of officially sanctioned, organized pogroms against Christians. Human bones are a melancholy sight.  Whether a single bone or whole skeleton, the stark relics of a once-healthy and robust human being molest the living man's self-centeredness.  The active, vigorous person shuns reflection upon the final event of his own mortality; he recoils from the grim certainty that, in the course of time, he will succumb to death entirely alone.  Bones rattle his complacent assumptions, forcing him to confront the meaning of death and the inevitability of his own demise.

FUNDAMENTALISTS LOATHE not reality but complexity; they fear not death but accommodation. Nevertheless, Christians must avoid the temptation to take refuge in self-serving sociopolitical grandstanding.  Evil is not exclusive to China and militant Islamic countries as if it were absent elsewhere.  Wealth and power tend to dazzle citizens in first world nations, blinding them to the pervasive evils of promiscuity and pornography, broken families, addictive substances and violence, and the sinful consequences of contraception and abortion.  The Lord Jesus, speaking through the apostle John, denounced the lukewarm spirituality tolerated by affluent churches:  "For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked."