What the Word Persecution Costs
I have never once been afraid to walk into a church. Bored, yes. Quietly furious about the song selection, more than once. But in a lifetime of Sundays, in sanctuaries and school gyms and rented cafeterias, the most dangerous thing I have ever carried through a church door is a casserole.
And yet I know how easily the word persecution comes to people like me. I have heard it applied to a canceled show, a snide remark in a break room, a school calendar that says winter break instead of Christmas. I have reached for it myself, in seasons when the culture felt colder than I liked. The word is always within arm's length here, because it costs us nothing to say.
In January, Open Doors released its annual World Watch List, the count it keeps of what happens to Christians in the places where the word still means what it meant. Researchers documented 4,849 believers killed for their faith in a single reporting year. That is about thirteen a day. Thirteen today, while I decide whether a sermon series is worth my time.
Somewhere between my unafraid Sunday and that number, one English word is being asked to cover both. The question I cannot put down is whether it can.
