In recent years, Christians in Western society have come under increasing pressure to keep their beliefs “in the closet.”
Britain, long a haven for religious freedom, is now a haven for discrimination against Christians. Recent headlines tell of Christians losing their jobs after offering to pray for a sick person or suggesting that a client look to God for help.
“What this amounts to is that for Christians, the freedom to live according to their religious beliefs—one of the most fundamental precepts of a liberal society—is fast becoming impossible. Indeed, merely professing traditional Christian beliefs can cause such offence that it is treated as a crime.”
According to one author, “...it is nevertheless a source of wonderment that for the police, ‘hate crime’ doesn’t seem to occur whenever Christianity is pilloried, mocked and insulted—as happens routinely—but only when a minority faith is in the frame.”
Ironically, the Archbishop of Canterbury has recently chastised British politicians for adding to the fray. One author sees the situation this way, “Without the Biblical narrative, which gave the world the revolutionary idea of an orderly universe that could therefore be investigated by the use of reason, science would never have developed in the first place” (Daily Mail, December 14, 2009).
God warned that those who reject Him will be given over to a debased mind (Romans 1:28). These same individuals are often well-educated, “always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). We need to pray for the day when God’s Truth will fill the earth (Isaiah 11:9).
