Awhile back, someone that I know was pretty consistently posting hateful rhetoric about Christianity on their Facebook page.
Most of the flat out bigotry, I let pass, as I didn’t have time to address it all.
A high number of the posts were memes from other pages. One was called “Religion is Evil” to give you an idea. Some of the arguments in the memes were so weak that I was surprised that the non-believers have gotten so sloppy.
A few of the posts I did address and charitably corrected the errors. To give you an example, one said, “Who really thinks there were people in Jesus’ time named Matthew, John, and Peter?” Gotcha!
Each time I corrected, the meme was taken down by my friend and nothing was said.
Another post, though, I addressed more directly because it was so insulting. It basically said that all Christians are uneducated, bad people.
So I asked the person in the comments, “You know that Dustin and I are Christians, do you really believe this about us? Do you really think we are stupid, bad people?”
They responded by private messaging me and, at first, trying to make excuses for why they post stuff like that. But, when I challenged the excuses, they apologized, took down the post, and said they’d be more careful about what they post in the future.
There hasn’t been a negative post about Christianity—and to be sure, they were all focused on Christianity—since.
I’m not hear to brag. It saddens and concerns me that many so feel emboldened to blatantly express such negative, hateful things about God and Christianity.
Our Lord did warn us that we would be hated because of His name. This, though, is not a call to play victim, but a call to be charitable defenders of our God and our faith.
It is also a reminder that while we should expect ridicule and disrespect, we are not called to just be nice. Charitable, yes, but nice isn’t a virtue.
I do care about the friend that was posting this stuff and I’ve been praying for their soul for years now. I can’t properly love someone, Catholic Pilgrims, if I never speak the truth into their life about Christ.
Live the Faith boldly and travel well this Wednesday.
