Cancel Culture?

 Michael Sprague

A History Lesson/Cancel Culture

July 19, A.D. 64, was the day Nero, the lunatic Caesar, torched his own city of Rome and then to save his own neck said, “The Christians burned Rome”. Great persecution followed for over 200 years.

Here’s the million-dollar question that Baylor University sociologist Dr. Rodney Stark asks in the subtitle of his classic book, How the Obscure Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religion in the Western World in a Few Centuries. Think about it. The Christian faith started with 120 followers in the upper room. By A.D. 40, Christians were about .0075% of the Roman Empire. However, Stark calculates that by A.D. 350 there were about 33 million, or 56% of the empire who named the name of Jesus. Christianity colored everything. This is an estimated growth rate of 40% per decade. It’s staggering.

Again, the question is how did this persecuted, insignificant, marginalized, often uneducated group of Jesus followers, who were considered vagabonds, gypsies, or members of some cult, turn the world upside down? What accounts for the phenomenon? Was it money? No. Was it power? No. Was it soldiers? Not a one. Was it weapons? No. Was it buildings? None existed for two centuries. Was it an ability to out-argue? No. Was it seeker-sensitive services, praise bands, or youth groups? No.

Stark concludes that the key to their success was a willingness to sacrifice themselves out of love for others. This sacrifice, such as the following, rocked the world: 

• They treated slaves as human beings, sometimes liberating them.

• They elevated women and treated them with dignity.

• They reacted to persecution as martyrs, not terrorists.

• They loved neighbors, as one pagan said, “as if they were family.”

• They offered charity and hope to strangers, orphans, losers, and the lame.

• Tradition has it that a Roman government official demanded St. Lawrence, the second-century treasurer of the church, bring forth all the treasures of the church. Lawrence showed

up with orphans, widows, the blind, the lame, and the poor and said, “Sir, these are the treasures of the church,” for which he was burned on a spit over a bed of coals.

• Clement in A.D. 95 wrote, “We know of many among ourselves, who have delivered themselves into slavery in order to ransom others.” Imagine you are a slave with no hope and no dreams. One day the master says, “You are free. Take off your chains. Someone has taken your place!” Clement said it happened many times! Some sold themselves into the salt mines

to minister even though they would never see freedom again.

Good works were Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C to a watching world. It was unlike anything the world had ever seen, and it drew people by high morals, good citizenship, and sacrificial acts of love. The raging opposition was overcome. Good works, in the power of the Spirit, won the day over a mocking world.

Do it again Lord. Do it again. Do it again.