The other day I was coming out of a local building supply, and was headed for my truck. I heard a voice behind me, an inquiring voice, saying, “Douglas Wilson?” That was a correct identification, so I turned around, indicating yes. A middle-aged woman I did not recognize was standing there, about to go into the building supply, and when she ascertained that it was I, she extended her hand like an ancient Roman citizen, three rows down from Caesar, and gave me an emphatic waggled thumbs-down. I asked her name, and off she huffed, saying something about our hateful behavior. Blessings! I called after her, and resumed the walk to my truck.
It reminded me of another incident, in which I was speaking at a League of Women Voters forum about a proposed Idaho referendum on homosexuality. The room was jammed with pro-homosexual activists who had all showed up early, and most of them had signs. But the choice moment of the evening was at the end when one of the hecklers stood up, hoicked up his sign, which said “No Hate Here.” and with his other hand he flipped me off. One of the few moments of my life where I regret not having a camera at the ready.
Both incidents reveal something that we must understand about our persecutors here in Moscow. They feel (intensely) persecuted. They have assumed, in their own emotional lives, the status of victims. In therapeutic America (built by secularist fundamentalism), the privileged class is always the victim class, and certain other classes cannot be victims by definition. White males cannot be victims by definition. Conservative Christians cannot be victims by definition.
And a victim cannot be guilty of “racism,” “bigotry,” “hate,” etc., also by definition. This is why we have gone through two years and more of petty harassment, vandalism, frivolous legal complaints, and so on, and those on the progressive left cannot see what is happening. We cannot be victims, and they cannot be persecutors, their world being a place only suitable for the tidy-minded. They cannot see it because their worldview precludes it. If the sun goes around the earth by definition, it is little wonder that the theologians of Galileo’s acquaintance refused to look through his telescope. “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
This is a religious issue, a worldview issue. The persecuting mind works in a certain way necessarily, and this is part of it. Moreover, this is an essential part of the persecutor’s mental framework. To take the classic case, the anti-Semitism of the Nazis fed upon a wide-spread feeling among the German people that they had long been victimized in various ways by the Jews (which was, of course, not the case). But this was the story they told themselves to justify themselves beforehand. Waves of persecution do not break out because one group of people take it into their heads to attack another group of people whom they also believe to be peace-loving and entirely innocent.
Persecutors are a threat, but they are a threat because they feel threatened. This also accounts for why the persecuting complex is frequently characterized by cowardice and timidity. Persecution is defensive panic on steroids. So it does not matter that the feelings are largely imaginary and busy looking for a scapegoat — those feelings can still motivate people to commit hateful acts, both on a grand scale and on a petty scale.
And when they start behaving this way, they cannot see it unless a forgiving God deals with them at the heart level — as He did with Saul the persecutor. And so that is how we should pray — that God would destroy our enemies by converting them to our friends. But if that is not God’s good pleasure, we still know that He has this kind of incoherent persecution of the Church well in hand. The persecutors invariably and inevitably fall into the pit they have prepared for others, which is in the hand of God alone.
Thank you. Very helpful.