Religious Liberty Is Not Freedom From Ridicule
There is always a temptation to conflate the right of soul liberty with the idea that we should be outraged when we are marginalized or ridiculed in the public square. We should fight this temptation.
When we work for religious liberty, we are working in the interest of the common good; we are not just protecting ourselves. We are working to keep ourselves from participating in the evil of a conscience-restricting coercive government. The apostles denied the authority of a decidedly non-democratic authority to intrude into such matters (Acts 4:19-20), much less should we expect it of a government with constitutional guarantees of the natural rights of religious freedom.
This doesn’t mean, though, that we should vent outrage when we are ridiculed or insulted or slighted by the culture around us. In fact, this impulse will leave us less equipped for contending for religious liberty. Behind our hurt at insults, after all, is a desire to be seen as “normal.” If people just saw us as we are, we think, they would see that we’re not as stupid or backward as they think. Nowhere in the gospels does Jesus have such a concern. He is accused of drunkenness, of insanity, and even of demon possession, and through it all Jesus is frustratingly tranquil.
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