One Little Thing
By Anthony Casperson
4-15-23

In the past couple of weeks, I saw a Christian author talking about why he decided to write his book. The author mentioned that he wrote it in order to combat the sentiment he noticed on a shirt that someone was wearing. That shirt read, “Too many Christians. Not enough lions.”

This sentiment, of course, is distastefully calling for the persecution of modern followers of Jesus by poking fun at the persecution of many of our faithful predecessors by the Roman Empire during the early centuries AD. People whose lives were cut short in horrible and tragic manners used as the punchline in order to demean those who adhere to the same faith.

Many who would wear such a sentiment on a shirt consider we followers of Jesus to be ignorant fools who should get with the times. Or, at least, should just go along with paying lip-service to whatever the culture says is the right thing to do, and then go do the whole “faith thing” far away from them.

Little do they know, though, that this attitude matches the one which those ancient Romans had. The cultural elite who used their power to murder people whose only crime was non-compliance so that they could keep their God’s standard.

See, the Roman Empire was rather open when it came to religious beliefs of those within their boundaries. Anybody could worship in whatever way they wanted, as long as they also did “one little thing.” (As an aside, Jews were exempt from this requirement because they fought hard in many semi-successful rebellions during the few centuries before Christ came enfleshed in humanity.)

What was that single requirement? To give Caesar his “rightful” worship.

The leader of their culture was considered like unto a god. And thus, should be worshipped like one. The expectation would be to take a tiny little pinch of incense, throw it onto a specific fire, and say a few words—which the person didn’t even need to mean.

It was just “one little thing that no one needs to get upset about.” Everybody else was doing it. And afterward, they had all the freedom they wanted to worship in whatever way suited them. Over there. Far away from others. In the privacy of their own home.

But for those who worship the one true God, and who seek to live in light of his instructions about life, that “one little thing” holds monstrous proportions. The tiny pinch of incense contained the weight of apostasy. To claim anything as god other than the Creator of the Universe—to claim any “truth” beyond God’s standard—denies the entirety of the faith.

And the only thing that those early followers of Jesus could do was stand up for the truth of God by refusing to give in to that “one little thing.”

So, the cultural elite whose worldview they refused to affirm turned to ecstatic violence in order to try to silence voices that still echo the truth of God today. These Christians walked in with their heads held high, refusing to deny the Lord who died for them. Some were burned at the stake. Some fought lions in the arena. One pair of women were gored by a bull (after having been caught in a net because they were too good at evading the beast). And that list is just from my memory of church history.

The list could go on of these people who join with the great cloud of witnesses cheering us on to run this race of life with the same faith that they did. Hebrews 11 includes numerous great ancestors of the faith. Some of them did heroic and mighty deeds. And many were persecuted and killed.

Verses 35-38 tells us that “[s]ome were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”

All of these people refused to surrender and acquiesce to the culture around them that sought to force them to do just that “one little thing.” They refused, and died for it. In tragic ways.

They are not a punchline. They are the massive crowd cheering us on as we run the race ahead of us. Let us run it like they did. Without giving up. And with our minds set upon our Lord who showed us the way to live, even it means facing the cross of persecution.

Like I wrote last week, our Lord considered it nothing to endure the cross. Bringing us into right relationship with him was worth the pain and agony and death. Shouldn’t he be worth it to us in return? Shouldn’t we refuse to give in to that “one little thing” that denies him and the truth he stands for?

Consider the persecution by those who despise our Lord to be as nothing. In this equation, that is really the one little thing that we have to endure as we worship our God. Just like the crowd of martyrs surrounding us who will cheer if our race ends like theirs did.