Hello everyone, this is Lila Rose and you're listening to the
Lila Rose Show. Today's episode is on the topic
of persecution. Persecution is something that
many of us, or probably all of us in some way or another have
experienced or sadly we have unwittingly or purposefully
caused others to experience. Persecution is a human problem.
It has existed throughout all of human history.
Human beings, we persecute one another and we are persecuted.
It stems from the ability in each of us to commit wrongdoing,
to commit evil, just like we have the ability to commit good.
And the definition of the word persecution has to do with
persistently annoying, harassing, being hostile, or
I'll treating somebody else, especially because of their
religious or their political beliefs.
And it comes from the Latin word persecution, persecution them,
which means to follow, pursue, hunt down, proceed against,
prosecute. So it's a human problem.
And it's especially important to talk about because even though
it may not look like it sometimes in the United States,
we have a persecution issue. We have an issue with labeling
and seeing others as less than or different than and not
wanting to tolerate other people's beliefs.
And it's something that I've particularly noticed in the last
several years. It's a problem on college
campuses. It's a problem in the way we
discuss and talk about topics online.
It's a problem even economically Now.
There are horrific persecutions happening worldwide right now.
I want to mention a couple of them to put this into context.
For example, in Iraq, there are there used to be 2 million
Christians. They are a minority population
and always have been and they are now less than 1/4 million
because they've been killed or had to flee because of ISIS,
because of attacks from radical Islam.
An exam. Another example is in China,
both Christians and Muslims are persecuted.
Recent word got out that there are actually Christian, they're
actually Muslim internment camps and internment camps where
Muslims are put in it by the communist Chinese and there's
very little information about how they are being mistreated.
An internment camp is never a good place to be, but it just
goes to show that religiously speaking and certain minority
groups worldwide are experiencing with persecution,
sometimes to the point of martyrdom and death.
In the United States is a little different, but it's also very
bad. What we see in the United
States, and this is something that's happened just recently,
is large corporations and whole political parties and
individuals who don't want the other side of an opposing
viewpoint or another belief system to be able to even speak
or to even exist. Recently, JP Morgan Chase closed
several accounts of conservative activists with no explanation,
so they shut down their bank accounts with no explanation.
Many conservatives and those who oppose certain leftist
ideologies have been suppressed on social media by the big tech
companies are completely shut down.
There was a feminist in Canada recently who spoke out about her
concern that transgender, the ideology of transgender, was
actually hurting biological women and she was banned from
Twitter. Live Action has been banned from
advertising on Twitter, the organization that I lead, the
pro-life Group, for the last three or four years.
This is despite the fact that pro abortion groups like Planned
Parenthood and other very strong abortion groups are allowed to
do advertising on Twitter. I could go on.
There are so many examples of this sort of entrenched bias in
these companies. But I think one of the biggest
concerns I have is the way sometimes we talk to each other
online or in person, and this culture of shaming or silencing
when you're faced with a position or an opinion that you
don't like. And for those who are listening,
who are pro-life, who believe in their faith, who are Christians?
Not everyone listening is a Christian, I understand.
But many of you are Christians are Catholics, people who are
trying to live in many ways a counter cultural life.
You're not trying to go the way of the culture when it comes to
things like human dignity and sexuality and marriage often are
called and hateful and bigoted and all kinds of names.
And the the hostility towards what you believe in and what you
stand for is often very strong. We saw this outside of a Planned
Parenthood abortion clinic just last month when a state
representative in Pennsylvania in Philadelphia walked up to
three teenage girls and their mother and his name is Brian
Sims and started to harass them, yelling at them, saying that
they making fun of their religion, making fun of them
being outside praying outside of Planned Parenthood abortion
clinic. And he filmed them.
And he told the people that he was live streaming the video to
his followers on Twitter and Facebook.
Facebook that he would give them a bounty of $100 if they could
find the names and identities of these 3 teen girls.
He also mocked an elderly woman who was outside the Planned
Parenthood. This is a state elected
representative and he did not apologize.
He only apologized to Planned Parenthood for violating Planned
Parenthood non engagement rule where they don't allow any of
their volunteers to even talk to pro lifers because they're
afraid that they by discussing the abortion topic with a pro
lifer, they might become pro-life.
So this is just an example among many, but if you're listening,
you probably have experienced times where you felt afraid,
afraid to say and stand up for what you believe in, where you
felt put down or you felt sidelined or silenced because of
what you believe in. And so this is for you.
This is for anybody for any reason that has experienced
that. And I won't.
And I'm sharing this, what this episode is coming from a place
of my faith because I strongly believe that persecution and how
we deal with it comes down to a question of our identity.
It comes down to a question of who we know ourselves to be.
And the reality is if our identity is based in conditional
things. So if our identity is who we
know ourselves to be, is based in, for example, how successful
we are, if it's based in how popular we are, if it's based on
how respected we are, if it's based on how beautiful we are or
well liked we are, or how wealthy we are or how healthy we
are. If it's based on any of these
attributes, then our identity is conditional and we're and when
we're not seen as one of these things, if some we're not seen,
if we're disliked suddenly, if we're not seen as popular, if
we're not seen as beautiful, if we're not seen as successful, if
we're not seen as smart, if we're not seen as whatever this
these attributes are, then that's an attack we will feel
against our identity and persecution.
The sting of a persecution, the sting of an attack, will be that
much deeper and can unsettle us because our identity is rooted
in the conditional and not in the unconditional.
And so I think the core of how we deal with persecution has to
do with what is our identity. And if our identity is as a
Christian, and this is my identity, if our identity is
strong enough and deep enough that nothing, then nothing can
change it. Change it.
And the way to have that identity as a Christian is to
know that we are sons and daughters of God, sons and
daughters of an all powerful God who loves us, who wants to
forgive us, who has come to set us free and who desires eternal
life with us because he loves us so much.
If that's our identity, then no matter what we face out there in
the world, no matter what kind of attacks or trials or
challenges or struggles we face, then we will still be rooted in
the peace of knowing we are sons and daughters of God.
I believe everybody's called to be a son and daughter of God.
God created every single person, no matter their background, no
matter anything about them, for him, for eternal love.
And it's a human. It's the human story, the human
quest to discover our truest and deepest identity.
But if our identity is in the conditional, if it's in how the
world sees us, if the world approves of us, if other people
give us that slap on the back, if other people think we're
doing a good job, whatever it is, it will never be enough.
And then when we face the the pain of letting others down or
being opposed or it's even attacked by others, then all of
a sudden we will feel this existential pain and this crisis
within us. Instead of knowing that we have
the invincible identity of being a son and son or a daughter of
God because that is who we serve and that is who we follow.
We are part of a family of God and everybody out there is
called to be our brothers and sisters and we can choose to
accept that identity or we can choose to reject it.
I want to share an incredible story of somebody who so totally
knew their identity as a son of God that nothing could face him,
not even death. This is a story of Maximilian
Colby, who was a Polish Franciscan Friar during World
War 2. At age 13, he joined the
Franciscan. So he was very young when he
felt a call to faith and to live his life completely for God.
When Germany invaded Poland, Maximilian Colby didn't flee.
He stayed put in order to organize a temporary hospital.
He was ultimately, even though he was there trying to rescue
Jews and he was trying there to try to provide shelter to
refugees. He was also publishing anti Nazi
German publications. And because of the work that he
was doing, he was ultimately arrested by the Gestapo and take
it to Auschwitz. And when he was imprisoned
there, he tried to serve like he had been serving before.
He was subjected to really terrible harassment and beatings
because he was acting as a priest.
But Despite that, he tried to serve and try to love those
around him and tried to cultivate his the faith for
those around him. Well, at the time a prisoner
tried to escape from the camp, which would happen periodically.
And this prompted the guest, the S S to pick 10 men to be starved
to death inside an underground bunker in order to be a sign to
the rest of the prisoners to not even attempt to escape.
And when he randomly during a role called, picked these ten
different men to be starved to death, one of them cried out and
was very distraught and said, my wife, my children, because he
was afraid to die and leave behind his children and his
wife. And that's when Maximilian Colby
stepped out of line and volunteered to take the place of
one of these ten men who had been chosen to be starved to
death. At that time, Colby, Maximilian
Colby and the other nine men were led into the bunker.
They were left there to die. And during that time, according
to the eyewitnesses, Maximilian Colby would pray with the
prisoners. He would be standing or
kneeling, and he would be singing.
And after two weeks of the starvation and the dehydration,
only Maximilian Colby was left alive in that bunker.
And at that point, the guards gave him a lethal injection
because he wasn't dying, and he died.
This is a martyrdom. This is a story that is
horrific, but it also shows Maximilian Colby's peace and
love in the middle of the worst persecution, even to the point
of being willing to take another person's persecution on to
himself. And the only way that Maximilian
Colby was able to do this. And this is something that he
even we know about his life. When he was a very young man, he
had an apparition appear to him of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who
said that she had to offer him 2 crowns, 1 of purity and one of
martyrdom if he would accept them.
And he said he would. So it's something that rooted in
his identity as a Son of God, as a Son of God the Father, as a
disciple of Christ, Maximilian Colby was prepared.
He was preparing in a way, his whole life for martyrdom and he
was living out his whole life sacrifice and love for others.
So. So this is a story that's meant
to inspire us. It's obviously an incredible
story, but it just goes to show that when your identity is so
rooted and who you are and whose you are, and Maximilian Colby
had his eye on eternal life, he knew that this life is not all
there is. So even in the worst
persecution, he did not flinch. He did not reject his faith.
He continued to stand up and serve others, even to the point
of giving his life in exchange for another person's life.
A few things for those that may experience persecution or may
experience challenges. I think it's very important to
ask ourselves in any situation to ask why are we experiencing
persecution? Why do we think somebody is
treating us poorly or is upset with us?
I think sometimes it's absolutely because it is unfair.
It is part of the the way that challenges happen when we are
standing up for what's right. But sometimes perhaps it could
be that we need to improve. We need to improve the way that
we're communicating, the way that we're talking with people.
Maybe we need to be more loving and understanding and what we
perceive as persecution is actually somebody who is, who is
just misunderstanding and asking for more respect and love.
So that's always important, especially for something as
simple as like a conversation with a friend or a chat room
online, leaving comments on Instagram or whatever it is.
Our respect and our kindness towards other people is
essential because if we're being a jerk, then we shouldn't be
surprised when other people are maybe a jerk back to us.
The other thing I want to say here too is if we are not
experiencing any persecution, if you are out there and you're
like, I'm fine, no one's ever been upset with me, then I would
say, are you actually really standing up for what's right?
And Jesus Christ says that blessed are you when they
persecute you for my sake. And he said that no servant is
above his master. So if you are a follower of
Jesus Christ, you should experience persecution at some
point or another. The world will not love you, the
world will hate you. And Christ predicted that.
And he said that the world would hate him so much as it did.
And that's because of our sin that he was even crucified on a
cross. But because no servant is above
his or her Master, we should not expect to be free of
persecution. If Christ was persecuted, so
will we be. So if we are just living like
the rest of the world, if we are just trying to be pleasing to
other people by fitting into their boxes or fitting into how
they expect us to live or talk or behave, then perhaps we're
not actually being disciples of Christ.
Perhaps we're actually not living our truest identity.
I want to share a verse from the book of Matthew where Christ
promised us persecution. He said in Matthew 543 to 48.
Jesus said to his disciples, You have heard it said that you
shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who
persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly
Father. For he makes his sunrise on the
good and the bad, and causes rain to fall on the just and the
unjust. Before I go on, Jesus is doing
something very radical here when it comes to persecution.
He's saying that not only should we love our neighbor as
ourselves, which is the golden rule, it's something that was
instituted even before Christ. But he is saying that we should
actually love our enemies, not just our neighbor, but our
enemies, and that we should pray for those who persecute you.
This is exactly what Maximilian Colby did, and he's saying that
we should do this, that you may be children of your Heavenly
Father, which is incredible because Jesus here is exactly
reminding his disciples of their identity.
He's saying you are children of your Heavenly Father, your sons
and daughters of God. So you have this identity which
gives you the strength to pray for those who persecute you,
which gives you the strength to love your enemies.
And this unconditional identity as children of God is what will
enable you to pray for those who persecute you and to stand up to
persecution. He goes on and says, Jesus says,
for if you love those who love you, what recompense or what
reward will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the
same? And if you greet your brothers
and sisters only, what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect just as your
heavenly Father is perfect. I mean, very strong words from
Christ here in Matthew, be perfect, just as your heavenly
Father is perfect. But he's saying that what sets
us apart as Christians is the fact that we are the children of
God and we love those who are our enemies.
We pray for those who persecute us.
This is our path to perfection. So this is extremely important
because what he's doing here is he's transforming.
Christ is explaining the transformation of how
persecution actually makes us become perfected.
It actually teaches us true sacrificial love, loving our
enemies and praying for them. How do we do that?
It doesn't mean we don't speak the truth.
Actually, love asks us to speak the truth.
If we're going to love our enemies, it means telling them
the truth, doing it lovingly, trying to find ways to do it,
but speaking the truth, especially when so many lies are
being told. And it also means that we take
the time to pray for those who are the enemy, pray for those
who are doing the persecution, who are lost in lies, who are
confused. The prayer coupled with our
courage to speak and our willingness to serve, that is
what will help us become like our Heavenly Father, help us
become like Christ. I want to say something else on
persecution here too. I've talked a lot about
persecution from the outside. Obviously the extreme case of
Maximilian Colby and, and the Nazis literally killing him for,
for his face and for sacrificing for others and caring for the
Jews and caring for others. But also persecution can come
from inside of us. And this is actually for me, one
of the things that has been the most difficult for me
personally. So yes, there's persecution from
the opposing side sometimes in politics or in the culture.
And you know, I've had my share of death threats and attacks and
stalkers and all kinds of things.
But for me personally, sometimes the biggest persecution is from
my own, within my own heart. Meaning I feel that in my own
mind, I think negative thoughts, I doubt or I question, you know,
if God is really there. I sometimes I know he's there,
but I, I'm not really thinking the thoughts of God is with me.
Instead, I'm thinking about how things are going to go wrong.
Or I can think about how I'm not good enough or I think about how
life is not as good and you know, there's there's no way
there's a hopeless case. It's just it's despairing or I'm
you beat yourself up because you're upset at yourself over
something. Basically, we persecute
ourselves. There's so many negative
thoughts and Satan loves us. This is a spare thing too, but
it's also a psychological thing. There is a world of negative
thoughts and negative ideas and negative emotions that can hurt
us and that can make a bit we're we're down on us and, and make
us feel like we're not really that son or daughter of God.
And I think from that perspective, it's all the more
important to go back to our unconditional identity and to
renew both of both our heart and our mind in that identity.
And that's why I want to. Close with I want to close with
some tips for how to do that. So whether we're dealing with
persecution from the outside, what other people say about us,
what other people do, or we're experiencing persecution from
the inside, those negative voices that may come in our head
or our heart or those negative feelings that we may face.
So the tips I want to share for protecting our unconditional
identity, first of all, and our unconditional identity is what
we're sons and daughters of God. We're destined for eternal life
and eternal love with God. We are forgiven, we are
redeemed, we are set free. That's our unconditional
identity. And before God, we are his
beautiful, most beloved and and forever to be enjoyed in heaven
forever sons and daughters #1 tip for protecting our
unconditional identity. It is necessary for us as humans
to find community who are like minded and who share our beliefs
so that we can grow with and that we can grow from their
influence. We need other people.
We are made for community. We're not made to go it alone.
We become, you may have heard it said that we become most like
the five people we spend the most amount of time with.
You may have heard that. Well, I think it's true.
The people that we spend the most time with, the people that
we who are are confidants, the people that who we confide and
we share our soul with, these are the people that influence
us. And of course we can influence
them. And what I'm saying here is not
that we can't have friends who disagree with us or who have
different beliefs and that we can't have very close
relationships with those that are maybe very different from
us. But I'm saying that we need
community of those who are on the same path, who believe
themselves to be sons and daughters of God, who are trying
to actually follow Christ and fulfill his commandments.
And who are going to help us become the men and the women we
are created to be. Who are going to help strengthen
our beliefs, belief in God and strengthen our good habits and
strengthen what we do, what the good that we can do and who are
on that journey with us. So this is something that can be
found in churches. It can be found in young adults
group. You can, you know, find a close
group of friends in the pro-life movement.
If you're involved in that, finding some folks who are on
the same page. There's even online groups or
that you can join to at least first connect with people.
Of course, I think our community needs to be in person.
We need to be in the flesh with each other.
But there are people out there like you.
There are people out there who want to be disciples of Christ
and who believe the truth about life and sex and the dignity of
the person and all of these things that are so controversial
today about abortion and about how sex is for marriage and
about God and and his love. So find those people and if you
are struggling to find them, then look around at the
communities close to you, whether it's churches or your
local young adults group if you're a young adult, because
they are out there and don't give up until will you find that
group. It can be just a couple people,
but people that you can become friends with that will be on the
same page with you. We were made for community or a
family. People in our family who might
be on the same page that we can be close with #2 is having a
relationship with Christ. It's really impossible to be
rooted in our identity as a son and daughter of God if we don't
have a relationship with Christ. We absolutely need to cultivate
that friendship with Christ. So what does that look like to
really identify with Him and have a friendship with Him?
Well, first of all, there's three things I'm going to share,
but I want to 1st caveat it and say a relationship with God is
not just about our feelings or our subjective experiences.
Obviously those things matter and we can use them to help draw
closer to God, but sometimes we have bad feelings.
Sometimes there's an experience we didn't understand that makes
this question what we have to go back to in a relationship with
Christ is 3 things. First of all, prayer.
Second of all, study and what God has to say, which is the
Bible and the Magisterium of the faith.
And the third thing or the the, the extrapolation of what that
teaching of Christ really is. And then the third thing is the
sacraments. And to explain each one.
First of all, prayer you actually, we actually need to
spend time talking to God and trying to listen in silence for
God in order to actually deepen that relationship with him.
And this means taking the time each day set aside.
Some of you may go to daily mass or other services or some of you
may just have your 10 minutes or 30 minutes of quiet time.
But taking that time to actually sit with God, to share your
heart with them, to ask for forgiveness for the things that
you need forgiveness for, to give the difficulties to him, to
praise him, to thank him, to meditate on the good that he has
done, to meditate on his promises.
We need to take time for prayer. The second thing is study of his
teachings of Christ teachings. We need to familiarize ourselves
with the life of Christ, read the gospels, know the Bible,
understand what Christ was saying by taking time to
actually sit with it and study it and read commentary on it.
If we don't understand the life of Christ, it's probably because
we haven't taken enough time to try.
And I'm not saying we will completely understand the life
of Christ, but we can grow an understanding by taking the time
to study it, taking the time to learn it, taking the time to
study Christ's life and also the teachings of his church.
Study what are the teachings about life and sexuality and
marriage and how we are to live and how we are to serve and what
it means to be a disciple. So that takes study.
So we need to take time for prayer, take time for study,
and, and the last thing about having a relationship with
Christ is the sacraments. This is something that these are
things that Christ instituted for us to be close to him in a
very physical way. So baptism is the first
sacrament that we have and it's something that some of us
received as children. Some of us chose it as
teenagers, depending on how we were raised or maybe even as
adults. But baptism is actually adoption
into the family of God and we're wiped free of the stain of
original sin. It's a physical thing that
happens to us with the water, but it's also a spiritual
renewal and it's something that we need in our relationship with
Christ. Another sacrament that's very
powerful is confession. And this is from the Catholic
perspective, or if you're Orthodox going to confession,
you're actually talking through the priest to God and it's
actually an A moment where you're sharing your sin and he
is explicitly forgiving you. Now we can still confess our sin
anytime, anywhere, but this is also a sacrament where you
actually receive through the words of Christ, through the
words of the priest, the words of Christ and the forgiveness of
Christ. Another sacrament that's very
powerful is marriage. For those of you that are
married or feeling called to marriage, this is a sacrament
that's meant to draw you closer to Christ.
I know in my marriage it absolutely has brought me closer
to Christ and to know the love of Christ.
So the sacraments are really important.
I might talk about that those all in a future episode, but
these are this is the life of the Church.
This is the life of a Christian. Our prayer, our community, our
study, our sacraments in it and all through it developing our
relationship with Christ, our friendship with Christ so we can
truly follow him. Bottom line is persecution of
any kind from within or without can be transformed when we
endure it and experience it through the lens of Christ,
through the lens of our unconditional identity as
children, as sons and daughters of God.
And from looking at it in order to transform it, experiencing it
to transform it, to use it as an opportunity to love the person
persecuting us, to pray, say a prayer for the person we're
talking with, whether it's on social media or the friend who
disagrees or the person who maybe vandalizes our pro-life
sign at our university. I know a bunch of you had faced
that. Or we pray for the person that
we are debating with. Or we we pray for the the tech
social media tech bosses. We pray for our politicians, we
pray for the conversion of souls, and we also speak up.
We also speak up and speak the truth as we continue to seek to
serve and to love others with that when with God's strength,
knowing our identity, any persecution is not only
bearable, but it is something that we can transform.
And that's why this is the secret that Christ left us with.
And when he ascended into heaven, he, he gave us, he's,
he's teaching us, because it's the life that he lived, one
where he was persecuted unto death, but he, his own death
became a ransom for our sin. And that persecution, when we
enter into it in our own little way, whatever we endure,
experience, we can become a part of that powerful redeeming love.
And that's the beauty of persecution, even when there is
the hurt alongside of it. As always, I love hearing from
you guys. If anybody has any thoughts or
questions or feedback for me for this topic of persecution for
this episode, I would love to hear from you.
You can e-mail me at thoughts@lilaroshow.com.
That's thoughts at lilaroshow.com.
I hope this episode was helpful, was interesting for you guys.
Thank you so much for listening. If you found it useful, please
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