We've said a fair bit in the past about persecution, and about our need to be willing to endure it. Just as happened to Jesus, there were people who tried to say that we were paranoid, that we were imagining things. At times we were just speaking theoretically, i.e. accepting that if Jesus really knew what he was talking about and that if we were really following him, then we would ultimately face the same kind of persecution that he received (as he clearly promised). It was just childlike faith in what Jesus had promised (one of those promises that never appear in a churchy 'promise box'!)
Most of our "persecution" over the years has just been expressed as snubs, especially from the religious establishment. People just kind of distance themselves from us, but don't say much about why they are doing it. And they don't appear to say that much about us to one another either. Everyone just kind of quietly agrees not to mention us, hoping that we will go away.
Of course the murder attempt on Reinhard was pretty extreme, and definitely in line with the kind of stuff we had been saying would happen (and the kind of stuff that everyone laughed at as sheer imagination). But it was still possible that Jared Johnson and company were just a one-off family of violent crazies, who might have done the same thing to almost anyone who disagreed with them. "It's really awful what they did to Reinhard," people would say, but then they would imply that it was definitely not the sort of thing that society as a whole would condone.
Then we felt that God was leading us, in connection with the murder attempt (and the fact that the Long Beach Police Department had strangely 'lost' the file on it) to conduct some kind of a trial of our own in Long Beach... a trial that would do more than protest against the injustice, but that would also illustrate something about the cross of Christ.
For a group that had never said much of anything about the cross (because we were more interested in Jesus the Teacher), this in itself was a bit out of character. But the more we talked about it, the more it seemed that the cross was becoming real to us. It was a shocking symbol of torture and injustice at the same time that it has become an icon of infinite mercy and, as we were quickly discovering, God's symbolic promise of ultimate justice. Something was changing in our whole understanding of the cross.
We were starting to gain an appreciation for the radical implications of those final few chapters of each of the gospels. They held out hope of a world that will one day be truly just, and the message seemed so far removed from the do-nothing selfishness of the churchy interpretation of the cross.
Almost from the start we sensed that this was going to become the nail the entire world needed to hang us on. We discussed it and counted the cost, then all agreed together to go for it. If taking a hard stand against sin but a radically soft stand toward the sinner was going to be the excuse everyone needed to come out from behind the trees and start shooting, then let the shooting begin.
And so it has!
Faux News set the pace with as many distortions as it could cram into eight minutes, and then climaxed with a tear-jerker about this poor family who had now been charged with assault on top of all the other horrible things they had suffered at the hands of the Jesus Christians.
Our rational minds could see how someone might, at the worst, say, "How weird! Imagine whipping yourselves for something someone else did!" But the Faux report was not prepared to stop there, and neither have many others who have heard about it.
You only have to scan the flurry of activity that has been taking place at the Rick Ross forum since Nov. 7, to see that the trial in Long Beach has become the turning point in our history, the excuse that everyone needed to come together and express their hatred.
Here is a typical posting:
Quote:
I realize that as a believer I am supposed to pray for those who do evil and all, but quite honestly: in the flesh, when it comes to Dave McKay (and I know I've never met the man so tell me if I am out in left field here) I say "screw him"; I think of him the same way I'd think of somebody who rapes kids. I have no mercy nor compassion in my heart for people who do that sort of thing. Same with McKay, except in my mind he's worse, more perverse than a guy who rapes kids. Sorry if the content of this message is too graphic for you; I'm just trying to put a fine point on what I am driving at here. Because like I said he rapes minds and kills souls. And so I really don't feel sorry for the man. He ought to be locked up forever. He's like another type of serial rapist, he's just found a legal way to take what he wants by force and f**k people's minds in the process.
People on that forum (including Rick Ross himself) did NOT question the hatred of this man. Instead, they fueled it and joined together, more or less under his leadership to declare war on me and the Jesus Christians. Here is another posting:
Quote:
Now that I have seen that video of the trial I have decided to go into full-on "attack mode" and really work, dedicate substantial time and energy, in exposing and breaking up this group. I have made this one of my missions in life and do not plan on letting McKay get or stay comfortable. I am dedicated and have taken this on as my cause; that is, organized anti-McKay activity. Precision-guided bombing, so to speak. What I am trying to do might cause some pain in McKay's children's lives, and I am not insensitive to that, but the whole goal here is in preventing equal and greater pain and disruption in the lives of others.
The numbers continued to grow as more and more people flowed to the forum to express their outrage.
Here is another posting:
Quote:
Somebody has got to stand up and do something before more people get hurt, or worse, before people start dying. This man (McKay) is dangerous... we've got to take him and his group out before people start dying. By "take him out" I mean put an end to the JCs, disband them, and get McKay the psychiatric care he needs. Campaign to get this chicken-hawk put away.
Okay, so Jared and his family were not the only crazies in the world. Maybe Rick Ross had managed to gather a small group of other crazies who were harmlessly venting their rage through his forum. But then the attack began to spread "closer to home" as a poster in Sydney put it. They started to write letters to anyone with any contact with me or the Jesus Christians, calling on them to view the video. Like I said, the trial (or at least the video of it) has become the focal point for all of this irrational hatred. They called on people to stop us, the same way that Craig Hendry attacked the work we were doing with refugees at Woomera some six years ago. (Craig, of course, was also there amongst the leaders of the renewed campaign.)
We found other living organ donors suddenly coming out of the closet and saying, "I knew it all along. They are forced to donate their kidneys by that horrible man. He must be stopped."
Even on the Quaker forum (and Quakers are famous the world over for being very slow to point fingers or pass judgment), people started saying, "This kind of activity must not be allowed to continue." One Quaker said of the trial and the whippings that all she could feel was "total revulsion" at what was being described... and that was after listening to half an hour of explanations about how we saw it as an expression of love and not of hate, and a plea from us not to condemn what they might not understand.
But was anybody listening?
What I am saying here is that Jesus did a lot of things that outraged people. They couldn't stand the thought of him and his disciples not having to slave away at jobs that they didn't like. They were jealous of his miraculous power. They feared his confidence and boldness in the face of their threats. All of it angered people. But it culminated in his willingness to lay his own life down as a sacrifice for others. It was just his WILLINGNESS to suffer for love that made people want to MAKE him suffer.
As Jesus said, "For what good deed do you seek to kill me?"
As the quotes above would indicate, the plot to demonise me (and make no mistake, the campaign target will pass on to the next in line the moment I have been "taken out") is centering on some kind of unspeakable abomination committed against the people who have joined the Jesus Christians in the past and who later left.
Throughout our entire history, we have prided ourselves on the fact that people who have left our community have never come out publicly and exposed any scandal that took place while they were with us. One embittered member left us twenty years ago, promising to go public as soon as he could find something to nail us on. He's still trying.
Eight years ago, the whole community split down the middle, after twelve of 25 members tried unsuccessfully to vote me out as the leader. In the end, two of them were voted out, and their followers went with them.
They have continued to meet together ever since, and have scoured the world looking for other disgruntled members. But they have never come up with anything to charge us with. We have even asked them several times over the years exactly why it was that they left, and the answers that have come back have differed every time, usually something along the lines of "You know why."
But now, with the release of the Faux News video about the whipping trial, they believe they have their cause celebre, the ultimate case against the Jesus Christians. After all, whips hurt, and it was a Jesus Christian who was wielding it. How easy it would be to make people believe that they (the disgruntled ex-members) had been whipped while they were members of the Jesus Christians (which, of course, they had not been).
But, of course, it was Jesus Christians themselves who were (perhaps stupidly) volunteering to be the recipients of the punishment, and two of the four volunteers were the evil leaders of the group.... the monster himself, and his wife. That is so casually brushed aside, as just some sick publicity stunt. The point is (to those who have become consumed with righteous indignation) that people's minds are being raped, their souls are being killed. A monster is on the loose. Revulsion is everywhere.
When I point out that I suffered more pain at the hands of my track coach in high school, or that there are hundreds of people belonging to kinky sex clubs who do worse, people get outraged that I would even suggest that these people fall into the same category as serial rapists and mass murderers.
We hardly understand OURSELVES just what the trial was aiming to achieve (although we've written a fair bit about it on the "cross" link on our home page), but we're starting to feel kind of good that this is apparently going to be the issue that galvanises and unites our enemies, whether they be raving fundamentalists, atheists, left-wing theologians, mental patients, prosperity gospellers, university lecturers, or so-called experts on cults. This wonderful cross-section of humanity is coming together in unity against a handful of people who dared to experiment with what it really means to take up our cross and follow the example of Christ.
Wonderful. Bring them on! And take note how they still mutter that we are just imagining that we are being persecuted!
