Generally, ostriches are among my favorite animals. I love their flirtatious eyes, if you really want to know (which you probably didn’t). I love emus for the same reason, and had my husband photograph this one at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo:

But ostriches — and probably emus — have a reputation for burying their heads in the sand. Our culture has consequently turned their practice into a metaphor describing someone who tries to avoid unpleasant realities.

I’m thinking about that metaphor after a recent conversation with a Christian we know. John and I had watched a documentary about Corrie ten Boom, a Christian woman from Holland who had been imprisoned in a Nazi Concentration Camp during World War II. Corrie and her family had provided a hiding place for Jews fleeing persecution, only to be caught for doing so. Her father and her sister both died in Concentration Camps, while Corrie was unintentionally released due to a clerical error (and of course, God’s providence).

As we told our sister in Christ about the documentary, she asked why we’d want to watch such a depressing video, and then quickly changed the subject. I couldn’t explain that I thought it would encourage me as the Church in our country now faces early stages of persecution. Her tone and body language clearly communicated that she had no intention of discussing any type of suffering for Christ. John and I obediently dropped the subject.

Since that day, I’ve been prayerfully concerned for this woman. I wonder if she realizes that persecution is coming to the United States of America soon. Furthermore, I wonder if most evangelicals realize it. And if evangelicals are burying their heads in the sand as this lady seems to, will they be able to stand against the pressure to compromise Christian convictions?

Whether we like it or not (and I doubt any of us likes it), Jesus Himself told us that persecution necessarily accompanies our commitment to Him.

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. ¹⁹ If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. ²¹ But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me. ~~John 15:18-21 (NASB)

Few evangelicals have that passage on refrigerator magnets. Nevertheless, we can’t bury our heads in the sand, believing the prosperity preachers and false promises of our best life now. We’ve only to look at how Western society has accelerated its embrace of sin since the Obergerfell decision legalizing same sex marriage five years ago.

I remember a comment a friend made back in the 1990s. “Maybe we should let them have gay marriage,” he mused. “Then they won’t have any more reason to be angry.” Yet Obergerfell has only intensified the militancy of the LBGTQ activists, who now demand universal approval of their various sexual proclivities. The Equality Act, enthusiastically endorsed by President-elect Joe Biden and his handlers, would infringe on religious liberty. This act, which Biden promises to push through by Executive Order if Congress doesn’t pass it, threatens Christians who view homosexuality as a sin.

The Equality Act is, I believe, only one means of trying to silence Christians. As time progresses, culture will demand that we compromise — if not abandon — Biblical convictions. In short, ladies, persecution of some type is inevitable.

Will evangelicals who bury their heads in the sand be prepared when persecution comes? I fear many will prove to be false converts, compromising the Word of God for the sake of self-preservation. I pray that we would not join them in being ostriches, but instead that the Holy Spirit will carry us through hardship as faithfully as He carried Corrie ten Boom.

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