If I convert to Christianity, my family will disown me and I be will terribly persecuted in my culture. What do I do?

1884 56 Disciple is learner, follower: the Lord Jesus is both Saviour and Master, Lord and Master of all men, of those whom He bought with His blood. Only believers are true disciples. To be a disciple of Christ while He was here below involved the loss of all that men value (Luke 14:26 etc.). Not by being deprived of all as by force, for then the affections might still be engrossed with them; but a deliberate and willing separation from all that would interfere with following Him. Faith is the first step in the path, the only true beginning. A false start, that is, a pretended following, when all else is not forsaken, frequently if not invariably leads to greater hardness of heart, and to infidelity. The sure natural result is hatred of the truth. The Lord warns the multitude of what is needed to be a true disciple, "if any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." Had they ears to hear? Anyone attempting to be a disciple in his own strength, by the working of his own will, would be like a man beginning to build a tower without counting the cost, or like a king going to war with ten thousand against another king with, twenty thousand. The cost of being a disciple is beyond the resources of man.

Some have given up father and mother for the sake of worldly advantage; others to gain the applause of quasi-religious men, which is but another phase of the same world. There is only one case in which the Lord shows the necessity of forsaking father and mother, and that is when the child is commanded to forsake Christ; in every other it is sin against Him who said of old, "Honour thy father and thy mother," and also by the apostle, "Children, obey your parents." When father or mother, yea, or wife or life, comes in competition with Christ, then all must be "hated" the disciple must bear the cross and follow Him. If any of these stand in the way of confessing Christ as Saviour, it is better to be driven from home and disowned by parents, than to be Christless.

When Christ was here, the world was against Him. A few were gathered to Him in true-hearted love. Great multitudes were attracted by His gracious words; they would be disciples, but had not counted the cost; they had not reckoned on the opposing forces of nature and the world. It was only natural feeling which moved them: how could they oppose nature? What a proof this necessity of denying nature affords of the havoc sin has made with the affections implanted by the Creator, and therefore excellent as given by God, that when it is a question of following Christ, the affections are all found perverted and become hindrances, insomuch that the Lord says the dearest objects must be hated. "Hate" in this scripture is not to be understood in its common acceptation of intense dislike; the true disciple does not at all dislike his unconverted relatives, but he seeks their blessing. He may be intensely disliked by them, for he cannot join in their worldly pleasures, and his joys are beyond their apprehension. They are outside and opposed to all that he loves and follows. Hence to the world he has the appearance of hating them. This is a trial to the disciple who longs to see them brought to God, but he will not cease to follow Christ. The separation on the disciples' part and the hatred on the world's part had a very acute form when the Lord was here. To break away from every thing, to be in open separation from all that had hitherto been accounted of God and highly esteemed, and as a consequence to be scorned by the religious of that day, was what the disciples of Christ had then to endure.

As it is in the world, so in the house. There are those that believe and those that believe not. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword." Dream not that everything is going to be triumphant. The day is coming when the Lord will cause peace to flow as a river; but such is not the effect of His first coming. It is the badge of war now, because of the opposition which unbelief always creates against the truth. "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." The Lord boldly meets the case. I am come to bring in My principle, and it sets child against parent. Now this becomes one of our severest trials — the effect that the testimony of God has upon families. People speak of households being broken up and kindred disunited. The Lord already uses the same words and strengthens us for it. "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me. He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it" (vers. 37-39). He shows that His coming would bring the opposite to a path of ease in this world. Yea, we must make up our minds to suffer trial, rejection and scorn. But then He adds the other side: "He that receiveth you receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me." There would be those that would receive, as well as those that would reject. "He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet" (that is, as a prophet), if he knew he was a servant of God, and received him as such, in the face of shame and scorn, he should have the same reward as a prophet himself. "And he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man" — other people might call him unrighteous, but he receives him, not as a mere man or friend, but as righteous, and he "shall receive a righteous man's reward." He proves that his own heart is right with God. We show our real state of soul by the opinion we pronounce. Supposing I speak or act unwarrantably against a good man doing his duty, I show that I am not with God in that particular thing. On the other hand, if I have faith to discern what is of God, and to take my part with him in the face of general desertion, happy am I indeed. God alone enables a man to do so. We show where our hearts are by our judgments of and conduct toward others.

The Lord here, in this passage, demands a love beyond the tenderest earthly affection. Where there is a real conversion and a godly testimony, there is often terrible family opposition. Both Peter and Paul, in presenting the gospel, say, Thou and thy house (Acts 11:14; Acts 16:31). Even if not the head of the house, may I not count on God for them all? Rahab did. But the Lord's words would show how it is possible to have terrible family variance and antipathy. That would be a cross. Every believer has his cross, but this in ver. 38 is in connection with family persecution. Some in taking, in faithfulness, this cross may have to suffer to the giving up of life, or if not that, to the losing of all earthly prospects, even being disinherited from their part in the family inheritance, etc. Yet are they not losers, but great gainers, if it is through faithfulness to Christ.

This we may see every day. The home that was once cheerful and happy is now a cheerless wilderness. How often the young convert has found himself an alien and a stranger in his father's house — the very house in which he lived all his unconverted days! But now, he being completely changed, the family not, he has no fellowship with their ways, and they have none with his. All is changed; opposition is inevitable, and persecution in some way or other, especially if he reaches the sevenfold blessedness of his Master's image. "Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution." (2 Tim. 3:12.) "Hold thy peace, art thou wiser than thy father and thy mother, than thy brothers and thy sisters, must we all give in to thee?" may be the lightest form of persecution experienced. Still it is resistance to the grace of God and the Spirit of Christ, as manifested by the young convert. He must now pursue his path alone.

How painful it is to have to live in a divided family! The Lord Jesus warns his disciples in this respect: “I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes will be those of his own household” (Matt. 10:35,36). How many tensions arise when one member of a family turns to the Lord and the others are opposed: lack of understanding, sometimes overt acts of hostility, and in some countries even persecution. We should be very grateful if the grace has been granted to us to live in a closely-knit family where each member loves the Lord and seeks to serve Him! A beautiful example is offered us by “the house of Stephanas … the firstfruits of Achaia” who had “devoted themselves to the saints for service” (1 Cor. 16:15). They all belonged to the Lord, and each one desired to serve Him.

It is often the case that believers walk faithfully with the Lord, holding the principles that He has shown us in His Word, and then there comes a challenge to that Word from within one's own family. This is why we particularly need verse 7: "He shall not make himself unclean for his father, or for his mother, for his brother, or for his sister, when they die; because the consecration of his God is upon his head." The emotional bonds that we have with our more immediate relatives are very strong. Consequently, when conflict arises between what we know to be right and the approval of our own relatives, there is the temptation to set those principles aside in order to gain their approval. The Lord Himself knew what it was to be a member of a family. It is not only that He knows of these things because He is the God who created the family and created these emotional bonds, but He knows them because He experienced them when He was here upon earth. He loved His mother, His brothers and His sisters. He knew what those emotional bonds were, but He filled out in perfection every rela­tionship in which He was found. He had His God before Him and when a choice had to be made between the desire of His family and the will of His God, He was subject to the will of His God. The consecration, the separation of His God was upon His head. There is an example of this in Mark 3:21. His friends, or as it should be translated, His relatives, were without and they said, "He is beside Himself." In other words they felt that He was going too far. The Lord gave His answer in verse 31: "There came then His brethren and His mother, and standing without, sent unto Him, calling Him. And the multitude sat about Him; and they said unto Him, Behold Thy mother and Thy brethren without seek for Thee. And He answered them, saying, Who is My mother, or My brethren? And He looked round about on them which sat about Him, and said, Behold My mother and My brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My brother, and My sister, and mother." The Lord identified those with Him who did the will of God as His brethren. This is where His heart lay and when that strong appeal came to Him from His own mother and His brethren according to the flesh He was obedient to His God. Having, as the perfect Man, overcome in such circumstances, He can enable us also to do the same.

The devil was slow to let me pass into liberty of soul. He magnified my difficulties, and told me that, if I embraced Christianity, I should be driven out of house and home, my own father would disown me, my relatives would treat me as one dead, and I would have no one to care for me. My family connections were very wealthy. I was not called to work hard for my living. It seemed very hard to leave such a beautiful home, to become a vagabond, to be buffetted, to be beaten, to flee from town to town, from city to city, and perhaps be murdered in the end. This is how Satan brought very heavy pressure to bear upon me.

Persecutions. — What the disciples were to expect the Lord now foretells: "They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time comes, that whosoever kills you will think that he does God service. And these things will they do, because they have not known the Father, nor Me. But these things have I told you, that when the time [or, their hour] shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not to you at the beginning, because I was with you" (16:2-4). Excommunication, the severest ecclesiastical dealing, and death, the last act of judicial power — such treatment must they expect. To any not established in the faith these consequences would seem terrible. To nature it is no light thing to be deprived of ecclesiastical rites and associations, one's name cast out as evil, and to be viewed as a moral leper, unfit to associate with those of one's own nation or kindred. Then death — cut off from life here, with consequences affecting, it may be, those nearest and dearest — all this is hard, very hard, to flesh and blood. And some, we learn from Acts 26:11, quailed before such terrible dealing, preserving their lives and their place in the synagogue by blaspheming that name which they had professed to honour, having in measure confessed Him to whom it belongs as the One they would follow. None of them, of course, were of the Eleven. But their defection, just referred to, furnishes us with some idea of what it must have been for faithful souls to brave such terrors and calmly die for Christ's sake. So, lest it might come on them unawares, the Lord in plain language foretells their future, when He should have left this earth. What care does He manifest that the enemy should not get an advantage over them!

"Kings' daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir." When the King is spoken of, the bride is Jerusalem; so this Psalm has a millennial bearing. Israel will look on Him whom she rejected and pierced, and will mourn. The Lord will save His people from their sins, and in divine righteousness give them a place in His presence. "Upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir." Then will she consider, and incline her ear to Him. She is to forget her own people, and her father's house. But what does this teach us? That there must be the bringing in of Christ between the soul and everything here. Nature must be distanced by Him; I must forget it. Christ must be my first object. Is He the first consideration with us? or is it self and our houses, and the care of them — the family, the friend, or the father's house? The Spirit of God here says, "Forget also thine own people, and thy father's house;" and Jesus said, "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:37).

The consequences are fully stated by the Lord: "In the world ye shall have tribulation." "Whoso taketh not up his cross, and followeth not after me, cannot be my disciple." "He that saveth his life shall lose it … he that serveth me, let him follow me": and many other like passages, familiar to the Christian. They were to be called Beelzebub, and he that killed them would think that he did God service - they were to be hated of all men, etc. - nor, may we add, was the church at any other time pure.