Back in the early days of the first millennium A.D., the Romans didn’t start throwing Christians to the lions just because it sated their taste for blood-thirsty sport. And they didn’t kill them just because they worshiped Jesus. Rome, at that time, had so many different gods and religions that they couldn’t keep track of all of them. The fact was, as Francis Schaeffer reminds us in “How Then Shall We Live”;

Nobody cared who worshipped whom so long as the worshipper did not disrupt the unity of the state, centered in the formal worship of Caesar. The reason the Christians were killed was because they were rebels.

 
Christianity threatened the Roman state unity because they worshipped one infinite-personal God only – above Caesar. And the various emperors viewed this as treason.
 
More important, and more relevant in terms of the parallels to our present-day secular society, the Christian faith claimed to be not just one more religion, but the one, true faith. And Rome had a big problem with that.
 

No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions…
 
…Because the Christians had an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts.

 
Flash forward a couple thousand years and here we are, mired in the muck of moral relativism, where anything goes but absolute truth. Today, the biggest sin one can commit is to “judge” someone. Mesmerized by multiculturalism, we must mock and marginalize anyone avowing universal truths.
 
So once again, Christianity is a threat to “Caesar”. And must be ridiculed: Obama Mocks House of Representatives for Reaffirming “In God We Trust.” Last week the President accused House of Representatives leaders of wasting time during a jobs crisis with debates over commemorative baseball coins and reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the country’s motto (because they refuse to consider his joke of a jobs bill);

“That’s not putting people back to work,” Obama said. “I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work. There’s work to be done. There are workers ready to do it. The American people are behind this.”

 
We’re also witnessing attempts to marginalize Christianity by ignoring and devaluing our history: Obama Admin Opposes Prayer at WWII Memorial. Rep. Bill Johnson’s (R-OH) recently proposed bill – the “World War II Memorial Prayer Act of 2011.” would add President Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer to the D.C. memorial;

Roosevelt asked the nation to join him in prayer as U.S. and allied troops launched the invasion that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. He asked God to give the allied troops courage and faith, saying, “With thy blessing we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy.”

 
Appealing to a higher authority than the state? Can’t have that.
 
Currently, the Senate is holding up re-authorization of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). This agency is an independent, bipartisan federal commission that makes recommendations to the president, secretary of state and Congress. They monitor and raise the profile of Christians and other minorities around the world who are suffering persecution for their faith. USCIRF has been, and should continue to be, a voice for religious liberty around the world.
(Unless, perhaps, “Caesar” tacitly approves of the persecution…)
 
Our own armed services are becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity, beyond the repeal of DADT. Last week, in a really detestable move, the Air Force Academy practically denounced Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child: Air Force Academy Backtracks on Christmas Toy Drive Because It’s Too Christian ~
 

Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate who runs the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the academy’s participation in Operation Christmas Child is inappropriate because of its evangelical Christian roots.
 
Weinstein said he took issue with an announcement about the drive made to cadets in the dining hall, followed up with an email appealing for donations.
 
“We are not trying to take shoe boxes of toys and candy away from kids,” he told Fox. “But this is clearly an egregious Constitutional mistake.”

 
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In 21st century America, we now have a government intent on placing its own authority over God’s ultimate authority. That arrogant assertion is what doomed the Roman Empire. And if we continue to supplant God with the state, America is doomed as well.
 
 Christianity however, is not doomed. Why? Because Christianity stands on absolute, universal, transcendent values – values that remain true regardless of the society or political state in which one lives. And as Schaeffer explains with regard to Rome…

That it was the Christians who were able to resist religious mixtures, syncretism, and the effects of the weaknesses of Roman culture speaks to the strength of the Christian world view. This strength rested on God’s being an infinite-personal God and his speaking in the Old Testament, in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, and in the gradually growing New Testament…
 
Thus the Christians not only had knowledge about the universe and mankind that people cannot find out by themselves, but they had absolute, universal values by which to live and by which to judge the society and the political state in which they lived. And they had grounds for the basic dignity and value of the individual as unique in being made in the image of God.

 
As history has shown us again and again, human gods are a poor foundation on which to build any civilization. But Christianity, built on the “rock of ages” outlived Rome. It will outlive our modern-day “Caesar.” And it will outlive America itself.