I do not want to detract from the suffering and perseverance of our brothers and sisters here in any way whatsoever. May Jesus our Christ be with them.

However, I think that to see this in relation to Early Church persecutions is a grave mistake and enforces an 'us-and-them' mentality.

These activities are arising out of the 'tribal' mindset of the persecutors, and to respond by likening this to the Early Church is to enforce that tribal mindset.

The Early Church was a small sect, they did not choose to be a 'tribe,' they just were a tribe of sorts. The Church today has evolved into a very different body. We cannot respond with the same tribal mindset that we could have had as the small sect that we were in the early days.

Due to the size and reaches of the Contemporary Christian Church we must respond as a gloabl community comfortable in ourselves and without need of the tribal mindset.

A tribal mindset becomes defensive and mistrusts the testimony of a converted Paul. A tribal mindset views these persecutions as an attack on their own little community detached from the gloabl communty, christian & non-christian. We are a gloabl church and we cannot afford to do that.

A global community mindset seeks to deliver the persecutors from their tribal mindset and places these persecutions within the realms of the persecuted throughout all lands for whatever reason, christian & non-christian. A gloabl community seeks freedom not for the Christian Church but freedom for all. A gloabl community views this not as an attack on Jesus Christ or an attack on the Christian Church but rather as an attack on the freedom of spirituality and religion, living and life which Jesus Christ and the Christian Church seek to bring.

 Again, I don't want to detract from the persecution and the suffering, but I don't think that New Testament parallels are the best way forward in these circumstances in 2007.

'without just one nest a bird can call the world home life is your career' (Haiku courtesy of Chuck Palanhiuk, Fight Club)