Unrecognized Minority Suffering

16 July 2024

Being part of a "recognized minority group" in Western countries (LGBT+, racial minority, etc.) gains you the power of all the people who have recognized you. But being part of an unrecognized minority group, or not being part of a group at all, means that you don't get the power of mass political opinion in your favor. Sometimes religious people get recognition for their religion-associated suffering, but often they don't. Maybe the idea is that if your religion is causing you problems, you can just convert away from it. But if you know the truth, and are loyal to the truth, you aren't really that free to convert away from it, despite the fact that society might not recognize the truth and thus the necessity of your adherence to it.

The Bible is a book largely for people undergoing religion-associated suffering, which largely went unrecognized in their day. (Perhaps Cyrus was motivated by the suffering of the Jews to let them go back?) The strategies for dealing with suffering in the Bible prepared the Jews and early Christians to survive and thrive in hostile environments, where they could not get redress (or often could not) from the authorities, no matter how just the Jewish or early Christian cause may have been.

If you believe something that most people don't, you can't get what you need by claiming your rights, by claiming that you deserve it, but instead, have to be a leader. You don't demand like a consumer, but must produce.