Recent polling data has revealed that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than believers. By believers, I don’t mean just Christians, but folks who belong to all the major religions. No matter how you slice it, we don’t come out looking very good.

            What exactly does this mean? Perhaps that those who do not believe in God studied so they’d be able to defend their position. But the real question is: Why aren’t we ready to defend our position of faith? And not contentiously but in a true Christian manner.

            Maybe one reason we don’t study religion is that those of us who have experienced Jesus in our lives have the calm assurance of the truth of scripture. The words of life confirm what we already know. So when we come together as God’s people we are in the company of those who share our assumptions. But how do we approach those who do not share our experience?

            Maybe the apostle Peter in this short passage can help us. Peter is addressing Christians in Asia Minor who are experiencing persecution from people who not only did not share their assumptions, but also even believed lies and misinformation about the followers of Jesus. Christians in the Roman Empire were accused of belonging to a secret society that had strange and bizarre practices.

The rumors about Christians

            We think we’re the good guys, so it’s hard to recognize ourselves in these words by the Roman historian Tacitus, who referred to the Christians as “a class hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace ....” And he referred to Christianity as “a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and b

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