Mockers gonna mock

Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. (1 John 3:13).

The Alexamenos graffito is a piece of Roman graffiti scratched in plaster on the wall of a room near the Palatine Hill in Rome, which has now been removed and is in the Palatine Hill Museum. It may be the earliest surviving depiction of Jesus, and if so is the earliest known pictorial representation of the Crucifixion of Jesus, together with an engraved gem. It is hard to date but has been estimated to have been made c. 200. The image seems to show a young man worshipping a crucified, donkey-headed figure. The Greek inscription reads something like, "Alexamenos worships [his] God." The graffito was apparently meant to mock Alexamenos, a Christian. (Wikipedia)

The graffiti was first discovered in an excavation in the 1800s near the Roman site of the Circus Maximus.

A tracing of the drawing.

The original drawing

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. (John 15:18)

If you are being mocked, scoffed at, humiliated, take heart. Christians always have been. This is because those who do not believe cannot think right.

If you are enduring the modern equivalent of graffiti, say, an inter-office email that you have stumbled upon, a crass doodle of you on a napkin left behind in the lunchroom, an overheard conversation scoffing at your faith, do not be troubled.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)

You stand in a long and noble line of those who were scoffed at, including the worshipful Alexamenos, a long-dead, unknown person who loved Christ enough to stand up for Him by kneeling to worship in a crass culture that hated righteousness and truth. Like our culture now. Some things never change! You are never stronger than when you are kneeling at His feet.

Persevere!