On martyrdom
Meditations on martyrs.
No. 137: On martyrdom
Being willing to die for some belief seems insane by modern standards, I’d guess. Glorified in the religious context and many others, martyrdom likely comes across to the modern person as the height of fanaticism, a cheapshot word leveled at anyone whose worldview they fail to understand and so deem incorrect. (Where the same term might be applied to their favorite sports team, The Golden Bachelorette, or a choice wine, they opt for softer words, or the abbreviated one).
And fair enough. Martyrdom is a rather intense concept. We tend to shy away from such things. They don’t fit snuggly into our comfortable lives or the American tendency to treat sickness and death as some foreign, far-off something. But again, at the same time, I get it. Life is certainly precious, and not to be thrown away or cut short haphazardly. Martyrdom likely comes with the opposite connotation to modern ears. It should be generally accepted that each person has not only the freedom, but the obligation to live as long as their mind and body will allow, loving one another, being joyful, and becoming the best they can be. But I’d guess one of the reasons the concept remains somewhat of a hot potato is that we struggle to believe it’s possible to be a martyr today. Surely this would be hard to believe in a society that no longer holds anything as sacred.
Sacred or shallow, the fact remains that death is certain. By this fact we encounter the first earnest challenge to the rationalist presupposition that the martyr is a madman. When examine our own ideas with the same rigor we self-assuredly apply to the martyr’s, the root cause appears to be multidimensional: the modern person believes that life, their life, is the most important thing in the world in and of itself; they view death as the greatest evil imaginable; they are afraid to die.
Let the record show: I want to be different and above this. I want to be unafraid in the face of death. I want to say I would rise to the occasion should the occasion present itself to choose the good at the expense of my life over evil or enslavement for the “reward” of a few more years. However unlikely today, this juncture is possible for all of us. Perhaps the most salient example, in our context, is finding oneself caught in the midst of the all-American mass shooting, like the one that happened years ago in a movie theater and where a few young men gave their lives shielding their girlfriends.
The first time I encountered stories of martyrs, I had the modernist reaction. It seemed plainly misguided to die when the martyr might instead compromise or concede and retain their life. After all, wouldn’t this be to everyone’s benefit? Their friends? Their family? Wouldn’t a good God affirm their choice to live rather than to die, being their Creator and Father?
Today, however, I find myself asking a different question.
Would I have the courage to stand for something, even unto death? Is there not some merit, some courage, some even greater good that comes from seeing, or being, someone fearless for the right things? Who refuses to compromise for the good of the other, or many others? Aren’t we all going to succumb anyway? And since yes, if the events of one’s life fatefully lead to a juncture in which to die would be the greater good, shouldn’t we accept, and even be glad, to be given such a fate?
But it’s here we run into the modernist problem. Most people today stand for nothing. Worse, if they stand for something, the fear of death trumps that belief, undermining it, corrupting it, and making it essentially moot. For what is a belief if it can be thrown away at the time it’s most relevant?
I admit, my heart is in my stomach even writing this. The gravity of such questions is immense. These things are not easy, and I don’t ask these questions out of childish heroism, nor do I neglect that fact that the world today rarely poses us with scenarios where such questions can apply. But the counterweight is this: There are times in life where such questions apply. Maybe not for all of us. Maybe only for a select few. But the questions do exist. And I wonder: What’s my answer?
So perhaps it’s a bit extreme to hold ourselves to such a standard. Perhaps it’s a bit over-the-top to have such conviction in society where our the biggest dilemma has become doing the frozen pizza or ordering Dominos.
But then again, perhaps it beneficial to know ourselves. Perhaps its good to question the strength of our beliefs or the lack thereof. Perhaps it’s better not to be a noodle, wriggling our way out of every hardship.
Perhaps its ideal to be prepared and comfortable in our mortality, and to know who we are and who we hope to be despite it. Perhaps its best live with the understanding that your life is not all there is, nor is it the most important, a fact underlined by your inevitable demise and the demise of every single human being who ever lived.
Perhaps, with these things said, we should try to adopt a new view, with life per se taking a back seat to how we spend it, recognizing our actions have the ability to echo through the ages, inspiring millions upon millions of others to adopt a similar perspective along the way.
You and I may already be living with a martyr mindset, in fact. After waking up each morning, why don’t we just lay there despairing all day? The way we spend our time is, in some ways, and a series of mini-martyrdoms, a giving of oneself for some belief that transcends oneself. The writer knows this, for although he will die one day, he doesn’t despair and drop dead, but spends three hours writing an rambling essay about martyrdom, pouring as much of himself as he can onto the page in the belief that the action might benefit another.
Even nature knows this rule. The little daisy—taking its nutrients from the soil (which gives), growing a stem, then a bud, then a flower—blooms because it’s job is to be beautiful and to brighten the world with its beauty, then to die shortly after. The flower does not recognize its death, then delay its bloom.
It’s increasingly apparent to me, then, that each and every person does live for something and does die for something, whether they know it or not. It becomes only a question of whether they recognize that thing or not—which is hard. It may be ugly. It may be beneath you. It may require a leap. It may require you to reorient your entire life toward something worthy of your whole being. In all cases, though, to know yourself in this way is fulfillment, contentment, and peace perfected, I think. Thascius Cyprian taught me this.
Born around the year 210, it was while reading about the trial and death of Cyprian that it occurred to me that we will all become martyrs in one way or another.
Cyprian was the bishop of the Church of Rome during the reign of the Roman emperor Valerian, who was trying to systematically exterminate the burgeoning population of Christians living in pagan Rome. Before a great crowd at the Villa Sexti, he was tried and offered a last chance to perform the required religious rites.
I will not do so, Cyprian replied.
Consider your position, the governor said.
Follow your orders, said Cyprian. In such a just cause there is no need for deliberation.
The governor reluctantly decided that Cyprian should die by the sword, and after asking one of his friends to give the executioner twenty-five gold pieces, his companions laid out cloths, and he was blindfolded and beheaded.
It’s popular today to preach the well-known story that religions are bad news because they’ve inflicted inordinate amounts of pain on people. It’s true. They have, the often overlooked caveat being those horrors were committed by the practitioners not the religion itself. Even then, for the sake of argument, the church Cyprian led went on to commit the same crimes in different lands. So it’s interesting to think that at one time, it was the Catholics being exterminated.
At another time, it was Catholics killing Pagans. At another time, Pagans killing Jews. At another time, it was Jews killing Egyptians. At another time, it was Jews killing Canaanites. At another time, it was Muslims killing Catholics. At another time, it was Catholics killing Muslims. At another time, it was Nazis killing Jews. At another time, it was the Japanese killing the Chinese. At another time, it was the Soviet Dictatorship killing their Citizens. At another time, it was Americans killing Vietnamese peasants. At another time, it was Native Americans killing each other. Today, national armies kill other national armies. Today, Americans kill other Americans. Today, smoking and bad health habits kill people all over the world. Today, hopeless people kill themselves.
The point is this: we can go forward, go back, go up, go down. But all are bound to get caught up, in one way or another, in the world, being in the world. Thus, we die for something, unless we are cowards hiding in a cave. Even assuming avoidance were possible, it would be the most futile route imaginable, being compelled by nothing more than the animalistic instinct to merely survive.
Do I want to be a martyr? No. Am I likely, in some way, to become a martyr? Yes, as are you.
Then I hope give myself for something and to be able to call it by its name. Because I don’t know when or how my end will come, I hope to be always and actively giving myself. And if I ever enter upon such a dystopian tailspin that I find myself on the actual chopping block with a choice to give my life and preserve what I believe to be good and true, or to live and increase suffering and pain and evil, I hope to have the courage to be an example of rightness, stepping confidently into what Peter Pan calls that biggest adventure of all. ♦