Martyrs

“So now I’m facing the blaze, facing the pain,

By grace putting faith in his name.

He says: Last call for a recant.

I say: We can’t.

So he ignites me in flames.”

Shai Linne, ‘Martyrs’, Storiez (2008)¹

As I understand it, this is a piece of artwork entitled ‘Martyr’ by Sigurjon Olafsson, photographed in the Hallgrímskirkja (Hallgrímur Church) in Reykjavík. Not bad for a stock photo. Thanks to Phil_Bird at freedigitalphotos.net.

So I was reading Foxe’s Book of Martyrs the other day.² As one does. To be fair, what I was actually looking for was a list of the ten great persecutions that Christians endured under the Romans, to copy for side-note-esque reference into my notes on Revelation 2, but let’s not get distracted. In any case, while skimming through the account that our dear sixteenth-century friend John Foxe relates of these ten distinct periods of horrendous mistreatment to which the Roman authorities subjected followers of Jesus during the first three centuries after he lived, died, rose, and returned to the Father, I could hardly fail to apprehend the occasional detail pertaining to an individual gruesome martyrdom. And they really are gruesome. A brief selection of examples:

Rhais had boiled pitch poured upon her head, and was then burnt, as was Marcella her mother.

Hippolitus [was] tied to a wild horse, and dragged until he expired.

Julian … was put into a leather bag, together with a number of serpents and scorpions, and in that condition thrown into the sea.

Peter [was] stretched upon a wheel, by which all his bones were broken, and then he was sent to be beheaded.

Trypho and Respicius … their feet were pierced with nails; they were dragged through the streets, scourged, torn with iron hooks, scorched with lighted torches, and at length beheaded.

Agatha … was scourged, burnt with red-hot irons, and torn with sharp hooks … she was next laid naked upon live coals, intermingled with glass, and then being carried back to prison, she there expired.

Not pleasant reading, I know, but you did rather bring that on your own head by clicking on a link to a post about martyrdom. Anyway, aware as I am that better-informed persons than myself could probably generate a merry debate about quite how reliable Foxe’s facts are likely to be on these particular matters, nobody at all, I believe, can dispute that, for just about as long as there have been human beings worshipping Jesus of Nazareth as God, there have been other human beings subjecting them to horrendous mistreatment on that account. For just about as long as there have been witnesses to the good news about Jesus Christ, there have been martyrs in his name. And the particular manners of their martyrdoms have often been gruesome indeed.

Perhaps this is just me, but my natural reaction to such accounts as are cited above – after the initial shudder and sharp intake of breath at their sheer horribleness – is actually a kind of frightened, self-censuring guilt. I call it a ‘natural’ reaction very meaningfully: this is an attitude that belongs firmly to my fleshly self in all her deadly sin and selfishness, and not to my spiritual self resurrected after the pattern of Christ. (You can tell that much by the way it consists of a kind of frightened, self-censuring guilt.) I think something to the effect of: oh crikey, I could never, ever endure that. Granted, I'm not afraid of death in the abstract – in the abstract, indeed, it would constitute a desirable honour to lose my life in service of the gospel – but I altogether recoil from the blood-and-guts particulars of the process of dying. I know in my head that Jesus is everything and that earthly distress, however bitter, is worth bearing for his sake, with the certain hope of everlasting life before me, but I actually deal really badly with physical pain and even the merest thought of suffering trials a fraction as horrible as those suffered by these martyrs is enough to turn my insides to absolute jelly. I am so, so relieved that the happy fact of the time and place I live in makes it seem highly unlikely I shall ever be called to do so. But then, shouldn’t I be completely ready to suffer for the sake of the name by which I am saved? Shouldn’t I be ready even to consider such suffering joy, as the first disciples did?³ How far short I fall, then! Look at the pure unshakeable courage of these men and women who were prepared to lose everything and undergo anything for their God and his gospel. Look at their relentless, steadfast faithfulness; look at their all-consuming love for their Lord. I’m not like that. I’m weak and cowardly and more than anything else I love comfort and pleasure and ease. I haven’t got it in me to be a martyr. If God ever does place me in a situation where I have to suffer, really suffer like that, for his sake, I can't imagine I’ll do anything but fail him. And what will I say to him then? And even if he never does place me in such a situation, well, weakness untested is still weakness, and not hidden from his eyes. I’m still as guilty as if I really had denied him.

So proceed my thoughts on the matter when left unchecked. Hopefully you’ve been able to discern in the above something of the profitless desperation to justify myself by works which ever continues to plague me, and that’s certainly one aspect of my attitude that begs rebuke: however far short I fall, the entire point of the gospel I’m so worried about being unprepared to suffer for is that God himself suffered in my place, in order that my shortfall might be made up to overflowing. I deny the gospel as surely when I try to hang my salvation on my own virtue – my own faithfulness in the face of trouble, rather than Jesus’ – as if I had recanted explicitly. Nonetheless, more fundamentally even than that, my natural reaction is looking at martyrdom totally upside down. Check out another extract from Foxe’s magnum opus:

At the martyrdom of Faustines and Jovita, brothers and citizens of Brescia, their torments were so many, and their patience so great, that Calocerius, a pagan, beholding them, was struck with admiration, and exclaimed in a kind of ecstasy, “Great is the God of the Christians!” for which he was apprehended, and suffered a similar fate.

My natural reaction to accounts of martyrdom is to look at myself and despair. How crazy is that when the more fitting response is to look at God and be awestruck? Calocerius understood: he beheld these patiently tormented brothers and thought, wow, what a God they have. He did not think, wow, these guys clearly have an impressive talent for enduring severe pain, which they currently happen to be employing in service of the one they worship. He did not marvel at the martyrs but at their God.

In like fashion, then, ought I to marvel – not at how much these impressive individuals proved capable of enduring in the name of God, but rather at how much he, ever all-impressive, made them capable of enduring in his name. If I attribute their steadfastness to some inherent quality in them that I fail to find in myself, I belittle the work of God. Do I really think that ordinary human beings can face such trials merely of themselves and by their own power, for the sake of a God whom they have not seen and an inheritance of which they have no worldly proof? Is it not rather that God takes ordinary human beings, perhaps sometimes ones who are of themselves as weak or cowardly or comfort-loving as even me, and testifies to his own glory by rendering them able to face phenomenal suffering, even unto death, for the sake of him whom they love despite not having seen him, through his free gift of faith? I’m not by any means suggesting that we shouldn’t commend the martyrs for their faithfulness and uphold them as worthy examples to follow on that count, but that’s all got to be done under the premise that it was only by the grace of God that they were able to do what they did. I hardly think any of them would affirm anything to the contrary.

Perhaps, as I say, it’s just me. Perhaps, O Wise and Discerning Reader, your natural reaction to accounts of martyrdom bears no resemblance to mine, and I’m merely stating the obvious as far as you’re concerned. Still, even if that’s true, to prevent it having been a waste of time for you to read this far, don’t depart without taking a little encouragement. Look at the kind of faithfulness and courage and self-sacrifice God works in his people, fashioning them in the likeness of Christ their Lord. Look at the profound understanding he grants them of the incomparable worth of their heavenly inheritance next to even the most horrendous earthly trials. Look at how he uses what he works in them to proclaim his glory and increase his kingdom, so that ever more voices should exclaim, “Great is the God of the Christians!”

It’s true: I haven’t got it in me to be a martyr. But when he suffered and died to secure the truth of the good news, the Lord Jesus Christ proved that he had it in him. So only let him be my single plea before man and God, and I need never be afraid of how short I fall, nor any suffering that should befall me. If God made these martyrs capable of enduring even as much as they did, that’s all the more reason to trust that he will make me capable of enduring whatever might be in store for me as I seek to follow him. And the fact that naturally, my insides turn to absolute jelly at the mere thought of suffering a fraction of what they did – well, that will only make such steadfastness as God should nonetheless produce in me even more marvellous.

Footnotes

¹ If you like the faith/fiction dynamic of my blog, and have any taste at all for rap music, I suspect you’ll be a fan of Storiez. But don’t listen to it in public unless you don’t mind random strangers seeing you cry. Here’s a lyric video for ‘Martyrs’ that some kind human has gifted the Internet with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abchW9hmfq8.

² Or, as it’s officially entitled, the Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church, by John Foxe, which is so much less catchy that it’s really no surprise that the alternative designation I gave in the main text tends to be preferred. You can get the whole thing free online, here for example, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/martyrs/fox101.htm, though all my references in this post are drawn from Chapter Two.

³ “Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name.” – Acts 5:41. Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+5&version=ESVUK.