Western Martyr

“We live in a time where a literal modern-day Paul was assassinated on national TV”.

I sat in shock as cries of agreement from others in the room rang out: “That’s right!”, “He was a martyr”, “He was executed!”

Did the speaker just compare Charlie Kirk to Paul of Tarsus? Even worse, did everyone in the room agree without so much as a thought or a flinch?

It took some time to realize what I had just witnessed, and even more time to digest what had transpired. Even longer still was the time to understand why it had transpired in the first place. I realized that I had found something wonderful and perturbing in the crowd of that room, and in Christianity at large.

There are Coptic Christians that are burned alive in church buildings by radical Islamists. Other believers are confined to cold cells and regular torture in underground prisons, destined to die for not recanting the name of Christ, never to see the light of day again….

How could the stories of martyrs not dazzle? Is there greater honor, than to forfeit one’s entire existence for the highest possible ideals and relationship? Is it not peak testament to willpower, love, conviction, authenticity, authority, than he or she who trades themselves for their beliefs? What is the Western believer in comparison to such purposed life?

And it is no wonder that it dazzles, as in contrast to it, believers in the West thank God that they are not in a position where one’s claim to Christ alone is punishable by death or torture. In fact, there is hardly any risk at all for the Western believer to claim Christ. Precisely because of this, something else establishes itself in the midst of the brethren: Christian society divorced from danger.

There is no consequential barrier of entry. People come to band themselves with others in circles that emphasize inclusion and integration without palpable risk. Nothing must be proven – only spoken claims of faith given, and somewhat decent behavior shown.

This is why the stories of martyrs often set the heart on fire for people aspiring for greatness of faith. It feels like myth and legend to believe so consequentially. However, since these are verifiably true stories, heart-felt believers who hear the stories of martyrs are stuck with a problem in their soul that they can scarcely address, and perhaps have no words for. There is a sense pain and longing that is never voiced.

…because the believer who heard of the martyr is smothered in the gravy and syrup of church civility, quips, good manners, community events and feel-good rhetoric – as the story of the martyr drowns, and the heart forgets that which it was confronted with. One remains one of the masses, swimming in a nurture of renewed visceral ignorance.

But now something unavoidable transpired: someone died at their doorstep, which to many, had the appearance of martyrdom. It is, at the very least, the closest approximation to martyrdom in the West anyone has seen in modern times.

Charlie is dead. Assassinated. Now hearts of believers that lived in ignorance work to understand that which has transpired around them, and in consequence, in them.

The goo of civility and pretense is now gone as two groups of believers, floundering for breath become exposed:

The first group who claim Christ but are only cultural allies of Christianity. They want a martyr to cement and further their culture war and self-deception in the realms of faith. They worship their Christian environment, because they desperately hate a chaotic, painful world (which is ironically that which is required for martyrdom) that detracts from their social order.

The second, those who genuinely claim Christ, but who desperately long for a hero of martyrdom in risk-free Christianity – someone to follow in order to approximate the same opportunity to prove one’s faith as authentic to everyone, including themselves, in a way that maybe Charlie did… A way to separate that which is “mere” charitable action and thought, from that which is paid by way of lifeblood.

Although there are two different groups, the cries they have are the same: “Charlie was a martyr”, “He was assassinated for his faith”, and of course, the most egregious “Charlie was a modern-day Paul”

And both groups make the same mistake: to lower the bar of suffering to reach the highest echelons of Christian faith (or self-deception). To raise a person to elitism who was not left for dead many times, who was not tortured, who did not suffer shipwreck, who did not write some of the most brilliant literature ever written, who did not, presumably, consciously decide to end his life in front of the most powerful person on Earth, and who did not travail through it all over a great many years, while bearing the burden of all the churches that he founded. He also did not, in order to simply believe in Christ, suffer the loss of all privilege that came with being the most prolific member in his culture (Judaism).

Here is maybe the most disturbing thought about this: that because suffering is rarely understood as a means of inner gain, it is discarded in the hearts of believers as one of Paul’s fundamental tools to become the giant that he was. Although the sopping warmth of gravy and syrup has been vanquished as a block to corporate understanding of such a thing, it still exists in the bellies of those who were previously swimming in it. Blindness that faith requires difficult circumstance for profound use is blindness that one can become great without risk.

It is therefore natural that the bar is lowered by them and consequently makes elitism feel reachable for everyone who claims Christ (even if they do not believe). No one has to face the reality that they are brutally cursed by their social and material comforts that keep them so distant from a faith that proves its authenticity through outwardly observable self-sacrifice, and conquest of mortal fear.

At the very least, one can now see, for those who are genuine Western believers, some form of desperate secret want of public ruin for the sake of Christ’s cause. Let us hope that Charlie’s death helps people to identify the true reasons that keep them from being positioned honorably by God: a gospel of personal profitability, and not one of pain for Love’s sake.