Set your affection on things above…
Let me say before the fact (because it’s really not immediately apparent): there is a central theme here. Please, bear with me. I will eventually get to the point, and that point is this: you do not get to choose how you are going to be a witness, you do not get to choose what sort of example you will be.
I can only speak from personal experience (which, by the way, I loathe doing). I know that to any reasonable person —and I try to surround myself with reasonable people— I must seem like a dilettante, unable to focus, to finish things. I hate that. Laziness, of any kind, disgusts me, and it is inexpressibly awful to know that people must think that of me. To paraphrase Chesterton: existential flippancy is something that I happen to despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that it is the thing of which I am generally accused.
I’m very goal-directed. I like working hard. I like thinking hard. I like the satisfaction of a finished product in my hands. I like learning things. I like helping people understand things. I like completing tasks. I like coming up with solutions. I like doing things — even dumb, tedious things, if the only other option is doing nothing.
Naturally, I get to do… none of this. There is no one whose nature is less suited to a contemplative, prayer-oriented tradition, and that —along with outreach work that is also a spectacularly bad fit for me— is pretty much exactly what my life has been. Except, of course, I’ve never belonged to an actual monastic Order of any kind, and so it’s even more difficult to explain to people what I do… what I’ve been doing, every day, for most of my adult life, and a fair chunk of my childhood. I’m not complaining, truly, because I see how God has used it (more on that later), but I really can’t emphasize enough how much I hate it. I hate it with the fire of ten million exploding suns, and recognizing how good it has been, both for me and other people, does not make me hate it any less. I don’t know if it ever will.
But you do not get to choose how you witness, you only get to obey… or not.
It’s become near-cliche to discuss the history of the Greek word for witness: martyr. In English, it came to mean someone who gave up their life and, so, kept the faith. There are echoes of the original, wider, meaning of the word in phrases like ‘the Green Martyrdom,” where the witness was that you joined a monastic community and lived separate from the world, building, teaching or learning as those in authority (ugly, unmodern sentiment that) directed. The point behind this phrasing, and the other-colored, later martyrdoms, was that, while they were not as obvious or simple a sacrifice as death, they still required extraordinary sacrifice on a continuing basis. Such ‘martyrs’ were always conscious of the things they had given up —for no worldly reason at all— to be there, wherever ‘there’ was. The witness of Paul —that it was better for him to stay and build the Church, instead of going to be with the Lord— is the only witness that many Christians are called to give, and I would venture to say that you cannot truly be a red martyr —as Paul, according to tradition, eventually was— if you haven’t been witnessing consistently up until that point.
It’s easy to compromise that witness though. It’s easy to do useful-seeming work and say you’re serving God and building the kingdom. And maybe you are, in part. God though, knows where we are self-interested even when we don’t. We all tend to avoid sacrifice, and it is so easy to tell ourselves that it isn’t necessary. There is always the temptation to say we’ve obeyed enough, given up enough, and that God should just let us coast for a bit. It never goes away, because God always has something else to teach us, and this means that we are always faced with the choice between clinging to our old ideas simply because they’re ours, or trusting that he knows better. Admitting to God “You’re right, and I’m wrong” always costs. Trying to find a way around that sacrifice never works. There is no better, easier way than the best way.
Once you’ve learned this (in part, I don’t know that we’re ever truly finished), you start learning it for other people. What you learn is that sometimes there is no way around ‘martyrdom,’ and the loss and difficulty that our brains can only see as unnecessary are, in fact, an essential witness. (I think of it like this concept in thermodynamics that you can’t get more energy out of an engine than you put in, and that, in fact, there is a certain amount of unavoidable loss, even in the most perfect, theoretical engine. There are no perpetual motion machines in spiritual things either. Somewhere, at some point, someone has to put work in, make the sacrifice that seems useless, stupid and unfair, and new life comes out of it.) Jesus is our model for the new people that we’re supposed to be, and his suffering wasn’t punishment, it wasn’t even to fix anything that was wrong with him. He wasn’t obligated; nobody made him. He had no practical thing he could point to that explained why he was doing what he was doing. He just obeyed his Father and his God.
Jesus was the model for all the martyrs that came after him. When a Christian dies, knowingly, for the sake of the gospel, it tells people that there is something more valuable than life as we know it. This testimony can be denied, or explained away, but it can’t be undone. You have quite literally put your treasure in heaven where your mouth is, and it makes no sense whatsoever. Don’t let anyone tell you that it does. People die for all kinds of causes, all the time, and that is dumb. It may also be beautiful, or inspiring, or ‘en-couraging’ to those of us who survive, but it is, first and foremost, incredibly stupid. The wisdom of the cross is foolishness, and it will never add up if we only consider the earthly half of the equation.
Here’s the really difficult part though: every other martyrdom requires the same thing; we learn to sacrifice practical, material value for what God values and says is Real.
I know that God takes pity on us sometimes. He helps us to understand that he’ll take care of us in practical ways: ‘See, I could have lied about that check, and I didn’t, and God gave me money to pay my rent anyway” etc. That’s wonderful; I’m not being all mystical and weird here. The man who turned water into wine, and multiplied fish and bread does not have a problem with concrete examples. My point is that they’re just examples and not what really matters.
Yes, God gives us good things, that’s his heart and his ultimate intention. So sometimes helping people makes you feel good. Sometimes being kind and honest turns out to be good business. Sometimes God simply gives us what we ask for because he’s nice. Sometimes you obediently do the right thing that seems stupid (I mean, really, really, deeply stupid) and it magically works out. Sometimes all the hours, weeks, years, you diligently put in at that hateful job has helped you build skills that you really enjoy using somewhere else. But knowing the God who does those things is the reward, not anything we “get” out of it. When we fail to recognize this, we learn it the hard way.
For me, this ‘God is the reward’ thing has had to apply to pretty much everything, because I’m a practical kind of person, and I find it easy to adapt my hopes and wants to whatever situation I happen to be in. If I could have, in good conscience, spent literally any appreciable amount of my time and energy on my own goals and what I thought was important, I don’t think I’d have gotten it. It’s hard to admit that, because there are still times when it all feels like a waste, when I don’t choose to look at what God values. I don’t think I could have learned any other way though. The ugly fact is that if I’m left with any way to rationalize things my thought process goes something like: ‘Well, obviously, I can’t do the wrong thing, and if I do the right thing, it’s not so bad. I guess I can manage it. It’s not fair, but it’s sort of… the cost of doing spiritual business, or something. At least I got ‘X’ out of it.’
Well. Sometimes it is so bad. Sometimes you don’t get anything out of it. Sometimes (usually) knowing that you’ve done the right thing is no satisfaction. Sometimes there will never be any payoff. Sometimes it costs you everything. All the time. No exceptions. Constantly. For all the control and satisfaction you have in your life, you might as well be dead.
This also does not make sense. It makes as little sense as any other martyrdom. And that’s okay. More than that, it’s right.
Because if you truly believe that this is just the beginning of life, that God, and nothing or no one else, is your source of joy, that God is just and that he rewards whoever goes after him, then none of that matters. Just like the martyrs don’t care whether they happen to be in Part I or II of Eternity.
I’m not saying this is easy. But it’s very clear. Every sacrifice should make you think about what you’re really working for and where you’re storing up value. It’s not just okay, it’s good to ask whether it’s all worth it. As long as we’re honest and we always answer yes.
Please, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not making any comparisons between lives, or saying that dying for your beliefs is somehow easy. That’s just stupid. Dying is hard and horrible; no one wants to be in that situation, and those of us who haven’t been confronted with that choice can’t say much about it. What I’m saying is that, conceptually, it‘s the same problem. The same philosophical question confronts you whether you give up your life bit by bit or all at once. …and I’m not saying that simply pissing your life down the drain automatically means that you’re serving God. There are plenty of ways that I’ve wasted my time, either because I was exhausted and felt entitled, or because I had my own stubborn ideas about what was worthwhile and sacrificed God’s goals for my own. That’s on me. I trust that God will bring good out of bad on that score, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t bad.
But if you are truly doing what you believe God wants, it doesn’t matter whether you think it’s worthwhile (and, helpful hint, some part of you at least probably won’t). If our values and God’s values don’t line up, guess who needs to change? (Another hint: the answer is never ‘God.’)
So if God has some ineffable plan that requires you to essentially sit in a lotus position for a decade, then that is the categorical Best Way to spend your time and you’d better sit your ass down. Don’t argue. Don’t kick and scream. It’ll just take longer, or hurt more, probably both. I know this must sound like complaining, but most of it isn’t (‘most,’ I say, because I’m still human). You have to have been there, I think, to recognize that everything can be genuinely horrible, and be completely beyond endurance —past the point where you can even realize that a thing may not last and that might be any kind of hope beyond it— and that it simply doesn’t matter because… God.
This also makes no sense.
Please know that I’m not just saying this, I’ve done it. This has been drafted on my heart. I have put the actual time in; there are no two-minute training montages in the kingdom of heaven. It was awful, as I said before, and I will never pretend that it wasn’t. I hope, with all the compassion I’ve learned, that God doesn’t put you through it; it’s quite literally excruciating, and, worse, the possibility for failure is astronomically high, but if that’s what it takes, I want you to know that it is worth it. He is always, always worth it.
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