What Is A Martyr? The Piece Missing From Our Modern Definition

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Pastor Foley

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What is a martyr?

There is a general consensus as to the meaning of the word today, which can be found everywhere from Wikipedia to academia. First, Wikipedia:

A martyr (Greek: μάρτυς, mártys, “witness”; stem μάρτυρ-, mártyr-) is somebody who suffers persecution and/or death for advocating, renouncing, refusing to renounce, and/or refusing to advocate a belief or cause of either a religious or secular nature.

Next, academia (from Jan Willem van Henten’s Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish and Christian Antiquity):

[A] martyr is a person who in an extremely hostile situation prefers a violent death to compliance with a demand of the (usually pagan) authorities.

It is such a familiar definition to us that it can be difficult to detect the crucial piece that is omitted here compared to the way the word is used in Scripture.

We can see from many New Testament passages (like Acts 1:8) the English equivalent for the Greek word, martyr:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

A martyr is a witness. But a witness to what? Here is where we can detect the crucial piece that is often missing from our modern definition.

For most of Christian history, the answer to the question, “What do martyrs witness to?” was never in doubt:

Martyrs witness in word and deed to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, son of God, as according to the Scriptures.

As Alice Dailey explains in her book, The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution,

In the Christian tradition, the ideal martyr story is one that replicates as closely as possible the persecutions of pious biblical figures, namely the Maccabees martyrs of the Old Testament, Jesus, and persecuted apostles like Stephen and Peter.

Why is there such an emphasis on exact replication? What is it that Jesus wants to make sure we do not leave out?

What Jesus embodies–and what Stephen and Peter witness to–is described by the preeminent Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori this way, in his Theology of the Pain of God:

The living and true God must sentence us sinners to death. This is the manifestation of “his wrath”… This wrath of God is absolute and firm…

The “pain” of God reflects his will to the love the objects of his wrath… Luther sees “God fighting with God” at Golgotha (da streydet Gott mit Gott). God who must sentence sinners to death fought with God who wishes to love them. The fact that this fighting God is not two different Gods but the same God causes his pain. Here heart is opposed to heart within God. “God opened the way for man’s atonement by experiencing unspeakable suffering, going through agonies, and offering himself as sacrifice…

The Lord was unable to resolve our death without putting himself to death. God himself was broken, was wounded, and suffered, because he embraced those who should not be embraced (pp. 21-22).

The thought is hardly unique to Luther; Kitamori goes on (pp. 154-155) to quote at length Calvin’s formulation of the same concept. What is germane for our discussion here is that this is what Christ calls martyrs to witness to in word and deed.

As Dailey notes, however, the focus of the martyr’s witness took a decisive shift during the Protestant Reformation in England. Instead of being what she calls a “strict typological repetition”–the re-presentation of the love of Christ to the martyr’s enemies, as according to the pattern of Christ (and Stephen, and Peter, and Paul), martyrdom became “Charles I’s defense of individual conscience–an abstract, figurative form of martyrdom that survives into modernity”:

In the violent upheaval that marked the Protestant Reformation in England, both Catholics and Protestants labored to inscribe their suffering believers into the paradigm of Christian martyrdom, often under circumstances that did not match those of biblical persecutions.

Martyrs become those who “died for their faith” and refused to “recant their beliefs.” But this idea of dying in order to stay true to one’s faith, one’s conscience, one’s beliefs, while true as far as it goes, does not go nearly far enough. It leaves out the very center of Christian theology. Says Kitamori,

Our task is to witness to the gospel. Before we can talk about the gospel, we must hear it and see it. Our words are empty if we talk about the gospel without hearing and seeing it…

The gospel is the gospel of the cross. This means that God loves the objects of his wrath and that he, in his love, embraces men alienated from him… [W]hat is revealed in the cross is neither the wrath of God nor his love alone, but a tertiary uniting the two.

What is a martyr, then? A martyr is not one who dies rather than giving up the gospel; a martyr is one who dies living out the gospel.  He follows his Lord’s command to take up his own cross so that in bearing it willingly–in unspeakable suffering, going through agonies, and offering himself as a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice–his persecutors might come to see and hear the gospel.

Bruno Damiano writes,

In 1996, Christian de Chergé and his fellow Cistercians
decided to stay in their monastery at Tibhirine, Algeria. They were seized on the night of March 26 and beheaded on May 21. De Chergé left a testament that ends with forgiveness of the man who might murder him and the hope that, God willing, they would meet “like happy thieves” in paradise.

Why does it matter that we do not leave out that crucial piece of the definition of a martyr?

Because otherwise our hearts will only break for the martyrs and not for the ungodly who martyr them–the ungodly for whom Christ died and for whom his heart also breaks, that they too might one day come home to him.

Just as his Father sent him for this very purpose, so sends he us.

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How To Go From One Great Leader in NK To Many NK Leaders Who Are Truly Great

Posted on December 11, 2014 by tdillmuth

Logo 071414Pastor Tim – This past Saturday, four of our North Korean Underground University students graduated.  This means that we are now sending them out to different ministry roles wherever North Koreans are found.

Much of our UU training has to do with scriptural and theological training, but we also teach a year-long course on leadership as part of the curriculum.  We firmly believe that in order for our UU students to be successful missionaries, it’s essential that they understand how to be Christ-like leaders.

With the wealth of leadership resources that we have in the US, it may be hard to understand just how incredibly rare biblical leadership training is to the North Korean defector.  In North Korea, everyone knows there is only one leader –Kim Il Sung.  He is North Korea’s “eternal president,” making North Korea the only necrocracy (country ruled by a dead man) in the world.

This law of “only one leader” spills over into every household, as every residence in North Korea is required to have spotless portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on the best wall. Every child considers Kim Il Sung to be their true father, above and beyond their biological father.

Dr. Foley, President of Voice of the Martyrs Korea wrote in her article, From One “Great Leader” to Many Leaders Who Are Truly Great,

As “Suryong,” or Great Leader, Kim, Jong-Il is the one mind of North Korea.  The role of everyone else is to obey. One consequence of this philosophy is that leadership involving
independent thought is equivalent to disloyalty. North Koreans are trained not to be leaders (pg. 25).

Often because of this lack of training, many North Korean defectors tend to use shouting, self-defense, and accusations as leadership strategies.  I even remember a former UU student, when faced with a conflict in South Korea, saying, “Either you die or I die!”

That’s why we became convinced of the need for leadership training, and why years ago we worked with John Maxwell and Equip to adapt their leadership training specifically for North Korean defectors.  Throughout the course of the year, UU students learn that leadership is something God designed for us since the beginning.  Genesis 1:26 says,

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

God intended our leadership to be directed not only toward the earth and its creatures but people as well. Matthew 5:16 says,

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

The first part of the year focuses on character development, and then the class moves on to nuts and bolts issues like how Christian leaders are to work with people, manage conflict, build teams, and maintain healthy communication.

We’ve found these classes not only personally enriching for the students but also professionally indispensable as they get ready to minister in places like Russia, China, Mongolia and Thailand.  They are surprised to learn that leadership is not simply something that a few are born with but rather a skill that can be learned and developed over time.  In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell says,

Although it’s true that some people are born with greater natural gifts than others, the ability to lead is really a collection of skills, nearly all of which can be learned and improved (pg. 25).

Although you may not be able to physically join us in our Underground University classes, you can participate in training similar to what our NK missionary trainees receive. Periodically there are training events hosted by John Maxwell and Equip that teach the same powerful, helpful, practical, biblical material that we are teaching our NK students.

Just as North Koreans need leadership training, we too, regardless of our nationality, need take the time and make the effort to grow in the spheres of leadership in which God has placed us.

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What Is The Relationship Between God And Government When It Comes To Protecting Persecuted Christians?

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Pastor Foley

Logo 071414Writes R.C. Sproul, “Most Christians salute the sovereignty of God, but believe in the sovereignty of man.”

That’s the quote that keeps coming to my mind as I think about the ways we Christians are tempted to construe the relationship between God and government when it comes to protecting Christians and the free exercise of their faith. “Governments are God’s chosen instruments to protect religious freedom” is a formulation frequently employed. It’s a formulation that fits well in a worldview where human beings and governments are the primary actors and God, while ultimately active in such matters, is indirectly actively (often through Christians as his “hands and feet.” And voice). Which is why (so the logic goes) we need to appeal to governments (specifically, Western liberal democracies) to intervene to protect Christians.

Archbishop Athanasios Dawood, an Iraqi Christian who is based in the UK, was certainly eerily accurate when in 2010 he predicted (during a service at the Syrian Orthodox Church in London) “If they [Iraqi Christians] stay [in Iraq] they will be finished one by one.” But was he correct in his assessment that governments needed to be the primary and direct protectors of our brothers and sisters in Iraq?

“The Christians are weak – they don’t have militia, they don’t have a (political) party,” he said.

“You know, everybody hates the Christian. Yes, during Saddam Hussein, we were living in peace – nobody attacked us. We had human rights, we had protection from the government but now nobody protects us.”

He accused the US of not delivering on its promises of democracy and human rights.

“Since 2003, there has been no protection for Christians. We’ve lost many people and they’ve bombed our homes, our churches, monasteries,” he said.

“Why are we living now in this country, after we had a promise from America to bring us freedom, democracy?”

The archbishop called on the UK government to grant Christian Iraqis asylum, and called on the Iraqi government to protect Christians from militant attacks.

“Before they killed one, one, one but now, tens, tens. If they do that, they will finish us if we stay in Iraq,” he added.

These are not matters about which to speak lightly, casually, or hypothetically. Archbishop Athanasios Dawood was right: Real Iraqi Christians did stay…and real Iraqi Christians were finished. Was the problem US and UK government inactivity? Is the solution Christians calling more vocally on governments to care more actively about such matters and engage in greater levels of vigilance?

Liena seems to suggest a very different possibility. Liena is a Syrian Christian who is the narrator of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church video from our sister ministry, Voice of the Martyrs/US. She shares how she has prepared her children for the possibility that violent men may enter their home and kill them unless they renounce their faith in Christ. She counsels her children to maintain their faith even in the event of their parents’ death, and to say only “Jesus loves you, and we forgive you” before they die. And she does not indicate that this is a backup plan to be enacted only in the case of the failure of the local Christian militia. “Am I a good mother for teaching my children such things?” she asks at video’s end.

I suspect Josef Ton, the octagenarian Romanian theologian whom I quoted at length in my post last week on how Christian appeals should be directed to God, not government, would say yes. He wrote about one of his many interrogations for Christian activity this way:

On the 25th of October 1974, I was summoned to the Secret Police Headquarters. They ushered me into a room with a long table, covered with red cloth, having six chairs behind it. In front of it, there was a much shorter table, with one chair behind it facing the long table. I was asked to stand behind the smaller table while six ferocious-looking men came and sat down at the long table and then I sat down behind the smaller one. One of the six men was a Colonel, dressed in full military uniform. That man stood up and read my indictment. It stated that I was accused of committing the crime of “propaganda that endangers the security of the state,” and that offence, according to the penal code, was punishable with 5 to 15 years in prison. Then, the Colonel delivered a speech in which he told me how grave my situation was. When I was finally given a chance to speak, I said, “Mr. Colonel, let me explain to you how I see what is happening here. What is taking place here is not between you and me. It is between me and my God. My Lord obviously has some dealings with me here. I do not yet know what they are. It is very likely that He wants to teach me a few things. I only know, Sir, that you will only do to me what my God has planned for you to do to me. And you will not go one inch beyond that, because you are only instruments in the hands of my God.”
At that moment, I no longer saw six ferocious people with dark, hateful faces in front of me. I saw six puppets, and above them, I saw the hand of my beloved Father pulling six strings. The Colonel did not like my description of the events of that day, but for me it was the best illustration of the sovereignty of God! My Lord is in perfect control, even of His enemies, and He has His sovereign ways of fulfilling His plans even through them. Now, if that is the case, why should I be afraid of them?

One possible cause for fear may be the recognition that our God seems to have a very different set of values from the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” set enshrined in our legal codes. I notice that John 3:16 is cited much more commonly as a favorite Bible verse of encouragement than Matthew 10:28, in which Jesus says, seemingly quite seriously,

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

(Just for context’s sake, it is worth noting that this is the verse that precedes the much more frequently favorited “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” notice how the sentimental greeting card feel is incinerated when the two verses are read together, as Jesus no doubt intended them to be.)

Is it untrue that Christians today seem to be more afraid of ISIS and North Korea than the Lord Jesus? If so, is it possible that Jesus does not regard this as understandable but rather as an odd and unacceptable affront by believers against his Father’s glory?

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