Appreciating our Heritage

Among the books I'm currently reading is one about Christianity's early martyrs. It's a book that I know one of my sisters will never read because she has difficulty even watching the crucifixion scenes so prevalent around Easter.

Although persecution still exists in various parts of the world, for not just Christianity, I think it's easy to forget the sacrifices that others have made to bring our faith to us. After reading some of the tortures and death accounts endured by Christian martyrs in the centuries following Jesus' resurrection, I found myself asking God in prayer to thank them for keeping my religion alive.

I don't want to go into detail about their sacrifices, but let's just say that beheading may have been the easiest of what some experienced. The trials and tribulations of their lives under persecution often made me grimace, and I was grateful to learn of their fates through words rather than a depiction of their suffering. Like many, it’s impossible for me to watch the crucifixion of Jesus without pain and tears.

I like to think that my faith is unwavering, but it leaves the question of: How much could I endure of pain and suffering? If early Christianity depended upon me, would I have had the courage and fortitude shown by the martyrs?

The answer, I think, is that their strength had to come from God, the same God who abides with us through our difficulties which pale in comparison. For whatever God asks me to do, I have to believe his promise in Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful;¹ he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.² But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

I’m thinking there couldn’t be any greater temptation than to say you disavow what you believe in when confronted with such horrific punishment. No man would alone have the strength, so it must have come from the divine. (As a Stephen Minister, I also learned this is the verse most erroneously misinterpreted as, “God never gives you anything more than you can handle.”)

I will never take Jesus’ sacrifice as anything but with profound, humbling, sincere and eternal gratitude, and now I can no longer forget the importance of the early Christian martyrs’ sacrifices either. I am truly grateful to them for allowing God to use their lives in the most challenging way to bring my faith to me.