I have
been thinking a lot about the ways in which my Fundamentalist upbringing
groomed me for martyrdom, both literally and figuratively, and also for warfare
in general.
From an
early age, I was exposed to graphic images of Christian martyrs from around the
globe. There is one set of pictures in particular that has stayed with me,
seared into my memory. It came from China, which interestingly enough opened
the door to conversation about Communism and all of its inherent evils, most
especially its rejection of Christianity. My church was extremely politically
motivated and involved. We were often told from the pulpit which way to cast
our vote. It was also made clear that part of our Christian duty was to ensure
that the laws of our land reflected the Laws of God. We were told that God’s
Law trumped man’s, so it became tacitly okay to disobey any law of the land
that did not align with scripture, which may explain part of our present issue
with Constitutional interpretation. Equally important, we were urged to always
support the nation of Israel, as not doing so biblically ensured our nation’s
destruction for rejecting God’s Chosen People. This is why we have so many
Religious Freedom bills in circulation, as well as anti-LGBTQI and
anti-abortion legislation making the rounds, and it is also the reasoning
behind an unquestioning support, by some, of the policies of the nation of
Israel. All of these measures are simply a means of publicly demonstrating a
belief in and service to God, with a real fear that failing to do so might cost
a person their soul for eternity.
The
first picture of this particular series was of a Chinese Christian man who was to
be killed for his abberant belief by being cooked alive in a stove, in a public
square in front of a group of people gathered solely to watch it happen. Whether
this congregation was voluntary is unknown. The man was standing, bound and
subdued beside the oven as they were heating it up. His face was very stoic,
revealing no emotion about his situation, and this was attributed by my mentors
to his strong and unfailing faith, even as he faced a cruel death. This is how
a young child begins to revere martyrdom, and internalizes an ‘us versus them’
mentality. This is also how the seeds of terror get planted in the belly of a
child’s imagination and grow into unquestioning fealty to something they perceive
as able to keep them safe.
I
believe there was also a picture of him being loaded into the oven, horizontally,
but the one that truly stuck in my head was of his lifeless body after they
brought him back out. He was not exposed to flame, so there were no burns on
him. He was literally baked like a pastry and died due to the cooking of his
insides. His bloated yet fully intact body had a line of punctures from the top
of his chest all the way down his abdomen, like you might do to the top crust
of a pie, to allow for the release of heat without causing the insides to burst
forth during the baking. His face was grotesquely swollen and became a
nightmare that lived on the backs of my eyelids for years afterwards.
I was
told that the world was violently opposed to our beliefs, and that I had to
prepare myself for the possibility that I too may one day have to die for my faith;
I was told to think about that situation, and to imagine how I would react.
Would I stand firm and submit to death, thereby warranting eternity with our
glorious God, or would I fall prey to my weak human nature and deny my faith
and my God to save my pitiful life? I wonder how many hours I spent fantasizing
about the possibility? I say ‘fantasizing’ purposely, as it took on an almost
pleasurable aspect, after enough time spent there. I was somewhere between the
ages of five and seven when I began this practice. This, I believe, is the
mechanism that allows someone to put on a suicide vest and set out on a holy
mission. Christians aren’t so much on board with that, however, Christians are
in full support of our military forces dispensing an infinite amount of death
and destruction against the horror of Daesh or anything else that appears to be
at odds with the Judeo-Christian worldview. We did not sing ‘Onward, Christian
Soldiers’ facetiously.
Sunday
School classes in childhood were full of Old Testament stories about acts of
contrition and blood sacrifice performed for the purpose of forgiveness of sins,
which people inevitably committed, and also acts of genocide carried out against
non-believers by God’s Chosen People with not only His full blessing, but His
specific instruction as to how to go about it victoriously. Going to war was
sometimes necessary, and could become a holy act. At the time, I found great comfort
in these stories, as I believed myself to be in an extremely hostile and
threatening world, and these events showed me how to stay on the good side of my
All Powerful God, who would wipe out entire nations on my behalf, if need be.
The New
Testament was where I met Jesus, the Son of God, who was Himself a martyred God
granted a place at the right hand of the Father in Heaven as a reward for
willfully laying down His life for the greater good. Jesus was a revolutionary
with a message of Love as salvation and an end to blood sacrifice, but that
story got heavily obscured under the weight of His crucified form. Fundamentalist
tellings of Jesus’ death often play out like some kind of sadomasochistic word porn
for ascetics. All of his wounds, and there were many, are described in exacting
detail, which serves to solidify the sainthood of the martyr, while
simultaneously making it clear how utterly wretched the rest of us fall short. Shame
is too often the takeaway of fundamentalist Jesus, and it serves as the tinder
for many a righteous conflagration.
Terrorism
and fundamentalism go hand in hand because to be Fundamentalist is to live in a
constant, sublimated state of absolute terror. Humans are not meant to live in
terror, and the natural response to this brutal exposure is a deep and powerful
rage paired with a side of nihilism. It is an extremely short trip from rage
and nihilism to ‘give me a vest and seventy virgins’ or ‘send me to war, Sarge,
and make me a hero.’
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