The Heroic Heart

The charge is frequently brought against Christianity that it bestows a special patronage upon the passive virtues, reversing the honors men have usually paid to those of the heroic type, and claiming for meekness the praise which once went to courage, and for self-sacrifice what used to be bestowed on personal force. Christian ethics, it is said, do not encourage the active and aggressive qualities. The Christian ideal lacks force. Its spirit deprecates the wrestling energy which has won all the world’s battles. Its saints are feeble; its code is unfriendly to the strong; its millennium is a reign of effeminacy. Once let the spirit of Christianity prevail, this criticism urges, and you will witness under its refinements the disappearance of the active virtues, the decline of physical courage, the prowess which shone in battle, the intrepidity of manhood, the force which has overcome chaos and built a civilization. We shall see the type degenerate and perhaps disappear, and we shall only be allowed to honor the virtues of the warrior, the patriot, and the knight as the best products of a benighted past.
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It is not true to the facts of Christian ethics nor to the facts of Christian history. It misconceives the real nature of the dispositions which Christianity inculcates and it is inconsistent with the actual manifestation of the Christian spirit in its historic development … A survey of Christian history will prove that there has been no falling off in the culture of a vital personal force since the ethics of Calvary superseded those of the Platonist and the Stoic.

John Coleman adams

That was written 1891. The same charge is brought against us, renewed, today. It is not my position to argue that there are no heroes other than the Christian sort. My position is that Christians have been heroic – and of a special order, unique in this world. For these heroes have strength drawn from outside of themselves. As the stamp of death settles on them, their eyes look out of this world, to a hope and inheritance unfading. These are a special order – they do not die to achieve immortality. They die because they have achieved it in the death of Christ. They account themselves dead in His death, and alive in His life. The sword they wield does not touch the flesh, but the very hearts of men. With their gaze they convict the hearts of sinners, drive the deluded minds of the haughty mad, and shine with a light that’s not their own – they being irradiated by their Savior.

The first great battle ground of the Christian heroes’ spans those first 300 years. It was won by daring deeds and striking debates. Those first heroes of courageous trust met head on the heathen world, and brought Christ descended, crucified, and ascended before the eyes of anyone with whom they could get a hearing.

These earliest heroes of the Church were soldiers fighting a daily battle. They were mariners caught in the storm of three hundred pitiless years.

john coleman adams

Christianity, from the outset, was met with the most heated opposition. The spirit that had done all to keep Jesus from dying for the sins of the world now pursued those to death whom sought to bring others to Him. Yet they went out boldly, far and wide. Like the host angels who first gave that evangelical cry of God’s grace to the shepherds at night, so these points of light engulfed the hostile night of the pagan world.

Nero rose, among many others. Those gods of the pagan secular states, and those that stood under them with no god other than the state, blamed the burning of Rome on the Christians. They were living torches. They were clothed in gowns of fire. The rulers of that early world, in which the infant church grew, sought desperately to crush that Kingdom within their kingdom.

For all centuries since, those heroic souls have endured in the name of the Savior unimaginable horrors.

When the fire had burned its hottest, and the sword cut its sharpest, and wild beasts had raged their fiercest, and these steadfast men and women were un dismayed, then they were stretched and broken upon the rack, and some had their limbs dislocated and their fingers crushed, and others had their flesh torn with sharp hooks, and others were smeared with honey and exposed to stinging insects.
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During the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a maiden of Lyons named Blandina was apprehended as a Christian along with many others. She made no denial. Her one answer to every demand was simply, “I am a Christian, and there is no wrong done among us.” She was tortured till the breath was almost gone from her body, and then she was revived that she might be thrown into prison. There she was forced to witness the torture and the death faith. of many others, whom she comforted and helped with her strong, cheering words of faith. At last, when her tormentors despaired of making her recant, she was taken from her lingering torture-house for one more sharp distress, and wrapped and bound in a net, was tossed to death upon the horns of a wild bull.

Polycarp made reply, ” Eighty and six years have I served Christ and He has never done me wrong; how then can I blaspheme Him now, — my King and my Saviour.” The officers threatened him with the wild beasts, but he was unmoved. They added the threat of fire. He answered, “Do with me what you will.” The crowd clamored for his death. They demanded that he should be burned alive, and rushed for fagots and for wood that he might be made an instant victim. They would have nailed him to the stake, but he said, “Leave me as I am. He who gives me grace to bear the flame will help me to stand unshaken.” And so he died, with a prayer of praise on his lips, as stoutly and bravely as any soldier in battle.

John adams coleman

Some, it is true, who claimed Christ, were full of the zeal of youth and the passions of hormones. These cried out for martyrdom – demanded it, even, believing that martyrdom would get them closer to Christ. These poor souls forgot the source of their life, the Son of Man on the tree for them, and sought to their own path of death to life. How subtle can the slime of the devil be! I do not condemn these, but hold them out as a warning: May we not substitute the courageous heroic heart of the trusting Christian for the heart of the heroic warrior who stands against the evil he sees in his own way.

The man who fights for a price sinks into insignificance by the side of the man who fights for an idea, a principle, an affection. The man who bears pain or braves danger from selfishness or any mean motive grows not greater but smaller from his suffering. But let the motive rise and let him become the servant of something outside himself and higher than himself, and his bravery then is glorified into a real heroism.

john coleman adams

But I will tell you of something greater – something only the Christian knows, and only hearts enlightened by their light can perceive. Their heroism resides utterly outside of themselves. That courage of the man on the cross next to Christ was nothing but naked trust. He faced death condemned, and all his hope was pinned on the One nailed next to him. And like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all the prophets and believers before, he died in trust. Imperfect, weak, desperate in and of themselves, strong beyond measure in the strength of their Savior filling every otherwise empty cavern of their souls. These were far greater than the Übermensch tyrants sought for. Beyond higher motive or affection, these were not heroes themselves; they had the Hero inside of them. It was He who died on the coliseum floor before His jeering enemies. It was His blood mingled in the sands. It was His heart on display before the hostile world. That same Person who entered the hostile night of Nazareth was the there in their souls. That same Person who hung on the cross amongst scoffers was in them that died hearing the roar of twenty thousand people who loved to watch Christians die.

Even against those who claimed the Name of their Savior, and used the sword that God gave them to punish the good and reward the evil, these resisted. They were not cowards, nor were they divisive. They brought a message of peace that the anti-God world could not bear. They offered reconciliation to God as His ambassadors. Imperfect, they often faltered and were influenced by the ideas of forcing bended knee. Yet the Spirit of Christ was at work in them, and now we stand on their shoulders. What sort will we be? Cowards? Heroes in our own right, establishing force to confront evil by our own means? Or heroes by the Hero alive in us? May we have that courageous trust that calls Princes and Presidents to godly standards, and may we share the Gospel with enemies who love to see Christians die. May we be people the world cannot comprehend. Filled with undeniable love, and opposed to all that they call “good” which we know to be Christless evil.