Prepare to Die

A few years ago I was contacted by my priest who asked me if I could give a ride to church to a new member of our community.  He was a college age kid (Zoomer) who attends the local university.  He gave me the boy’s phone number and I arranged to pick him up outside of his dormitory.  He came to church with me, and stayed after the service for coffee hour.  The boy’s name was Adam.  Sitting around the table during coffee hour our conversation turned towards politics and somehow the name of Nick Fuentes came up.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, Adam turned to me and asked me point blank “would you die for Nick?”  I was taken aback, and didn’t exactly know how to respond.  It was clear to me by the way Adam had asked this question that he had already settled the question in his own mind, and if I had asked him the same question he would have answered in the affirmative.  This isn’t the first question that a normal person would have asked in polite company.  Under normal circumstance such a serious question might only be asked between people who had already developed a bond with each other.  Of course I had heard the name Nick Fuentes, and I was somewhat familiar with his work.  I’ve watched a couple of his streams and he strikes me as a very sharp political commentator.  As another political commentator, Michael Sisco, says of Nick, I agree with most of his positions on politics.  But would I die for him?  Such a question had never even crossed my mind up to that point.  Giving this question a bit more thought, this scripture verse comes to mind: “scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.” (Romans 5:7). Would I die for Nick?  Maybe.  If I were a better Christian, perhaps.  The next time I was watching one of Nick’s streams live, I began paying attention to the chat, and it turns out that this is a question that many Groypers have given thought to.  If you read Nick’s live chat you will see Nick’s audience proclaiming their willingness to die for him, and asking the same question of others.  Having seen this in the chat, I now understood where the question had come from when Adam had asked me if I would die for Nick during the coffee hour.  As I got to know Adam I began to understand why he had asked such a socially awkward question.  He was a socially awkward guy, and this wasn’t exactly his fault.  Adam is somewhere on the autism spectrum.  He revealed that he had been injured by vaccines in his youth, so that he now misses social cues and can’t relate to people normally.  I began to pity Adam, but I also began to see why he had developed such a strong sense of devotion to Nick Fuentes.  This situation isn’t unique to Adam.  There are many young men just like him.  His generation was born into a time which doesn’t give much hope for the future.  The political system hates him and wants him dead.  Women aren’t interested.  There aren’t many good job opportunities, and in fact the economic situation seems to be deteriorating.  What hope is there for the future?  These are the exact conditions in which a political figure such as Nick Fuentes can come along and capitalize on the situation, drawing an audience who is so loyal as to be willing to die for him.  A whole generation of young men with nothing to lose are finding Nick and see in him some kind of hope for the future.  I wouldn’t be surprised in Nick became President, honestly.

Although the question of whether I would die for Nick hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind, there is another question that has long been in the back of my mind.  That question is, would I die for Christ?  Christianity is an all-or-nothing religion which demands something from it’s adherents.  The founder of Christianity, the God-Man Christ, was born of a Virgin, was baptized in order to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3:15), and He died in order to open for us the way back into Paradise.  Christians are followers of Christ, and we are expected to follow Him all the way to Golgotha.  The first person to die for Christ, the Proto-Martyr Stephen, called upon God as he was being stoned and prayed for those who killed him (Acts 7).  Following the death of Stephen, Christians were scattered abroad from Jerusalem and began to spread the Word of Truth in other regions of the Empire.  Up until the Edict of Milan was issued in 315 AD, thereby legalizing the Faith, Christianity was a persecuted religion and untold thousands died as Martyrs.  Martyrdom is in the genetics of Christianity.  In it’s first centuries, it was enough for a Roman citizen to denounce somebody as a Christian for the authorities to put such a person to death.  In the early Church a problem therefore arose.  What was the Church to do with “lapsed” Christians who had denied the Faith?  If a Christian was facing execution they would be encouraged by the authorities to renounce the Christian Faith in order to be delivered from death.  If such a person came back to the Church, should the Church receive them?  There were some who believed that after renouncing Christ there was no possibility for repentance, and that they should be excommunicated.  Others who were more merciful believed that lapsed Christians should be given a penance, so that they would be denied Communion for a certain number of years, but that eventually they should be received back.  As the Church taught that mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:3), the latter camp won this debate and lapsed Christians were eventually allowed back into the Church.

Throughout the history of Christianity persecution has risen and fallen in waves.  The 20th century was the bloodiest century in the history of Christianity.  A rough estimate is that 20 million people died for the Faith under the communist yolk in the Soviet Union.  The possibility of martyrdom is the harsh reality for Christians, and a person shouldn’t become a Christian if they aren’t willing to die for Christ.  End of story.  As we look out today at what is happening in the world around us, it is apparent that persecution against the Church has once again arisen.  In the Ukraine the Government has been seizing churches, harassing believers, and arresting clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).  In October the Ukrainian legislature passed a bill with overwhelming support which will make the UOC illegal.  This is outright religious persecution.  It is here, now.  It isn’t some vague possibility for the future.  The government of the United States, which supposedly upholds religious freedom, has done nothing to stop this persecution but on the contrary has supported the Ukrainian government financially in it’s war with Russia.  If the US government is turning a blind eye to this persecution, what will stop religious persecution from spilling over into the United States?  This is why we must be prepared to suffer for Christ.

Over the years in my pondering over the idea of suffering for Christ, I was at first somewhat fearful.  In the accounts we read of the martyrs of the first centuries it is often recounted that they suffered horrendous torture, as the torturers tried to compel these martyrs to renounce their Faith in Christ.  They would be scraped by sharp iron implements, have their skin flayed off, be forced to watch their children be executed, have their eyes gouged out, and other such tortures.  Today, with the development of science, the methods of torture have only become more refined and painful.  Be sure that governments across the world have perfected various forms of torture, besides the crude methods that have been used in the past.  I wonder to myself, how will I be able to resist excruciating pain without denying Christ?  The answer came to me, however, and my worries have been put to rest.  At the time of torture, through intense prayer to Christ, the pain of torture will be alleviated.  In fact, in many accounts of the martyrs that we have preserved today it has been recorded that to suffer pain for Christ was experienced as an intense joy in the Lord.  We even have a modern account of such a phenomenon.  Metropolitan Philaret, who was the first hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia from 1964-1985 and whose incorrupt relics lie under the altar of Holy Trinity cathedral in Jordanville, New York, had this experience I am referring to.  The time was 1943 in Harbin China where the Metropolitan was serving as a priest at the time.  The Japanese had invaded China and they began demanding that the Russian Orthodox emigres bow down to one of their idols.  Fr. Philaret of course refused to do such a thing and was seized and subjected to torture.  The night before his torture he was fearful that he would deny Christ, but he prayed intensely to St. Nicholas for help.  When the torturers began to burn him with with a red hot iron the miracle occurred.  Although he could smell the burning of his flesh he felt no pain; instead he felt joy in his soul.  The torturers were so frightened by this occurrence, that they gave up trying to force the Orthodox Christians to bow to their idols.  For the rest of his life the Metropolitan had a visible scar on his eyes from the torture.  The moral of this story is that we should not fear torture, or even death for Christ.  God will give us the Grace to endure it.

If you are asking yourself or others “would you die for Nick?” you might be asking the wrong question.  You are asking something along the lines of the right question, because your desire is to die for a good cause, for something you believe in.  But if I may, I would like to tweak that question a little bit.  I think the question we should be asking ourselves right now as Christians is “would you die for Christ?” because you might get the opportunity.  Early Christians who lived with the ever present danger of dying for their Faith knew that to die for Christ was the highest honor.  The Church still holds every one of these Martyrs in high regard, such high regard, in fact, that to die for Christ automatically elevates these members of the Church to Sainthood.  If the Church on Earth is celebrating the memory of the martyrs as Saints you can rest assured that these Saints are in Paradise, where we will one day join them given that we continue in the Grace of God.