Inter­est­ing that you are writ­ing about this and thank you for address­ing it. I have been won­der­ing about this a lot lately too. We see media clips of cap­tives at gun­point being forced to say that they con­verted to Islam…knowing full well in their own hearts that they are not, but say so in order to save his/her life. I have been think­ing about the thou­sands of mar­tyrs that have gone before us that have given their LIFE for Christ and the Faith. What would we do in that sit­u­a­tion? Do you jus­tify it by agree­ing with the ter­ror­ists in order to save your life, but know full well in your heart that your a “Chris­t­ian?” Do we not think that God has ears? And has eyes? And sees and hears us denounce Him and our faith?

What would hap­pen if some­one now-a-days that was kid­napped and tor­tured said he was NOT going to con­vert to Islam because he was a Chris­t­ian? What effect do you think that would have on the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties? Any? A lot? It’s hard to say…

It makes me think of a jour­nal entry I wrote on May 22, 2006 dur­ing the whole Da Vinci code drama…
“Today as I was dri­ving into work I was lis­ten­ing to the radio and I came across a talk show on 96.5 The Buzz that was talk­ing about the Da Vinci Code movie. They were hav­ing peo­ple call in to dis­cuss the con­tro­ver­sial top­ics that the film con­tained in order to win some con­cert tick­ets. One guy called in, claim­ing to be a Christian…First ques­tion: “Was Jesus mar­ried?” The man responded, “No.” The radio broad cast­ers yell back, “FALSE!!!!” Next ques­tion: “Did Jesus have kids?” The man responded, “Well I guess I have to agree with your line of think­ing in order to win.” And so he replies, “Yes.” At which point I turned off the radio and sat in silence shak­ing my head, nearly in tears. I thought back to the early church days where mar­tyrs’ bod­ies were muti­lated and des­e­crated because they would not denounce Christ or speak of any hereti­cal claims against Him or the Faith. They would give their LIFE (not to men­tion suf­fer­ing cruel and hor­ri­ble deaths)in order to pre­serve the Faith and Christ’s divin­ity. And now a days I just heard a man denounce Christ in order to win con­cert tickets.”

It is a sad state of things. Where Chris­tians have come to believe that their earthly, tem­po­rary lives are more impor­tant than Christ and the Faith. Maybe if some­one does denounce Christ and their faith in order to save their life, they do so because they are not ready to die? Mean­ing that the want to be right with Christ and repent before their earthly life ends? I know that’s ide­alog­i­cal think­ing, but if a true Chris­t­ian really does denounce Christ and the Faith in order to save their life, then I think they bet­ter be spend­ing the rest of their life in repen­tance. It would be a ter­ri­bly hard situation…it’s very hard to put your­self in that posi­tion and to know what you would do in the same situation…

Good job for get­ting us think­ing about this, Grace!

I think that thing about the con­cert tick­ets is just the sad­dest thing I’ve heard in a long time. Because you’re right, a LOT of peo­ple would think a per­son was over­re­act­ing for think­ing it was any­thing more than just a dumb radio schtick.

With all of these accounts of cap­tives, I haven’t heard of any that were asked to renounce their faith and refused, so I just don’t know whether the cap­tors would mar­tyr them for that or not. And I don’t mean to cast asper­sions on what a per­son does under that kind of duress. Even in the times of the mar­tyrs, there were a lot that couldn’t go through with it. And I remem­ber read­ing at least once about a per­son who *thought* they were blessed to receive the crown of mar­tyr­dom only to be told by their spir­i­tual father that they were mis­taken and were con­fess­ing the faith out of their own pride. (As I recall, the per­son didn’t believe it and then broke under tor­ture and denied Christ.) So it’s really a rare thing for a per­son to be called to do, and if look­ing through the lives of the saints gives us hun­dreds of instances of mar­tyr­dom, we should still know those are hun­dreds of uniquely blessed ser­vants of God.

But around about now, I’m think­ing I’m in over my head. It’s really a bet­ter sub­ject for a homileti­cian than a hum­ble blog­ger. (Fr. Elias, got yer ears on?)

Have you been read­ing Jill Carrol’s story? You could find it on the web­site of the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, as that is what she wrote it for, but it’s been seri­al­ized in my local paper. They asked her to con­vert, and she wouldn’t. Inter­est­ingly enough, she was really not reli­gious when she was cap­tured, although at the end of the last chap­ter I read, she was talk­ing about how she was pray­ing and call­ing out to God.

Any­way, I also was think­ing of some of the New Mar­tyrs under the Mus­lim Yoke in South­ern Europe when I read that story as well.

Lord have Mercy — I can’t even begin to imag­ine being in that situation.

Ooo, I’m glad you men­tioned her! By a curi­ous coin­ci­dence, I just hap­pened to catch the 10th install­ment of her story yes­ter­day on Yahoo, and I was going to include some­thing about her, but couldn’t fig­ure out how to fit it in. The install­ment I was read­ing was about the time of her release, and I thought it did as good a job as any­thing could of let­ting you know a lit­tle the toll that that kind of expe­ri­ence would have on a per­son. I wouldn’t think you’d ever feel safe again.

Any­way, here’s the link to the last install­ment of the series, and if you look on the left col­umn under her pic­ture, you can find links to all the oth­ers (for those who haven’t been catch­ing it).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/ojilleleven

See I had heard her 2 inter­views on Good Morn­ing Amer­ica about a month ago and she said (out of her own mouth) that she was asked to con­vert, and she said that she would con­vert just to appease them and to keep her­self safe. She said that she just kept going along with what­ever they wanted in order for them to spare her life. So now I’m really confused…hmm…the media send­ing mixed mes­sages? No way!

Well, it sounds like she’s say­ing dif­fer­ent things. I didn’t read the install­ment in this series where she’s talk­ing about that, so I don’t know.

I think she’s the one who had to do a lit­tle explain­ing when she got home because when she was still over­seas she made a point of say­ing how well she was treated and all that. When she got home, she said that she still didn’t feel like she could be honest.

I’m almost sur­prised though that we don’t get more of these kinds of back-and-forth things from peo­ple that have been hostages for a long time. Hang­ing around in mis­er­able some­times painful con­di­tions and not know­ing whether you’ll be dead in an hour or still sit­ting around doing noth­ing in a month — in that sit­u­a­tion, I gotta believe you enter an altered kind of real­ity just to keep your san­ity. The two Fox jour­nal­ists, for exam­ple, have been talk­ing like their biggest worry out of all that’s hap­pened is that other news­peo­ple might not want to go to Pales­tine. That just sounds like some weird pri­or­i­tiz­ing, but I can see where obsess­ing over that would free you from the fear and anger of think­ing about what these guys did to them.

She did talk about that in the story — that she didn’t feel she was safe when she was just released, so she said every­thing was great so that she’d not be recaptured.

I also think that part of the rea­son that she didn’t say she’d con­vert was lack of con­vic­tion in Islam, not an over­rid­ing Chris­t­ian con­vic­tion, as I men­tioned she wasn’t really reli­gious, although she may be more so now. I don’t know.

Which brings up the part of it that makes it a dif­fi­cult sub­ject. There are a great num­ber of nom­i­nal Chris­tians and agnos­tics in the coun­try. If that’s where you stand, why *wouldn’t* you con­vert at gun­point? It would be like some­one point­ing a gun at my head and telling me to say I like Col­gate tooth­paste bet­ter than Crest.

There was a blog post on this topic here — http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/08/28/gunp… — enti­tled “What would you do?”

The author is com­ing from a Protes­tant per­spec­tive and so he occa­sion­ally has a point of view that we just can’t relate to (“Once saved, always saved. I don’t have to work to “keep” my sal­va­tion. Yes, even if I denied Christ, God for­bid it, he’s still my Sav­ior.”) But the post — and espe­cially the com­ments — are still a good read.

I’m off to read that, thanks for the link. It is some­thing that is very inter­est­ing to turn around in my head.