The Judgment of Solomon

The Roman Empire had respect for things that were old. Their own pantheon of gods was derived from the Hellenistic culture of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. They were able to accept the Egyptian gods when they conquered that land. They were a little twitchy about the Hebrew god, because the Hebrews insisted on exclusive worship of Yahweh, which was just weird, and wouldn’t participate in the Imperial cult. This lead to a few conflicts, but ultimately, the fact that the Hebrew god was an ancient god was enough, and the Hebrews were tolerated. But the Romans had little patience with new religions, and there were plenty of new religions springing up all the time. One of the two most persecuted religious movements of the first two centuries of the Common Era were the Christians. This strange offshoot of the Hebrew cult was marked with the same exclusiveness, its same claims to superiority over all other religions and gods, but had none of Judaism’s ancient legitimacy. Christians had a hard time getting along with other members of the Hebrew religion, and as the movement spread, came into conflict with their neighbors and the Roman authorities. It didn’t help that it was a stressful and chaotic time, that the empire was fraying at the seams, that some emperors were nuts when they started, and others ended up that way from the stress. And of course, everyone needs a good scapegoat.

The persecution of the Christians wasn’t as consistent and widespread as we’ve been lead to believe, but it did happen, episodes of terror, some local, some empire wide. And so it was, in 110 CE, that the Bishop of Antioch, the most powerful church leader in the east since the destruction of Jerusalem, was arrested. Like Paul, he was a Roman citizen, and like Paul, he was able to appeal his sentence, and was transported to Rome. On the way, he wrote letters, seven of which have been passed down through history. Here is an excerpt from one. Ignatius writes:

“I am corresponding with all the churches and bidding them all realize that I am voluntarily dying for God – if, that is, you do not interfere. I plead with you, do not do me an unseasonable kindness. Let me be fodder for wild beasts – that is how I can get to God. I am God’s wheat and I am being ground by the teeth of wild beasts to make a pure loaf for Christ.”

Weird, right? I mean, we have a certain amount of respect for folks who refuse to waiver and die for their faith. Sometimes they die heroically, like Zwingli, Romero, and Bonhoeffer. Sometimes they simply refuse to renounce their belief. But Ignatius seems to be running full tilt toward a martyr’s death.

This is an uncomfortable truth about early Christianity. It is surprising that the faith endured at all. For since the founder of our faith died at the hands of the oppressor, an innocent victim of capital punishment, so his followers would hurtle themselves into the jaws of state sponsored terror for decade after decade, assured that in so doing, they would gain eternity. This is not the cult of worshiping the saintly martyrs. This was the cult of becoming a saintly martyr.

Leaving the metaphysics of eternal life aside, we have practical questions about seeking opportunities to become a martyr. Surely Ignatius deprived his community of important leadership. Someone must have grieved. Did the cult of self-destruction preserve and grow Christianity? Or did it limit the faith’s growth. Was a successful death in the jaws of a Coliseum lion a real victory, or a Pyrrhic victory?

The term Pyrrhic victory comes from just a few centuries before the early Christians, during the period when the Roman Empire was expanding. Pyrrhus was a great general in a region of northwest Greece. At the Battle of Asculum, Pyrrhus defeated the Romans. He lost 3500 troops, to 6000 Romans dead. History reports the general saying “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”

You see, the Romans had a huge population and an expanding empire. They had a nearly endless supply of bodies to pour into the jaws of the beast, into the carnage of war. The resources available to Pyrrhus were finite. One more loss of 3500 men, and there would be no one left to defend the homeland.

Winning the battle and losing the war, another way of describing a Pyrrhic Victory. It’s not that much different than the approach taken by one of the prostitutes that stood before Solomon. It wasn’t even that she was going to win. She was willing to go down in flames with her adversary as long as the other woman didn’t win. Her victory over the other woman would be her own defeat.

We can look at the story, imaging the screaming child, and it seems like a no brainer. Of course, every one of us would behave like the real mother, sacrificing something for the greater good.

Except when we don’t.

And we don’t all too often. I know. For this is one of my vices, and I know that I am not the only one in the room who suffers it. We insist on being right, fighting tooth and claw, claiming a moral or intellectual or emotional victory, no matter the carnage and smoking rubble we leave in our path. How many of us have damaged, sometimes destroyed, relationships, insisting that we were right, demanding capitulation from the other? Because we can’t let that other person, who we know is wrong, win. How many of us face a chasm between ourselves and a family member or a former friend, a canyon we dug with shovels of self-righteousness and certainty?

This isn’t just about picking your battles. After all, the phrase pick your battles” is still about winning. It is about strategy. The Pyrrhic question isn’t how can I win. It is about the cost of the victory.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer did what he thought was right, and joined an ineffective plot to kill Hitler. But what did Christianity lose? Would the church be better able to articulate the value of a life in Christ today if one of its greatest minds hadn’t hung from the gallows of Flossenbürg concentration camp?

Paul, the pastor, tries to warn us about this, even though he expects the second coming at any moment. The issue was the dispute over whether to eat certain meat. You see, unlike the Hebrew cult, where all sacrificed meat went to the priests, meat sacrificed to other gods in the Roman Empire often ended up in the market. Some Christians thought that to eat this meat was a sin, an acknowledgment of the legitimacy of those gods. Other Christians said, “Look, it doesn’t matter, since those gods are made up and not real anyways.”

This dispute was tearing apart the early Christian churches, because eating together was the core practice of those who would follow Jesus. Paul’s advice was this: The decision to eat the meat or not eat it is a personal preference. But if your decision, one way or the other, creates a stumbling block for someone else, then you need to give in, because hurting the relationship is far worse than your decision about the stupid meat.

Our world has changed dramatically in the last fifty years. We no longer know how to articulate the power of Christ in our lives, if we’ve even retained enough spiritual practice left to feel it. And yet, countless churches argue about meat. Or steak dinners. Or the type of coffee in the pot. Countless Christians destroy relationships trying to be right, even if there is an infant before us, facing the sword.

Our lust for victory, our desire to be right, sometimes just our demand to get our own way, can overwhelm our wisdom. Yet, if we place love before pride, there is hope.

The way forward is best described in words often mistakenly attributed to St. Augustine, but that actually originate many centuries later, in a text by Rupertus Meldenius, an otherwise forgotten Lutheran theologian of the early 17th century. He out the question of right, wrong and compromise this way:

In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; in all things, charity, which is to say, love.

I would add to Meldenius’ wise words those of a later generation, a generation that would struggle with addiction, for I would add the last line of the Serenity prayer: And the wisdom to know the difference.

May we not rush headlong into unnecessary martyrdom. May we not win the battle and lose the war. May we not sacrifice the child. May we not eat the meat and alienate our neighbor. May we have the wisdom to know where we can compromise, the courage to build bridges across the chasms we have dug, and the love to walk together always, in covenant with one another, and with our God. Amen.