A pastor friend of mine said, "Our problem is that we no longer have martyrs. We only have celebrities.
Shane ClaiborneTags: celebrities martyrs
Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.
George EliotTags: poets saints martyrs sages
All spiritual journeys are martyrdoms
Jean CocteauTags: spirituality martyrs
The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs... In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.
[Letter to James Smith discussing Jefferson's hate of the doctrine of the Christian trinity, December 8 1822]
Tags: reason gullibility absurdities trinity martyrs the-trinity athanasian athanasian-creed trinitarian
Rizal learned the right ideas at the wrong time, and for this he was shot.
Ambeth R. OcampoThe agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph's legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain.
David EbershoffEvery November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome.
The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you risk your life?
Tags: friends fanaticism christianity patriotism war death religion childhood self-importance suicide sacrifice principles torture soldiers martyrdom theocracy orwell martyrs masochism ugliness november boyhood comrades self-abnegation causes christian-martyrs conscription kamikaze memorials poppies suicide-attack
As Luxenberg's work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next.
Ibn WarraqTags: death sex language scholarship islam koran martyrdom martyrs raisins virgins suicide-attack christoph-luxenberg criticism-of-the-koran destructive-cult houris syro-aramaic-reading
In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs.
Alexandre DumasTags: religion extremists martyrs
However , it’s over, and I’ll take no revenge on his folly – I can afford to suffer anything, hereafter! Should the meanest thing alive slap me on the cheek, I’d not only turn the other, but I’d ask pardon for provoking it – and, as proof, I’ll go make my peace with Edgar instantly – Good night – I’m an angel!
Emily BrontëPage 1 of 2.
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