Martyrdom

(Warning: content related to depression and suicide)

A popular trend when I was a church-going youth was Christian martyrdom. Jesus Freaks, a book containing gripping and harrowing stories of people past and present who died for their faith, had just come out and it was all the rage. The Columbine High School massacre was on the forefront of everyone's minds. "Would you die for your faith?" the pastors at my church would often ask. It was a sincere question. Many people in our brand of Christianity were convinced that the day was soon coming when some kind of upheaval would hit America and Christians would be routinely slaughtered. We imagined that anti-Christian laws, bands of enemies storming into churches with assault rifles, and barbed-wire camps were imminent.

I was seduced by the idea of martyrdom. It played directly into my tendency towards suicidal depression and my desperation to be worthwhile to God. I spent long nights imagining scenarios in which I would be asked to deny my Christian faith and heroically martyred. I thought of what it would be like to die by impalement, drowning, burning at the stake, or being shot. Having morbid tendencies isn't that unusual for teenagers, but I suspect my obsession with martyrdom was beyond normal.

Since I spent much of my time hardening myself for the inevitable persecution I was led to believe was coming, my viewpoint became very black-and-white. I read everything I could to bolster my extremist outlook. I fantasized about raiding abortion clinics and smashing their equipment to bits, and of bombing adult entertainment venues. I was disgusted by the Christians around me who had strong pro-life views but who, for all their hooplah about baby murder, didn't seem to really treat abortion the same way they would treat, say, the legalized killing of 6-year-olds.

Meeting actual non-Christians did a bit to temper my zeal, and I let my natural meekness edge its way back into my outlook. Ending my daily prayer habit did wonders for my mental health and by that point the Christian martyr craze had died down (in retrospect, perhaps because of the September 11 attacks, though I may be remembering my chronology incorrectly).

I'm grateful that, for the most part, my extremism never went any further than words. There were times when I would have gladly committed vandalism, or hurt myself for the cause of God. It makes me a little sick now to think of what would have happened if I'd been just a little more hard-hearted, rash, and/or self-destructive. Or if I'd been born into a family somewhere, at some time, that was even more extremist than mine was. Most of all, it troubles me that nobody I knew seemed to think there was anything wrong with my jihad-like mindset, which I made explicit on several occasions.

I'm an atheist now and I feel like a better person, but I'm still sort of fucked up from my religious death-wish mindset. I try to exercise extreme caution, now, in adopting any views which I can't justify to a reasonable person. I have to temper my discussions with good faith and a willingness to see other people's viewpoints. I don't know how good I am at this, since it's not easy to train your mind to think in color after so much black-and-white. But at least now I'm making the effort, I guess.