Counting the Cost
Christianity would be popular if it did not have the Cross at the centre. People are not so much anti-Christian as that they find the via dolorosa to difficult, too demanding, and particularly is this true when men and women are called today to witness in the face of injustice, in humanity and indiscriminate abuse of power. There can be no cheap grace, co cheap witness. We bear not the mark of the beast, but the mark of the Cross, or baptismal name:
Seeing that this child has now by Baptism been made a member of Christ’s Church I sign him/her with the sign of the Cross in token that hereafter he/she shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant until his/her life’s end
To witness is to bear the Cross; in the Greek of the New Testament the same root-word is used for ‘witness’ and ‘martyr’ — martus. We recall what witness meant in the early community of faith in the midst of a pagan culture and under the tyranny of mad emperors. The Christian writers and preachers of the fourth century looked back to the persecutions as the heroic age of the Church.
From the star the Christians were regarded as having been deceived and having forsaken the essential faith and tenets of Israel for an impostor who received the just punishment for his deeds. The Jews regarded Christianity as a heresy within the context of Judaism. To the problems created by daily conflict with the Jews were added the consequences of the policy of Romanisation pursued by some emperors, which brought Christianity intodirect conflict with the powerful pagan orders. Other contributing factors to the life of martyrdom were: the renunciation of wealth and privilege, the imitation of the Passion of Christ, the vindication of his earthly ministry, and the liturgy and way of life practiced in his service by the Church. The example of martydom did git Christianiity a defensive power.
In the history of the Church there have been some who have caught the spirit of the early Christians. One recalls the witness of Martin Luther “Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.” and Thomas Moore “I die the king’s faithful servant, but God’s first”. In the last century we have Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This last has perhaps than anyone else to map out for us what it means to confront demonic power. His Letters and Papers from Prison have become a classic of the courageous resistance to Hitler by the confessing Church in Germany.
In his The Cost of Discipleship, he attacks all notions of ‘cheap grace’ and summons us to costly Christian living in the world, exposed, unsheltered, and vulnerable. His consistent cry was No Rusty Swords, and in his Ethics he showed how inadequate the old weapons were to deal with the forces of evil let loose by Nazism.
We too must count the cost and fashion new swords, as we respond to the Word of God in Christian obedience, accept the imperative of good, not bad, political involvement and be vigilant about the civil and political rights of our fellowmen in the face of arbitrary use of political power. Listen to Bonhoeffer again:
When men are confronted by a bewildering variety of alternatives, the path of duty seems to offer a sure way out. They grasp at the imperative as the one certainty. The responsibility for the imperative rests upon its author, not upon its executor. But when men are confined to the limits of duty, they never risk a daring deed on their own responsibility, which is the only way to score a bull’s eye against evil and defeat it. The man of duty will in the end be forced to give the devil his due. Some seek refuge from the rough-and-tumble of public life in the sanctuary of their own private virtue. Such men however are compelled to seal their lips and shut their eyes to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep themselves pure from the defilements incurred by responsible action. For all, that they achieve, that which they leave undone will still torment their peace of mind. They will either go to pieces in the face of this disquiet or develop into the most hypocritical of Pharisees. Who stands his ground? Only the man whose ultimate criterion is not in his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these things when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and exclusive allegiance to God. The responsible man seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God
The Christian faith, and the Church as the guardian and transmitter of this, has to do more than saving souls. If the Church is to join God’s action in the world, to be concerned for a right ordering of society in which men and women can realize their total personal fulfilment in the totality of their lives’ situations, then there is the imperative of entering the sphere of politics. The task of the Church has to do with all things — with the use of power, distribution of wealth, human rights, as well as with family unions and the status and education of children — which either liberate or dehumanize.
When powers that should be our servants become our masters, then they are the modern counterparts of the ‘principalities and powers’ which Jesus dethroned and made a spectacle of (Colossians 2:15). The Church has a tremendous responsibility within the political conditions for development and social change as she helps man to use his power, not as a power-drunk dictator or as a self-justifying revolutionary, but as a witness and servant of an emerging nation and people.
Sehon Goodridge, 1977
Taken from his book The Church Amidst Politics and Revolution
About the Author
Sehon Goodridge was born In Barbados in 1937. He was educated at Harrison College, Codrington College, Barbados and King’s College, London. He was ordained as a minister in 1964 and began his service in the island of Saint Lucia. He then was appointed as The Chaplain of the University of the West Indies and then Principal of Codrington College from 1971–1982. He also served as Warden at the Cave Hill Campus, Barbados and the Episcopate as Bishop of the Windward Islands. He was also the first principal of Simon the Cyrene Theological Institute in Wandsworth, a pre-theological training institute for ordinands and lay workers specially designed to serve Anglicans from minority communities in the UK. Sehon died in 2007. After his death the Theological Society of Trinidad and Tobago, invited his widow to one of its Graduation ceremonies. She gave permission for the Trinidad and Tobago Theological Society to use the name Sehon Goodridge Theological Society. This article is extracted from his book The Church Amidst Politics and Revolution published by The CEDAR Press, Bridgetown, Barbados (1977)
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