Persecutions, Ignatius of Antioch, and Logic Schoolers
I'm teaching Church History in the Logic School (8th and 9th graders) at Haw River Christian Academy. The past two classes we've been studying the persecutions of the 1st and 2nd centuries.
Yesterday we listened to this audio reading of St. Ignatius of Antioch's final letter before his execution. They found it strange to hear a man desiring death, craving the body and blood of Jesus, and seeing death as birth to new life.
We talked through the cultural differences between our experience of being a Christian in a place where it is accepted and the experience of the early church, where you could die for refusing to say, "Hail Caesar!" For the early Christians the assembly of the faithful on the Sabbath was vital to living out their faith. The students all agreed that on most Sundays they complain about going to church.
The discussion that followed became lively as they considered that 13 and 14 year old Christians in the 1st and 2nd century were persecuted. They asked themselves the hard question, "What would I do if I were arrested and asked to renounce my faith and curse Jesus Christ?"
Somewhere there is a Frederica Matthewes-Greene essay on the youth ministry of the early church. There was no youth curriculum. There was persecution and martyrdom. Those were the consequences for being a Christian in that day. We are told Origen's mother had to lock him in his room to keep him from going out and being arrested.
As I watched those Logic School students confront the depth or lack of depth in their faith, I was again grateful for those who have gone before, who have died rather than cursed Christ. The blood of the martyrs is still seed for the church.
