“The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner [... a] stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.” (1 Peter 2:7-8)
Stephen is stoned to death for blasphemy, a crime of thought and speech. In the process of trial for his wrong belief, martyrdom was not inevitable. There could have been some kind of peace or reconciliation, and instead there was death.
For Stephen, it would have somehow been worse to deny what he knew to be true than it was to die. To recant, whether by a change of heart or a simple lie, would have done some greater violence. It is one thing to be stoned for blasphemy, but another to let go of the truth of the Kingdom of God itself in favour of the lie that the world demands.
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American thinker Rob Henderson is credited with the term “luxury belief” as a contemporary, reactionary analogue to what used to be called “Western decadence.” The luxury belief is one that is not necessary, but is a distraction from what really matters.
It is an incredibly useful rhetorical tool, you don’t even have to come right out and say that someone else’s beliefs are wrong, or that you disagree, you can simply say that their belief is insincere, insignificant, or worthy of suspension. I am sure that you can think of many instances where this kind of framing is used.
A luxury is disposable and secondary. Think of times of rationing: you may well want to eat some good and nutritious food, but that is a luxury compared to allowing that food to go to someone who needs it to work in some essential role. It’s nice to have food that tastes good, but it’s better to have food at all. It would not be right for a parent to be well-dressed while their children lack of clothes entirely.
Likewise we have a hierarchy in terms of social needs and physical needs, and for the individual and for the collective. I think of those who during the height of pandemic response struggled greatly with the demand that they give up seeing friends in order that some unseen and unknown other people might live.
So those who work for public health say that to socialize is a luxury that can be suspended, while those who find the burden unbearable can likewise retort that those distant and hypothetical lives are a luxury compared to the immediacy of their own.
The need to protect the lives of Iranian children is a luxury so long as there is a need to sustain the global supply of oil, apparently. The idea of leaving oil in the ground is a luxury so long as there are people who need to drive to work, too. The idea of peace always feels like an unthinkable luxury to those who believe that they must fight a war.
Society operates on implicit and explicit hierarchies of truth, in which even those who agree about what is true can decide to suspend the truth in favour of something more important. You can believe in the rights of Indigenous people, or trans people, or the homeless, but there is a point at which those are each a luxury to be suspended, so that you can do the thing that you think must actually be done instead.
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I find myself wondering a lot whether religion, and maybe even God, functions as such a luxury belief, just waiting to be superseded by something that is somehow more real.
The Church of Acts is so steeped in theological realism: God is right here and right now for them, and the demands of their faith are equal to or even greater than the demands of their belly. Asked to choose between what the authorities ask of them and what God asks of them, they are quite clear: they will follow God.
I do not know how many of us believe in God like that, or see our faith as so central. Faith seems flexible and deferrable. Maybe we try to strike the balance somehow in suspending our religious practice, being sure to support something good even as we go along indifferently with the great evils of the world in which we are complicit. We really feel that we must go along to get along.
I don’t want to die a martyr’s death, and I don’t really feel like anyone else should, either, but a part of me would like to have that kind of clarity and conviction waiting somewhere in reserve. Maybe it’s not worth it to die for blasphemy, but there are martyrs like Jonathan Daniels, who was a seminarian killed protecting a young Black woman, Ruby Sales, from a racist, murderous act of violence by a deputy sheriff at the height of the American civil rights era’s conflicts. It must be worth it to love like that.
Love and charity are not luxuries that can be suspended. The dignity and reality of the lives of others can’t really exist within a suspendable hierarchy. If we love God, that love has to go farther than some sort of inflated sense of personal specialness, but must allow for something costly to be asked of us. If our faith is real to us, then it cannot be less real than the things we actually do and the lives we actually lead.
The religious life is not a game of make-believe which must be suspended as soon as there is real work to be done. Life may well challenge and change our beliefs, as well it should, but we cannot claim to believe one thing and then unthinkingly live out another.
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May you know that God’s love for you is durable and good — and will not fail. May you know that the meaning of your own life is not a polite fiction only waiting to be shattered. May you love others so deeply that it changes you, and bear witness to this love with your life.