In about 70 AD, a group of Jewish rebels fighting against a Roman siege of their mountain fortress, an old palace of King Herod, committed group suicide. History remembers these people as having heroic virtue, unwilling to become Roman trophies, prepared to die for their dignity. On the other hand, if it happened today, they might be dismissed as crazies or cultists, like those "ride a comet weirdos", or Jim Jones' acolytes.
The place was called Masada. And what they really were was human. Fully human.
"For the husbands tenderly embraced their wives and took their children into their arms, and gave the longest parting kisses to them, with tears in their eyes. Yet at the same time did they complete what they had resolved on, as if they had been executed by the hands of strangers, and they had nothing else for their comfort but the necessity they were in of doing this execution, to avoid the prospect they had of the misery they were to suffer from their enemies." (Josephus, Antiquities.)
We are all human. Most of us are motivated by the same desires, hopes, and fears as these ancient people who were both too proud to be paraded captives, and too desperate to hope in any alternative. It should be easy to see how we could be these people, and we should also see how easy it is to become their oppressors. May we always take care, collectively, to avoid becoming either.
Friday, February 4, 2005
Conscience, zealotry, or...
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4 comments:
Ah, yes, Masada... A tragic incident... But sometimes I wonder whether it was really worth it? I mean, the way I see it, if I got imprisoned, at least I could try to do something... Try to escape, organize a rebellion, subvert the system or sneak my children out of there. If I'm dead, and my children are dead, not only can't I do anything anymore, but the enemy gets the satisfaction of having won and not having to deal with all those potentially troublemaking prisoners. I don't doubt that a mass suicide seemed like a noble gesture in the face of an outnumbering enemy... But I'm wondering how things would have been had those people survived... I guess we'll never know. Hopefully, no one has to make this kind of a decision!
I recently caught this on a PBS story. Never knew about it before. Im trying to figure out how they got around knowing that suicide sends you to hell.
In Jewish theology of the time, there really wasn't a concept of hell, not as we know it. "Sheol" which we often translate as "Hell" means something more akin to "place of the Dead", and more modern translations simply use "the pit." There would have also strict prohibitions on eating Gentile food as the Romans might have served them as captives, and there would also have been the risk of other kinds of defilement, such as rape. These would have perhaps seemed even more damnable. See Ezra 9.
Christian theology on suicide is also not certain on this point either. Some evangelicals give such a primacy to their soteriology, that not even an act of suicide has the ability to negate it.
My own church teaches that an act of "mortal sin" so to speak requires full consent of the will. People who kill themselves are often in a state of despondency and possibly even mental illness, that it is difficult to believe that suicide is a fully cognizant act of reason. On suicide, we are taught:
"Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsility of the one committing suicide. We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives."
Personally, I think those people acted out of nationalist rather than religious motivations, because Judaism prescribes self-preservation above following the rules of Kashrut. If one has no way to fight the enemy, one may allow oneself to be killed, however actually taking one's own life is not at all condoned. Not that I'm condemning what they did... I think the possibility of rape is indeed a horrible one, and I could understand why they'd prefer to take their own lives above suffering humiliation. I just don't think it had much to do with religious obligations per se.
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