Some folks have created an industry out of bashing Christianity. They point to things like the Crusades, the Inquisition or the 30 Years War to, basically, say that Christianity sucks. They feel the Christian religion is impugned by atrocities committed in the name of Christianity. Yet, they continually fail to see the huge gulf between what the organized Church has done, or what malevolent people have done in the name of the Christian religion, and what the true message of Christianity has always been.
People always commit their atrocities in the name of something legitimate. Religion is always the perfect front behind which to promote one’s malevolence. People who are compelled to do evil are often lost in such a deep sense of denial that they even think their evil is good. It is sloppy thinking to attempt to impugn a religion because it has been misrepresented or misused by folks who never truly followed its teachings.
The fact is that the message of the carpenter’s son from Nazareth transformed a chunk of this world for the better and could have done even more transforming if it had not been hijacked by a self-serving Church institution that compromised with the Roman Empire. It might behoove us to listen more closely to that guy and put in proper perspective all the evil falsely done in that guy’s name. Frankly, God is good. Christianity does not suck despite all the evil falsely done in its name.
The Roman Emperor Julian II (331–363), a nephew of Constantine, took a disliking to Christians after Christianity became the state religion. He was, however, a philosopher-emperor and refused to resort to violence against them, but he wrote some amusing books trying to turn the Roman people back to paganism. He blasted various stories which he took literally instead of symbolically, and he bemoaned the fact that the Christians were such good people and that the followers of the previous state religion could not match their goodness. He couldn’t understand how they had become so good. To his chagrin, that was the big obstacle stopping him from turning people away from the early Church.
Becoming good human beings was, is and always will be the core of real or progressive Christianity. Julian’s religion was based on accepting whatever you already were as unchangeable and burning incense to petty and malicious gods to get things you wanted. That type of religion bit the dust when Christianity came along and you can see it in ruins at the Met Museum now if you pay $25 and turn left at the entrance. Julian II learned the hard way that Christianity does not suck.
When the Christian religion took hold, it was one of the most peaceful and beneficial revolutions ever. Human consciousness in the West irrevocably morphed from a religious orientation of burning stuff to get stuff to caring about how one lived his/her life in relation to others and scrutinizing one’s behavior for things that needed to be and could be changed to make human life better.
Before St. Patrick brought the Christian message to Ireland, that place was a hellhole of internecine and never-ending tribal warfare, slavery, human sacrifice, rape, murder and kidnapping. St. Patrick walks in there with a new message and the entire country transforms and becomes a beacon of civilization. That is documented history.
There is no other book that shows the stark contrast between the old system and the new message, and the personal and social changes to be brought by Jesus’s true message, than Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis? Indeed, there is no book that better shows how the Christian message could take root and flourish and why it did take root and flourish. Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater is definitely worth reading, but Quo Vadis takes the cake. Folks who read can see, essentially, why Christianity does not suck and where we might go if we, as progressive Christians, can continue to promote the essential personal and social meaning of the Gospels, which has often gotten lost or misrepresented. Indeed, Quo Vadis? is quite a powerful work and was the primary reason for Sienkiewicz to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
It is the core challenge of Christianity to look inward and to assess one’s own behavior, while establishing standards for humane, civilized behavior, which separated it so dramatically from what had come before and Quo Vadis? reveals this clearly. There was no element of rising or belief in significant individual or social reform in the Roman state religion, and there was much brutishness and injustice which went unchallenged. The philosophy of Stoicism provided a sense of moral earnestness in the Empire, but as Ian Small pointed out in an essay on Pater’s Marius, Stoicism failed to encompass all of human experience and did not condemn the widespread and senseless cruelty that defined large chunks of the ancient Roman experience. Quo Vadis? shows that Christianity was a light-bulb moment in the Roman Empire. The inhumanity which had been taken as natural was not natural and could be changed. If enough people changed, rampant and callous social barbarism could be stopped and new, humane standards could be established.
Sienkiewicz illustrates the capacity of the Christian religion to change folks for the better primarily through his characterization of Vinicius. He is a well-heeled tribune and patrician who meets and falls in love with Lygia, a political hostage living in the house of affluent and well-connected Roman Christians, who becomes a Christian herself. Vinicius is intrigued by how different Lygia is, how much kinder, compassionate and artlessly graceful she is compared to other young Roman women. There is a je ne sais quoi about Lygia which Vinicius quickly equates to her devotion to the Christian faith and slowly but surely he opens himself to this new belief system and way of life.
Vinicius recognizes that the change brought about in folks through the Christian religion is far superior to anything offered by the state religion and he cannot help but admire the personal qualities of Christians. Whereas the Romans wallow in pleasure and barbarism, Christians show self-restraint. In fact, Vinicius was a military guy and there may have been something about the military experience that drew Roman soldiers toward Christianity, as historians have discovered that the Christian movement took a strong hold and grew among Roman soldiers. These men who were used to privation and self-sacrifice may have admired the selfless qualities requiring self-control in this new religion.
The name Vinicius derives from the Latin word for wine and surely Sienkiewicz chose this name deliberately. To the Roman upper crust, wine was an essential component in their nightly partying and debauchery. Wine, to the Christians, represented the blood of Christ as a symbol of profound meaning. To the Romans the drinking of wine liberated one from inhibitions and allowed the freer flow of hedonistic desires. To the Christians, the effect of wine could be equated to human elevation: wine made one more tolerant, compassionate, joyful. The evolution of Vinicius is also a type of evolution in the understanding of wine as a symbol for a new type of driving force behind personal and social life.
Vinicius’s conception of love and desire also undergoes an evolution and this is a central thread in the novel. Initially the uniqueness of Lygia stimulates his need to possess. He is an upper-class Roman who has not learned self-denial — he gets what he wants when he wants it, regardless of how anyone else might be affected. Initially he shows no concern for the wishes of Lygia, although she is intrigued by Vinicius and sees something redeeming in him. As Vinicius opens himself to the Christian experience, his lust is diminished and he aspires to a selfless love and a desire for a more meaningful union. This follows his literal attempt to kidnap Lygia to force her to be, basically, his slave.
After he is severely injured by one of Lygia’s protectors, and nursed back to health by the woman he had attempted to kidnap and control, it is this tenderness shown to him, despite his attempt to harm her, that finally convinces him that there is real substance in the Christian religion. It is his turning point, when compassion and forgiveness are accorded to him and he is deeply affected by this since he, himself, does not feel worthy of such forgiveness.
Sienkiewicz charts our capacity for Christian change through the character of Vinicius. The key to the Christian religion becomes a type of contagious modeling of behavior based on a capacity for inner discernment concerning emotional responses and motives that are deemed either acceptable or unacceptable according to an ineffable but trusted inner process. Indeed, sociologist Rodney Stark demonstrated that the Christian religion was not spread by evangelical proselytizers but by individuals connecting with other individuals. Sienkiewicz hits this nail on the head as well — it was personal interaction, modeling, witnessing of kind and humane behavior that allowed this religion to catch hold and grow.
Sienkiewicz’s novel also examines what it is that needs to be changed about ourselves. Surely the unexamined lust Vinicius felt needed to go. Learning forgiveness in lieu of exercising malice was a pretty good change for him too. But what happens when a Christian zealot comes along and claims that Vinicius’ feelings of love for Lygia are irrational, emotional and not in accordance with God’s law? Well, we see the difference between Stoicism and Christianity here. Peter (who appears as a character in the novel) announces “There is no sin in your love” to Vinicius. Even if it is irrational, if it is irrationally pro-social there is no sin. Christianity never bought into any type of dualism between the intellect and the emotions. There is, therefore, the acceptance in the Christian faith of the non-rational, which separates it squarely from Stoicism. There is a subtlety and flexibility in the approach of the Christian who can accept an irrational but selfless love, but reject something pleasing to him/herself which is harmful to others.
In regard to the discernment between what is acceptable and unacceptable, there is no dogma. There is no stoic self-denial, no need to follow precepts. It is not a categorical approach. There is no need for dogma, law or for any form of memorization or struggle. The change comes slowly, peacefully and irreversibly. There is a possibility for humble receptivity to the Christian message and it works itself out within each individual. You cannot describe what happens, you cannot prove it happens, and you cannot make it happen, but it happens.
So what happened to this initial surge of true Christianity? Stark believed that once the Roman Empire became officially Christian, free-riders with membership cards but no real commitment took over the religion. Rome officially recognizing the religion diluted the religion.
Everything in Quo Vadis? is still, however, possible and I would argue the goal of progressive Christians is to continually embrace the core Christian values promoted in this amazing book, which should be on every Progressive Christian reading list. To be a Progressive Christian is to keep looking inward, to try to remain humbly receptive to possible change and to keep testing the boundaries of just what might be possible in our attempts to create a more humane world. This is modeled in the most inspirational manner in Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis?
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Previously Published on Progressive Christianity and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
