Forty men, at the command of the emperor, kneeling naked on the ice, staunch in their refusal to worship any but the One-God. Forty men singing praises, their bodies buffeted by wind and stung by particles of snow. One man can’t take it anymore; he jumps up and runs from the ice, recanting his faith. The others remain.

This picture was riveted in my mind from the seventh-grade Pathway reader, Seeking True Values. Of all the tales of persecution, it is the one that startled me most. The story, as written by Elmo Stoll, tells how the watching captain was deeply moved:

“God in heaven,” he gasped. “Let there yet be 40.” 

Without a glance behind him, the captain tore off his helmet. He threw down his spear. He stripped off his clothes.

The startled emperor watched in amazement as the captain ran forward on the ice  and joined in the singing — to take the place of the man who had weakened and fallen.

As the dawn of the day broke, there were 40 frozen bodies on the ice.

As an adult, I researched the story for myself and learned it was a well-known story from the Greek Orthodox tradition. Forty martyrs gave their lives in A.D. 320 in what was then Sebaste, Armenia, under the persecution of Emperor Licinius. The church was already formally honoring them 50 years after their martyrdom, with the earliest homily on record given by Basil of Caesarea around A.D. 373. 

Some details Stoll did not know or omitted: a warm bath was prepared beside the ice to tempt the freezing men; the man who recanted died almost immediately from shock; the captain saw a vision of heavenly beings bestowing honors to the 39 faithful men. 

Stoll named the wrong era and emperor and — what seemed most significant to me in a story intended for nonresistant Amish and Mennonite children — never mentioned that the 40 men were soldiers. 

This greatly surprised me when I first learned it, because all my life I had been taught it was wrong for followers of Jesus to participate in war. Why did Stoll not mention that the martyrs were soldiers? 

He is deceased, so we cannot ask him, and the son I spoke with did not know his dad’s sources. Maybe Stoll’s source did not tell him the men were soldiers; it is an ancient story with many variations.  Perhaps it felt too difficult to explain in a few sentences in the context of a children’s story that these 40 soldiers were Christians, but it is not OK for Christians to be soldiers. 

Regardless, learning of the 40 martyrs’ occupation caused me to reflect on how often it is, and how frustrating, that the pieces of life do not fit into easy boxes. 

As a still more perplexing example, Martin Luther, who is generally viewed as a hero for his stand against church corruption, was certainly not viewed as a hero by the Anabaptists when he tried, in his words, to “trample them all underfoot.” 

How is it possible that the persecuted so quickly became the persecutor? Is Luther hero or villain?

Perhaps both. We are not called to decide. 

Still, we must navigate for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. As a young adult, my dad taught me two principles that still help me in this task:

The trademark of a persecutor is when he pursues a cause so hard he doesn’t care who he destroys.

The thing that drives carnality is force.  

If you have seen someone pursuing a cause regardless of who is hurt, you have seen carnality. You have seen the seed of persecution. The cause may be righteous; there is never a person so righteous as a persecutor. 

Emperor Licinius, the Spanish inquisitors, the judges of the witch trials of Salem, the Nazis of Germany — these persecutors have all been on the side of God or a religion or a strong moral cause. Many people of their time or culture believed with passion in the rightness of their cause. 

Good and evil are easy to discern in retrospect. But it is the present that matters. The persecutors we encounter are not so obvious as they are in stories. They will use words, manipulations, strong wills and justified deceit — always for a righteous cause. 

But do not mistake their carnality for righteousness. Nor turn away from right because someone else has twisted it.

Each of us has only ourselves to answer for. 

Do I use force to promote my cause? Am I a persecutor?

The others God will judge.