Lessons from a Desolate Place Pt. 5 by Chris White

     Christians of previous centuries have held the notion that there are three kinds of martyrdom a believer may undergo for the sake of Christ.  Red martyrdom obviously relates to the shedding of blood as a witness for Christ while white martyrdom was associated with boat sails where the believer would leave family, friends, Church, and homeland to spread the Gospel without ever returning home.  Finally there was green martyrdom.  Green martyrs were people who did battle with Satan but also with their own flesh.  Their goal was to die to the world and the flesh in an extraordinary way that they might serve Christ in a greater fashion.  Those who entered the desert thought of themselves as martyrs whose chief aim was unceasing prayer and deep purity of soul.  One would think that moving away from civilization and living in a place of low visual stimulation like the desert would make it very easy to live such a life but most people who attempted this had a constant battle on their hands.  The voice of God does seem louder in quiet places and quiet times, but at the same time the voice of our true inner soul becomes much louder too.  As Christians we are very much aware of the presence of our old nature but many of us do a good job of concealing the really ugly parts from others and ourselves.  Life in the desolate places simply didn’t allow this to continue.  Every believer who did this successfully came into a great awareness of God but also themselves.  Some became so discouraged they gave up, but many, many more looked at their reality, considered the grace of God, and then took some radical steps of towards deep transformation.  But that we’ll save for next time.

Lessons from a Desolate Place Pt. 3 by Chris White

     In my last installment I discussed the mass exodus of committed Christians from the cities into the deserts of Egypt during the 3^rd and 4^th centuries.  The impetus behind this movement was to seek a more earnest commitment to the Lord Jesus in a period of time of spiritual shallowness.  But why the deserts of all places?  This had everything to do with the physical and spiritual geography of Egypt.  Today’s Egypt is a large square which takes up the northeast corner of the African continent but, as is the case in many other places, geopolitical boundaries are out of sync with historic reality.  The word Egypt literally means “black earth”.  This is a reference to the land that borders the Nile River and receives its silt and floodwaters.  Beyond this green and fertile corridor lies the dry and dusty “red earth” which roughly translates into the word “desert” in Egyptian as well.  When the Bible speaks of the Israelites or the Holy Family going down to Egypt, they were not hanging out in the region of the “red earth” but rather they lived in the areas that bordered the Nile where the water, food, and people lived.  Because the area where people could live in Egypt was so limited, if you wanted to get away from people and find solitude you had to head for the desert.  But mind you, it wasn’t a super long journey.  Next time, we’ll take a look at the spiritual geography of the Egyptian deserts.

Lessons from a Desolate Place pt. 2 by Chris White

St. Antony Monastery in Egypt

     You would hardly know it today, but in the fourth century Egypt was one of the most Christian places on Earth.  This should come as no small surprise since Egypt is so frequently intertwined with the story of Israel and even Jesus Christ Himself.  By the 4^th Century normalization of Christianity under Constantine, the Churches of Egypt were large, powerful, and very influential among the Churches throughout the world.  But many in their ranks were disturbed by the fact that while prestige was at an all time high, it seemed the spiritual temperature was falling to new lows.  Out of this sense of spiritual discomfort came what might be considered a “reverse Exodus” where Christians began leaving their prosperity and comforts in the city to seek the Lord out in the wilderness.  One by one Egyptian Christians began to do this until one Christian writer described the deserts of Egypt as a city of God’s people.  Why these Christians chose the move to the desert will be discussed next time.

Lessons from a Desolate Place Pt. 1 by Chris White

Constantine

     More than 1600 years ago the Christian Church of the Roman Empire faced a potentially catastrophic situation.  It wasn’t persecution or false teachers, nor was it a plague or the threat of an outside enemy.  The threat Christians faced in this time was spiritual shallowness and softened commitment to the Lord.  After the Roman Emperor Constantine was converted in 312 AD everything changed for the Christians.  Not only were they no longer persecuted, but it seemed as if they were favored citizens with tax monies paying for new Church buildings and the imperial court sponsoring large Church Councils.  This sea change brought a multitude of new people into the Church but it simultaneously lowered the level of commitment that was required to follow Jesus Christ.  In this period that many in the Church considered a great triumph, some were asking “how can I be a true Christian in this new situation?”  Their answer to this question was quite surprising and the subject of our next installment.

Istanbul is Constantinople by Chris White

Hagia Sophia Today

When Constantine became the emperor of the Roman Empire he made the momentous decision to move the capitol from Rome to the east where Europe and Asia Minor meet near the Black Sea in a small fishing village known as Byzantium.  Constantine quite modestly renamed the city after himself (Constantinople) and set about to utterly transform it into a grand, fortified city which he did within a few years.  Constantine was a military general and knew that the Roman empire’s greatest enemies lie in the east and so part of this decision was motivated by military strategy but the other part of this decision lay in Constantine’s spiritual commitments.

 Rome had been the physical and spiritual capitol of the Republic and later the Empire for 1000 years by then.  Constantine respected it for what it was, but he felt it was greatly contaminated by centuries of idolatry.  In his new city, only Christ would be honored and it would be free of pagan sacrifices.  Constantinople, flush with the wealth of government patronage became  a center of art, architecture, trade and commerce, but mostly for Christianity.  Constantine built a very famous church there called the Church of the Holy Apostles.  In this grand basilica he prepared tombs for the twelve apostles hoping to have their graves found and their bones brought there.  Unfortunately, he never got very far down the list.  The bones of Andrew, St. Luke, and Timothy were entombed there but that was about it.  Constantine was buried there as the 13^th apostle (sort’ve implied here) but the church was not to stand the test of time.  Later a descendant of Constantine, Justinian I built the Church of Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) and this became the grandest and greatest church in Christendom with the largest dome in the world.  It was the inspiration for the dome on St. Peter’s and the Washington D.C. capitol.  Despite centuries of earthquakes and wars and conquests, Hagia Sophia stands today in all her glory.  She is a museum today because Turkey is a Muslim country, but if the walls could talk they would give witness to some of the greatest preachers and beautiful church services in the world. 

A city awash in gold and opulence, Constantinople was very, very sophisticated compared to the west.  During the peak years of the Crusades, the armies of Europe would pass through and were stunned at the sight.  No one in Western Europe lived in this degree of sophistication.

Constantinople was also an impregnable fortress because of its location and incredible walls.  When it fell in 1453 to the Muslims, it was largely because they were exhausted militarily and were no longer a match technologically to the implements of war.  When the city was conquered, a flood of scholars and theologians made their way to Europe with ancient manuscripts of the Bible in Greek.  These were read and studied with great interest all over Europe.  With the renewal of interest in ancient Greco-Roman culture and Christianity the Renaissance and later the Protestant reformations were touched off within 50 years, and thus the effects of the fall of Constantinople, touch our lives today as Protestant Christians who study the Bible today.

           

  An interesting irony: Rome was founded by Romulus.  When it fell in 476 the emperor’s name was Augustus Romulus.  Constantinople was founded by Constantine the Great.  When it fell, it    was ruled by Constantine the XI.  The lesson for us in this is to never elect a president with a name like George Washington in his name.  That would be tempting fate.

Today Constantinople is called Istanbul.  There are a few theories for the origins of this name but the one that suits my fancy is that Istanbul was the best the Arabic speaking Muslims could do with the word Constantinople.  As one drives through the city today, you see a plethora of Mosques that all look like the Hagia Sophia; even in conquest, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.