#GruntGod ep.7: Rebekah Eklund
The seventh installment of a revolutionary exploration of faith and service.
Transcript
Introduction
📍 Welcome to First Formation and Grunt Works, and specifically the Grunt God. Season pass, episode seven. This episode, this chapter talks about St. George of Cappadocia and martyrdom. I don't wanna say when this was recorded. I will say that martyrdom. Is particularly relevant in the United States and has been for a while.
Um, what it means to bear witness to something and the extent to which that assumes or requires death, uh, at someone else's hands. Um. I kind of do wanna mention the timing because if you are watching this instead of listening, you'll see I'm in front of a chalkboard with some books in the background.
And that is because I am recording from Front Works' own brand new bookstore, the chapter House in Albany, Oregon. You can check out pew pq.com/bookstore to learn more. Uh, the bookstore is gonna be opening to the public formally on November 11th, 2025. That's Veteran's Day and Grunt. God has been releasing a new podcast, episode and book chapter every week since the beginning of August.
In October, we're gonna be having Grunt Con on the 25th of October, right here at the chapter house in Albany, Oregon on October 25th, 2025. A church service about church and service for high church low lives. Come check it out. We're gonna be talking about the Bible. We're gonna be talking about each other.
We're gonna be talking about we resources. We're gonna be talking about Marshall Hermeneutic and what do we do as military families. And rank and file believers in a system, in a world, in an institutional church that doesn't really seem to know what to do with us. You know, sometimes I know it's been said, I don't know by whom, but sometimes it's easier to give birth to something new than it is to raise something from the dead.
And so Grunt Con and Grunt God and the Chapter House are all, uh, kind of in the mix of what the institutional church would call grunt works. Scare quotes, ministry, and I say that, I say that with scare quotes because I was docked in an application essay for never mentioning the word ministry when I applied for my M div.
And it just never occurred to me to use that language. I still, it doesn't really resonate with me, um, because I don't want to be ironic, but it feels ironic from where I'm sitting. Spiritually and also literally, um, to say, I, I don't know if what I'm doing and what I believe fits inside the existing institutional and post-industrial church.
And so grunt con, grunt works, um, grunt God, the Chapter House, those are all pieces of a vision that I have that are all unified under grunt works. Um, but each kind of speaks a specific kind of thing into being, and at the chapter house, it's about Tolkien, it's about wonder, it's about story, it's about adventure.
It's about a place where you can go to kick off your boots and feel finely at home. Whether that's the shire or whether that's on the battlefield. I don't know. I'm, a lot of people still might feel like they're in the fight, and I certainly may have. I've said that I kind of retired or that I'm stepping back and I definitely am.
The chapter house is gonna be demand a lot of time and energy, but this is an operating, an outpost, an operating base for human dignity, for civil rights, for social justice, and so that we're talking about, I'll say it's Monday, September 15th. I will not say what. Problematic event just occurred last week in which martyrdom and the creation and propagation of martyrs is at the top of everybody's minds, and not the, not the necessarily the people you might think, but September, the week before September 15th, some things, some was martyred.
Uh, somebody bo witness to the truth that they espoused and it's an interesting kind of truth. It's not the truth that I've found as I've looked for the ultimate universal truth that bears the name Yahweh. And I want these episodes to have a certain timeless appeal to them. And so on the one hand, I don't want to bind this episode too much in time, but those of you who know to look, or those of you who are listening live, which is to say, as soon as I released this on September 15th, 2025, you'll know.
You'll know. How timeless these issues are. Um, from George Marks the first chapter of my tradition, uh, part in God as a grunt. There's the first part that we got done with, and that is scripture. All the figures and the topics come out, scripture. Then the second part, part two, I talk about tradition and George is the first non-biblical person I'm gonna cover.
And George, you may know him as this patron saint of one of the world's largest empires of England, and you may have seen his white banner with a red cross on the flag of empires of crusaders, of knight's Templars like, which is interesting because George is a very non and anti-imperialist. Figure. Now, I chose George and martyrdom because martyrdom, we usually associate with dying.
And you'll hear from me and Dr. Eklund how like that's not really what martyrdom should be about. It should be about everything about the, the life, the entire life, living in such a way that you bear witness to your own, your best understanding of truth. Whatever your gods are martyrdom is living and witness thereto.
Martus in Greek was a testifier at a at a trial. So it's not about dying. If you're gonna go out and try to die, that might be suicide. If death comes to your door and you do not slam the door in its face and bearing witness to the truth requires that that door stay open and you are killed, you're also a martyr.
So George and Martyrdom and the Imperial Co-option. Uh, uh, appropriation of Christian symbolism should be so apparent in George and this icon that I've made. Um, George has his own shredded, uh, flag of St. George behind him. It's in shredded imperialism is on the rung. But he is also holding a folded American flag, which you would receive if you had a military funeral.
And George was in the military a long time ago before the dragon crap and everything else. He was a man, a soldier. He was killed and he was killed over and over and over again. In these early, like hyperbolic, um, lives of the Saints, George is, is known for how many times he's killed and how many creative ways the devil kills him.
Christ resurrects him. He dies again because George alone is, is not afraid of death. If there's anything you can say about George, he's not afraid of death, and that's what it means to bear witness to the truth that not only death has been conquered, but that it's not even death that we seek. It is to be good and should death come to our door and challenge us and try and keep us from being good, then yeah, you might be killed as a martyr.
But we're all martyrs insofar as we testify to the truth in which we believe. So without further ado, here is Rebecca Eklund of Loyola Marymount College. And, um, I, I'm really struck by this conversation. It's a wonderful conversation and I won't say too much more about it. Only just really quickly, at the very end, you'll notice I do something, I don't intend to have the last word.
I know how important it is to speak directly from experience to reassure others who have a specific experience and Rebecca has not served. That is why I want to front load this. It's not a trigger warning or whatever, but like, uh, Dr. Eklund is incredibly just such a good conversation. I don't want to downplay for expertise in what seems like I'm gonna try and have the last word.
You'll, you'll get there. I think it'll make sense. Here is Dr. Rebecca Eklund and myself talking about George and Martyrdom. Hope you enjoy.
Interview
📍 we're here with Rebecca Eklund of Loyola in Chicago.
What's, there's several loyola's, Dr. Ecklin. Oh yes. Would you remind us where you're at and what your field is? Yeah, so I'm at the Loyola in Maryland, actually. I'm Loyola University, Maryland in Baltimore. Um, there are lots of loyola's. Um, my Loyola is proud that we were the first one. Ah, okay. Um, but, um, anyway, uh, my field is, uh, new Testament and ethics.
That's my specialty. But because I teach, um, undergrads, I teach a little bit of everything, which is super fun. Nice. Yeah, I've, I am, I love the, the ability to kind of stick with this with scripture, but be able to be enough of a specialist in something, whether it's ethics, um, like I, it'd be interesting to just be a Bible scholar, not something else on the side.
I, maybe I'm just a cynic, but, um, we're here to talk today about George St. George of Litta, St. George of. England. Uh, George, uh, the Knight of Cappadocia has been named as a patron saint of England and other empires, which is funny because his, the oldest cycle of his, of his vitas and, and his, his life have him as a soldier who refuses in some way to do something that the empire doesn't like, and there's a whole string of them.
In another chapter, I talk about hagiography, uh, using Martin of Tours, but today we're talking about martyrdom. And I'd like you to say a little bit about, um, how you came to this, what your ethical kind of perspective is. Um, if, if you wanna introduce your work on the Beatitudes, I'd love to hear what brings you to this conversation and, and what socio location, social location are you, do you kind of most identify with.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's, that's a great question. So. I mean, I came to this via my work on the Beatitudes. So I wrote a book called The Beatitudes through the ages, which explores how the beatitudes have been understood and interpreted throughout Christian history. So the Beatitudes are those blessings that Jesus gives right at the start of the Sermon on the Mount Blessed or the poor or the poor in spirit, depending on if you're looking at Matthew or Luke's version.
Um, and I became really interested at one point in how they have like changed in meaning and function over time. Or how they've stayed stable in meaning and function over time. So I decided somewhat over ambitiously to read my way through 2000 years of history. Um, but the, I would say actually there's three Beatitudes that sort of pertain to the question of martyrdom, um, and a figure like St.
George. Um, and the first one is meekness. And so, um, before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about language and. Kind of how, um, things change in translation and meekness, I think is the best example of that. Um, because the word meek, I think in English suggests sort of timidity or mm-hmm.
Um, but in Greek it's like this powerful v virtue of self-control. Mm-hmm. It's being able to rightly shape and use your anger. Um, so that's kind of one element. And then what, what is the word in Greek? Yeah. Um, it's pros. Okay. Um, and it can also be translated gentleness. Hmm. Which I like better. Um, because we still actually use gentle as a verb with like wild horses, right.
To gentle a horse. Oh, okay. Um, and I think that's a great kind of metaphor for what Gentle is in the Greek and Pros. It's, it's the virtue of, um, not that you never get angry, but you get angry at the right things for the right reasons, in the right amount, um, for the right length of time. And I think anger is, um, anyway, I mean it comes into play in a lot of ways, right?
But, but um, yeah, certainly in relation to violence, the chapter on blessed are the peacemakers. Um, I fell down an interesting little rabbit hole. I know you talked to George Lanis, who's like the expert on this in terms of Christian attitudes towards soldiers. Um, so I use some of his work, but. Also looked at Augustine and the development of the theory and.
To be a peacemaker, can you be involved in war at all? Mm-hmm. Um, and you know, if in the Christian tradition, if peace is preferable, if peace is the goal, can you use force to achieve peace? Um, or can you participate in violent efforts in order to be a peacemaker? And then the chapter on blessed are the persecuted where you get then into.
Um, martyrdom and into, you know, the sort of martyrs as the persecuted. And I think the main question there is, is the blessing for those who are persecuted for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of the son of man as one of the beatitudes says. So it's only blessed if you're martyred for, you know, in the traditional sense, right?
Um, for refusing to renounce your Christian faith. Um, but there's also a beatitude that says, blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness or for the sake of justice. Because the Greek word une can mean both, right? It gets rendered into English, either as justice or righteousness. So there's kind of this more modern debate about whether people who may or may not be Christians, if they are persecuted or martyred for doing justice, for doing justly.
Is, is this also a kind of. Part of the blessing of the beatitude. So that was a little bit of a long, um, no, I think that's, but that both, all three of those beatitudes are kind of how I enter into this chapter. Yeah. I think when you talked about meekness in contrast to anger and or in situated in its relationship to anger, that's one of the pieces that has kind of roll, been rolling around in my head as a soldier.
Um, and Augustine was not a soldier. So he is reflecting on these things through a certain degree, several degrees of separation. And I've, and I'm, so, I'm aware of, and I am, you know, kind of, I have been in contract with those who are formed by Augustine, who knew, who think either that I can kill someone without feeling anger, um, or that anger is the only thing that.
Allows for anger. Uh, I'm sorry. Anger is the only thing that allows for violence. Um, there is a, uh, an orthodox guy I listened to before I got to Duke who said, just insensitively, that we know all soldiers go to war outta blood lust. Oh, wow. And he said it kind of tongue in cheek. But he didn't not mean it.
Mm. And I heard that after six years in the military getting ready to go to seminary. Mm. And I thought, if that's what theologians think, that doesn't match with my fi six years in the military. Either I'm wrong or he's wrong. Mm-hmm. And my association, or my experience of anger as much seems much more nuanced than I've heard civilian theologians reflect on.
Hmm. And meekness. And peacemaking. I think I'll say anger. We always go to Jesus flipping the tables, and that's a kind of overt act. It seems like it was street theater. He went there, I think in Mark and nobody was there. So he comes back the next day. But I think there's a lot more anger or early, as you said, righteousness, persecuted on, on, uh, for the sake of righteousness.
I am aware that in the Greek. Uh, the, the Sadducees, they were calling themselves Righteous ones, Zaes, or, uh, they were, they were taking the, the imagery of the Zite Dynasty, which had ended under the Maccabean era and saying, oh, now we are the news at kites. We're the ones who are the inheritors of the high priesthood.
We are the righteous ones, and Jesus and all his contemporaries are like. No, Herod destroyed. Joshua's Temple built a new one, and now you're just trying to get it in good with Herod. So when he says blessed are those who were persecuted on behalf of OC or, you know, Hebrew and Greek doesn't quite line up, but it seems like there's something there.
It's there's a, there's an overlap there for sure. Yeah. I wonder if there's, yeah, yeah. Interesting. And I'm. As a, a homemaker who's been a stay at home dad for eight years and who has to deal with children, anger seems to be dangerous. Anger seems to be something that, you know, the whole gentle parenting movement, um, would suggest that when I raise my voice or when I express anger that that's harmful.
And I think that it's more nuanced than that. Yeah. When I'm angry, it drives me to do things to correct what's wrong. Mm-hmm. Martin Luther King said, um, he was asked by a reporter, um. What would you say to those who think you're just really, you know, an angry black man And Martin said, well, it's not that we're not angry, it's that we channel our anger toward justice and Right, right.
Yeah. And I think that's the piece about, um, so earlier where we might also end up talking about virtue ethics, which is part of, part of this chapter and. You know, with virtue ethics, it's always like a mean between an extreme and a deficiency, right? Yeah. And the deficiency of the virtue of meekness is actually not getting angry at the things you're supposed to get angry at.
Mm-hmm. Right? It's this kind of like me. And so, um, not getting angry at things that should make you angry is a deficiency in that kind of way of understanding what weaknesses. So, yeah. And I think. As a veteran, I'm also aware, like these generational changes, like my dad and my, my partner's dad were providers.
That's what was expected of them. Mm-hmm. But at home, both of our moms were, they had experienced the women's liberation movement and early feminism, and they were all, I'm absolute speculation. I'm not a woman. I'm not them, but like, my sense is they got a sense of what more freedom was like, but they didn't have.
Quite as much as they deserved and in varying ways, I think my partner would agree with my speculative assessment that there's a certain amount of anger or resentment at, look, I don't want just a provider. I want a partner. And because of. You know, hers and my social location and our upbringing experience, we're trying to be better.
I'm not just a provider. I've got a hundred percent disability, so I've got some financial flexibility, but like I'm not here to just, you know, shovel resources in, in to my family. It's like being a partner means something more. Yeah. Um, and I think the anger piece and how it's masculinized can be seen as.
A liability or a threat because we haven't really done the work to understand what it means to me emotionally, uh, nourished. Yeah. Like I, I think of. I won't say any names, but I was in the nonprofit world for a long time. I'm, I'm still basically there, but there's one or two fundraisers that I think of and I think they have to put on smiles all the time, and that seems to me to be emotional malnourishment.
We're not getting enough of what God has given us in our bones and our being. There's a way to take anger way too far. Yeah. But if we don't have any, always there's an excess. There's an excess and a deficiency. Exactly. There's the golden mean of, I mean, and there's also a, a series of virtues that, you know, all must align for a person to be magnanimous, et cetera.
Mm-hmm. Um, but anyway, let's get back to martyrdom. Yeah. Um, I also want to talk about. The, the etymology of it. Martus being Yeah. A, a witness at a trial. Um, Caiaphas says it at the trial, uh, with Jesus saying when he can't find counter testimony, which I, I think I bring this up in the book. Mm-hmm. He says, why do we need, why do we need any mar marto?
Why do we need anymore testimonies? Yeah. We've heard it from his own mouth. Like, we have enough. Yeah, exactly. And thinking about what function Christ serves in. God reconciling the world to God's self. Um, it strikes me that bearing witness that suffering death as a seal of your faith is one kind of bearing witness.
But when Paul says, like, praise ceaselessly, that strikes me as like, what does it mean to. Allow your entire, the entirety of your life, everything you do to bear witness to the truth that we see in Christ. Mm-hmm. And Stephen, the first martyr really seems to take, I dunno, I, I want to think through whether.
There's fruit to be had in thinking of martyrs as not just those who were killed. Um, and here again I have like Martin, my, my patron saint and this, the, the namesake of the hospitality of Saint Martin in the fourth century. He's recruited into the Pretorian Guard. Under Caesar Julian, who according to some accounts had had two soldiers, Juvet and Maximin killed for doing almost what he did, which is to refuse to fight or to refuse to pinch incense to Caesar.
And in 3, 3 56 or so, he's been in the Pretorian Guard for years protecting Caesar's life, and he comes to this moment where for the first time. As far as we can tell, he's told to go to war for Caesar and he says no. And all these others, all these other military saints had been martyred, juvenate, Maxus, George.
Uh, if some of his cycle had already been appearing and. Magically or whatever he escapes, martyrdom. Martyrdom. And he goes on to become a bishop and found all these, um, communities become the, the reluctant bishop of a major sea and tour. And so I want to kind of trouble the idea that martyrdom equals self-sacrifice to death.
Mm-hmm. But that it, that it must also mean something before death. Like if mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. If the martyrdom, white martyrdom is the seal of the faith. There's these other martyrdoms or the, the essence of martyrdom that must obviously, um, erupt in one's life such that when the moment comes, like Steven, he knew there's nothing that he could do but suffer the fate that the world had for him.
Just like Martin, like Martin didn't decide not to die. And I'll just say one more thing that. Through the military lens, and I did put this in the book. There's this caricature, this lieutenant Dan, uh, from Forrest Gump. Yeah. He's, he wants to die. Mm. Because that is the most. Assured way of being a virtuous person to to die on the field of battle in the Greeks, the Romans.
And he is deprived of that. And when soldiers are deprived of what they think the virtuous act is, you have these, you know, you, your, you. Soul can become disordered, like Lieutenant Dan. He thought that. Mm-hmm. The only way that he could be good was to die in battle. Martin may have felt the same way. Maybe George felt the same way, but if we can't choose it, and that seems to be the distinction between suicide and martyrdom.
Can you, right, can we talk a little bit about the, the context that leads to martyrdom? We can talk about Urs of Leone or the, or Polycarp, but there's. I wanna make sure that as Christians, as believers, we don't put death or, or the, the honorable death above the honorable life. The honorable life, is it?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And if, if you're killed because you're living honorably, then hey, good Anya. Yeah. But we sometimes we put that above, we put the, the, the. The chariot before the horse, and that becomes, you know, these martyrdom complexes where we play the victim. Yeah. But if it really comes to suffering, we're gonna run.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I totally agree. I think if you think about in the book of Acts, what, what Jesus, well, at the end of Luke and at the start of acts, what Jesus commissions, commissions', followers to do is to be my witnesses. And if you think about the word. You know, martyr being derived from the word witnesses.
He basically says, go be my martyrs, but by that he does not mean all of you go and die for me. Right? Yeah. That's not the goal. The goal is to go witness for me. And that witness might be costly. Yeah. It might cost you your job or it might cause tensions in your family. If you're in a Jewish family and you've decided to follow Jesus and your family members think you're now a heretic, um, yeah.
It might, in fact, your faithful witness might cause you to get thrown in jail like Paul, or it might lead to your death. But the goal is not that, right. The goal is to be a witness for Jesus wherever you happen to be. And so I like this idea of like the focus on this sort of honorable life rather than the honorable death.
And of course you, you mentioned in the chapter that there is this sort of tension that. Some people glorified martyrdom so much that they actually sought it out. Yeah. And this was officially frowned upon, right? The church was like, no, because you know, you're made in the image of God. You don't get to try to try to kill s you don't get to throw your life away like that.
But if the time came where you are witness, um, requires you to die because either you have a choice either to stand up and witness for Christ. That witness is going to get you killed, then that's, that's going to lead to your death. Right. I think of Perpetua, you mentioned, you know, EU and, and Polycarp and so I teach the martyrdom of Perpetua.
Mm-hmm. Um, partially because it's the oldest existing text written in the voice of a Christian woman. So I love to teach it. For that reason, she was martyred along with, um. Another woman named Felicity and you know, several other people, their catechist, their teacher Tyrus, um, in the year 2 0 3 in Carthage in North Africa.
And I'd love to teach this text because, um, she and some of her fellow catechism students essentially are arrested and they're in jail with their teacher with Tyrus, who's their catechist. Instructor in the faith. Mm-hmm. We know that Perpetua is very young. I think she's like 20, 21, 22. Um, and so she's just being instructed in the faith.
She's a new Christian and her father goes to beg with her, um, to, to, you know, to renounce her faith or to lie or do anything bribe. Get, just get out of this situation and live. She has a newborn child. Hmm. And so the father's like, how could you possibly abandon your newborn child by dying? You can save yourself, save yourself.
And she basically tells her father, um, look at that jug over there. Um, is that water jug a chair? Is it a, is it a table? Is it anything other than a jug? And he said, no, that's a jug. And she said, well, I'm a Christian and that is what I am. I cannot be other than what I am. Mm-hmm. Um, and so. If that means that I'm going to die, then I'm going to, because simply have no other choice.
Um, it's not that she wants to die, it is, you know, she weeps over, you know, being separated from her infant and, um, but she just says, I'm a Christian, full stop. And if the price of not renouncing that as my death, then I'm gonna die. And. She has these visions where, um, she's given these visions that through her willingness to die for Christ, she actually defeats Satan.
Um, that it is through her death, um, that she achieves this victory over the devil. So it's this kind of wonderful reconfiguration of like, what is happening to her in the arena. She's not dying. Yeah. I mean she is, but she's, um, she's actually defeating, um, Satan through her willingness to stand up for her faith in Christ.
Yeah. And it, it brings us back to George. 'cause I think like the, the stylized George killing the dragon. Killing the devil. Yeah. That, that's hinted at, at some of the early ones. Like he just dies over and over again. Right. And resurrected and blah, blah, blah. Like, it's all about dying for Christ. But I also, you know, back to the, the golden mean, like moderation and everything.
I've, even, as I read some of these martyr stories. And I hear from there are vets, there are, um, there are stories, no shortage of stories of veterans who take their own life mm-hmm. And tell themselves and their family that I'm a burden. I want to relieve that burden on you. Mm-hmm. And that's a kind of a lie.
Yeah. But that, that it seems to follow the same imaginative. Trajectory of I'm bearing witness. I'm, you know, death, death has lost its sting. Like it's such a fine line between, yeah. And it's not suicide, but it's like, I wanna say to Perpetua and, and George, like, you can choose to let the world do that to you, but you can also choose to run.
That is you can live a good life. It's, it, it's so difficult to, I, I think maybe what I'm suggesting is that I think that the freedom of Christ is the freedom to, to, to say yes or to, or to say no. And if you're moved by the spirit as perpetual was, as George was, as Maximilian to Besa, like do it. And people will tell you no.
Like, um, Fran Jager in World War ii, like everybody was telling him, don't do this thing. And now we look back and we've, you know, the Catholic church has, um, venerated him like to think if everybody just said no to run and live another day. As a lot of people were telling Aaron AEs of Leonis, he was moving off to Rome.
Like, I think it's such a hard, there's no way to say one thing or another. It has to rest on one's. Inspiration or conscience and connection to God. Um, we're gonna take a break really quick, but I think this sets up the third beatitude that you talked about in peacemaking. When we come back from the break, I want to hear about what the Greek kind of context is behind that and what that kind of points toward in if we believe that following Christ is about the honorable life, which doesn't exclude the honorable death, but doesn't.
But doesn't center it. I think that's, that's what makes me nervous, that certain, certain perspectives put martyrdom as death on the pedestal and I can't have that thingy, but maybe if I make myself suffer. Mm. Um, I thought of like Francis of Assisi. He I, which I talk about in another chapter about pilgrimage being an anti crusade.
He goes to the sultan thinking he's gonna die. And again, he doesn't, and towards the end of life, his life, he has a stigmata, et cetera. But like there's something good in wanting to follow the spirit to dangerous places. Mm-hmm. But when. You know, the faiths or God or the universe don't align and you don't get killed for the faith.
What does it mean to live faithfully? Yeah. To make the kind of life and presence that, that God instilled or inaugurated in Christ. What does that mean? When, like, death is, is not the, the destination, but it, it may be a spot along the way. Yeah. And still to be a great witness. I mean, there's, you know, this, but there's all these, there's actual treatises written in the early Christian tradition about whether you're allowed to run from persecution.
Yeah. And some Christians said, of course, you are. Absolutely. And we know that some Christians ran, some hid. Yeah. Um, some, and these were not seen as dish discernible choices. I mean, I suppose some might have, but you know, they were seen as. You can, you can be a witness if you're alive. I guess the other, I know we're going to a break, but the other question that I come back to that you asked in your chapter, which is such a good question, is, um, you know, what is worth dying for?
And, and I, I have, um, military people in my family. My stepmom was a veteran. Um, my grandfather fought in the Navy in World War ii, so I don't have any personal experience, but I definitely have family members who had that personal experience and, and you know, I, I guess I would want to say, I would want to tell them, you know, again, I can't speak from my own experience, but.
Like you're not a burden. I mean, nobody like dying because you think you're a burden is not a, is not a good. I can understand why someone would feel that way and that they're making a sacrifice, but people aren't burdens. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Well, I think that sets us up really well to after the break, talk about what peacemaking means if, if we are called to live lives that do not fear death, but that create and, uh, you know, shine forth goodness.
'cause I think, yeah, we can talk about Genesis all day, but we're gonna be back after the break with Dr. Rebecca Eklund. Thank you for listening. We'll be right back.
We are back, um, with Dr. Rebecca Eklund of, uh, Loyola University in Baltimore. We talked before the break about the, the difficulty of navigating. The, this, the Christian life in such a way that does not fear death, but does not set up death, premature death, um, as a good in itself.
Um, and you had, at the beginning of this episode, you talked about these three beatitudes you thought were particularly useful. We talked about meekness and how it's kind of, its relationship with anger and how it doesn't, it's not shyness or quietness, but. Pursuing the good in a way that doesn't let anger get outta control, but also doesn't deny it.
I suppose we talked about persecution and martyrdom, as you know, linguistically or, or, or, uh, to use a fa fancy word ontologically, like this means bearing witness. It's a witness at a trial. Somebody who lives truthfully without concealment. And in the military, one of the things that, uh, one of the things I'm most proud of in this chapter that I came up with was survival is not a virtue, it's a form of resistance.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And sometimes, and I say this as someone, you know, I, I got out of the military as a, a conscience objector, kind of fought the army a little bit and got pushed out. Then I went into activisty circles and I did that kind of stuff and like. I have been left with this sense that like peace or shalom or whatever is not something that occurs naturally.
And maybe that's because of, we'll call it original sin or whatever, but. Dorothy Day, or Peter Morin, or one of them said that we live in a society that makes it hard for people to be good. Mm-hmm. It's easier to do evil, it's easier to, yeah. You know, keep up with the Joneses and exploit any resources you can to get just a little bit closer to the top of the ladder.
And peacemaker. Or peacemaking in a lot of the conversations that I found myself in as I was getting out. And since, you know, with ethics and evangelicalism, it's like, you know, there's this positivist bent, like it's not peacekeeping, uh, even though keeper shamar is really important in Genesis. Mm-hmm.
What is peacemaker or peacemaking in the Beatitudes and Luke and does it. How does it comport with a kind of popularized understanding of, hey, we're all peacemakers singing kumbaya, or something like, mm-hmm. Yeah. Where is that tension and and where do you find the most fertile kind of ground for talking about what peacemaking can really, what's possible with peacemaking?
Yeah. It's such a good question. This was an interesting chapter for me to kind of dig into because it's the one I feel like that had the most. Variety in terms of what peacemaking looks like from, um, you know, from making peace with God, um, making peace with yourself. I, I encountered a lot of writers, which I found very interesting.
Who said the first person you have to make peace with is yourself.
Yeah. Because
if you are not yourself, a peaceful person or a person at peace with yourself, how can you expect to make peace among other people? I found that really interesting and kind of convicting. Um,
yeah.
Um, and then, you know, peace with the household, you know, peace, just in the domestic relationships.
Peace in neighborhoods. Peace in friendships. Mm-hmm. Peace among churches. Um, peace, like sort of across denominations like Christians being called, feeling called to be peacemakers across, you know, Orthodox and Catholic and Protestant lines. Um. And then peace making sort of a national or international scale.
So it, it goes from like the very smallest, like one person all the way up to nations. And I found that as such an interesting kind of way to think about that. It, we might jump immediately to things like war or nations, but that it also has these very small like personal components, which are really just as important.
And if you think about the word, um. Peace in Greek, it's, but it, it. It, it overlaps. It's probably a translation of this Hebrew word shalom, which a lot of people are familiar with, which obviously means more than simply the absence of conflict, right? Mm-hmm. It's that, this word that means wholeness or flourishing, where you have all the conditions that you need in order to be whole, both as a person, but also as a, as a society, as a family, as a neighborhood, as a nation.
So it's this very deep. Concept. You know, um, do you have everything you need to flourish? Do I have everything I need to flourish? Do we have everything we need to flourish together where, um, the weakest or most vulnerable members are not sort of left out, that they're taken into account? Mm-hmm. And to me, that helped me sort of reorient what peacemaking was away from just the issue of war, which clearly is part of it, but that it also has all these other dimensions to it.
I don't know. I can say a lot more, but I'll I'll let you respond.
Yeah. It makes me think of, um, man, Dan, oh, I cannot remember his last name, but he was one of Stanley's students. Um, just Wars, Christian Discipleship. Mm, mm-hmm. I can't remember his last name. Um, oh, I can't either. The first thing that struck me is like, yeah, if, if war is a last resort in the, the Augustinian framework, um, the only thing keeping us.
On that path is a lack of imagination, an inability to legitimately pursue the, the context or the circumstances for being a, just people like peace. Yeah. The p peacemaking, it's, it makes me think of like the Department of Defense. It used to be the Department of War is just more honest, and I would call it department of Defense and peacekeeping with the blue helmets in the un.
Like let's just, let's lower the temperature, but how, how much conflict can we tolerate to keep everybody, keep the ships from rocking? Mm-hmm. And one of the things, so. I've as a stay at home, my, my last chapter in this book was on Ralph Abernathy. Mm-hmm. And the black veterans who laid the foundation for Martin, a civilian to lead this movement, uh, of, uh, black liberation and civil rights.
And I, I, I, I can't say I made the chapter about Ralph Abernathy because. Not only was Ralph a veteran, and there's this saying that I talked about in an earlier episode with David Peters, the Civil War veterans had a way of talking about combat, and you call it, did you see the elephant? You know, we all talk about, did you talk about the elephant in the room?
Yeah. Did you see the elephant? Did you kill someone? Oh, were you asked to do something that you knew? Hmm, on some level was wrong. And, and has that influence, has that shaped who you are? Yeah. Did you see the elephant? Martin never saw the elephant. Yeah. Yeah. And Ralph did. And he actually, he, he saw combat in the European theater in a black unit.
And he developed typhoid, I think, and he got medically not discharged, but he got put on medical leave in Germany, his entire unit. Which is just so messed up. Black unit was trained to go to European theater. They moved into the Pacific Theater where they were just annihilated and he lost everybody in his unit.
Wow. And that there's something, there's something about seeing the cost of our privilege and an entitlement. There's something about our society now that has no conscription. That the people who are forced to bear the weight of this cost of our American freedom, we don't know how to have these conversations with them because they've seen the elephant.
Mm-hmm. And that's uncomfortable. It's scary. Yeah. But if you want to have peace, if you want to make peace, at least even on some like strategic level, you have to have seen the enemy. You have to know. Not just, you know, in, in the Paul line, like not flesh and blood, but like what is the enemy? The enemy is arrogance, egotism, entitlement.
And what does it mean to be on guard against that? Mm-hmm. And when I talk about Martin, I have to stop myself because we all know there were certain ways in which he didn't meet the moment, not publicly, but Ralph got into a lot of trouble because. Uh, I should, I don't know how to narrate this other than to just keep talking about Ralph.
Um, because we make our saints and we put them up on pedestals and we name roadways after them, which is something that was done to Martin and something that's done with veterans instead of listening, instead of doing the difficult work, which we may not even know what that difficult work is if we haven't seen.
The challenges that we have to overcome, we make these white whitewashed saints. Martin has this big, uh, sandstone white, um, statue in DC mm-hmm. And like that is the product of a white imagination. Mm-hmm. And I would've loved to have seen, uh, a generation or two prior treat veterans. In a way that recognize that they carry something that, that society needs.
Yeah. That if we want peace, if we want justice, if we want shalom, like we have to be willing to look at those dark spots. Um, we have to be willing, like I, uh, one of my chapters, um, well. I can't remember which one. Joshua. Joshua and policing, um, Joshua Moses' assistant. Um, he led this military campaign in Canaan and he oversaw the, the allotment of land.
That's the same English name for the Messiah. Yeah. Like in the fourth century, Jerome just decided he wanted to differentiate one Jo Yoshua from another. The Greeks still say, uh, OSH Ben, nun, Yoshua, Ben, Miriam, and they're the same. Mm-hmm. But in the West. We have created something that allows us to look past all that military stuff and judges and Joshua.
And so we have this weird faith that can't see that dark stuff. Hmm. Um, in your experience academically or otherwise, what does it look like or how does your faith or the tradition that you most identify with. What does it mean, or what do you think it takes to make peace? Mm-hmm. And E, without getting too much into our own, like I said before I started recording, I want these to be kind of timeless.
It's too easy to get into specific current events. Yeah. But what do you think peacemaking is in our day and what do we need? What are their missing pieces? And if so, like what does it look like to do that today?
I wish I knew. I mean, my goodness. Um, but I, I guess just going back briefly to your point about our distance.
I mean, obviously as a civilian, like I feel very distant from the experience of people who have gone to war. Mm-hmm.
I mean,
the, the. People I know most closely are either in my parents' generation or my grandparents' generation. Like I don't, I'm not friends with anyone in my generation who has gone to war, which is kind of astonishing.
If you think about, if you think about how many people are soldiers or in the National Guard or, um. But what, you know, what does it take to make peace today? I mean, I, I, part of me just wants to throw out my hands and go, I, you know, I, I, we're, we, we, how can, how can we, the problems are so deeply entrenched, but then I think No, no, this is what I mean, this is part of what we're called to, right?
Christians are called to the ministry of reconciliation, and I think part of what. That means is reconciliation is a kind of form of peacemaking, right? Reconciling people to one another. And that might be at a rather small level. It might not be, well, we're going to solve the, the current wars that are raging around the world, but we might, we might begin to be able to reconcile.
People to one another who can't see eye to eye. And we might, one of the things that's influenced me in terms of what peacemaking looks like in the world today on a bigger scale is, are these, um, kind of, they're, they're variously called, like peace building movements, or, um,
yeah. I
cannot remember what Lisa Sal Cahill calls this.
Um, she has a book on this. Um, and I've, I've utterly, for my apologies, der, I've utterly forgotten what term she use uses. But this idea that, um. We often think of peacemaking as intervening in a conflict that's already in progress. Um, or, um, that once like the war is ended, then the work of peacemaking is done.
But she, you know, and other practitioners as well say, well, um, peacemaking is. In large part, the most important part of it is trying to build the conditions where war doesn't break out or where violence doesn't break out. So what does a neighborhood or a society need to be more stable so that you don't need to send troops in to Yeah.
Yeah.
Um. And I think that's a piece that is hugely important, that pre-work, that, um, and, you know, I think like asset-based community development thinks about this, right? Where rather than going to a neighborhood or a city and saying, um, here are all your problems and we are going to fix them for you, asset-based community development goes in and says, um, what are your strengths and how can we help you build on them?
Um, and I think that's, that's a, that's a. I don't know. It's much less paternalistic in, in one sense, you know, you're not coming in as the sort of savior to save. Um, but also like what are your strengths? What are your beauties as a community? What do you love about yourselves and are there resources you currently lack that you need to build on those strengths?
I mean, that, to me, that's a form of peacemaking. Um, because it's a form of helping a community not tip over to the point where. They need armed intervention or, and then peace building is also what happens in the aftermath of a conflict, right? Rebuilding. Um, infrastructure, rebuilding the health system.
Mm-hmm. Um, helping people, you know, neighbors who might have fought on opposite sides of a war, how do they now live together? Yeah. Um, and I think that's also part of peacemaking, again, I'm not speaking of this as like a, a practitioner necessarily. Right. I'm an academic. Um, so I feel a little, um, humbled by, by.
Trying to say what I think peacemaking looks like, but from what I have studied
Yeah. It what's, it brings me back to George and how George has been used. Mm-hmm. He's the patron saint of an empire, or it was Yeah. Depending how you, anyway, like Right. Yeah. These stories will get co-opted. Yeah. The further they grow from the source and my, my.
Discomfort around Martin was that they knew Martin. Martin and Ralph both knew they needed an audience to show white moderates that it's really happening. Mm-hmm. We're not making this stuff up. Yeah. They knew they needed TV crews. They knew they needed talented speakers and Martin Martin supplied that.
But the further it got from the source, 'cause they went from. Uh, first was Montgomery, then Albany, New York, and then Birmingham, like they kind of went up and down and they were community organizers first. Mm-hmm. And it strikes me that maybe one of the, the connections to the, the ligaments to this is like George, you know, don't forget that George is a real person.
Like he's, it's like King Arthur. Like we know the dragon, but like, if you don't know. Um, the golden legend and then kaden's reinterpretation to include the dragon. Like the further the, that these sources get from their primary source, the more embellished and whitewashed they can get. Yeah. And I think that's what troubles me is that you need a certain amount of attention or influence to make a difference in our attention economy world.
Yeah. And peacemaking, it, it strikes me like at, at some point. I, I had this thought, you know, the starving child in India, um, that if, that, if you are so concerned about the starving children in India, that you can't realize that there's people who are sleeping on the streets, like maybe the cosmopolitan kind of instinct.
Of empire has seeped into your own imagination. Maybe you need to like Yeah. Sit down, plant some roots. And I, I have this phrase I used with friends slow activism. Mm-hmm. It was actually Amy, Laura Hall. Um, we, there's a panel some years ago when I think you and I were both at Duke, I can't remember what it was, but there was some conversation and either she said it or like asked the question and said, well, maybe, maybe activism is raising.
Children. Well, and tending to yourself and tending to your own community, first and foremost, it feels selfish, but like if you can't get yourself right. That's just go, that's it's an unsteady foundation.
Yeah. Peace with yourself first, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Um, is tender your
garden.
Exactly. And as the military, we had this thing re self aid first.
If it's like the oxygen mask, there's a reason they tell you help someone else first. And I, that exact reason is hypoxia won't kill you right away, but if, if it will kill you. So put your own mask on. And while everybody else is going to sleep, then you put their mask on and you help more people. It save
them.
Yeah. It's
like counterintuitive, but that's the way it works. You start with yourself, which is, feels so selfish and weird, but like. It's true. Yeah. If you don't have a good relationship with yourself or with God, like all these other things can just go, go haywire.
Yeah. I mean, like, you know John Wesley in his, in his sermon on Loving your neighbor says, the first neighbor you are called to love is yourself.
Now it does not stop with yourself. Yeah. Right. Because then you've just become self-centered. Yeah. But, um, but that if you, if you give and give and give and pour yourself out and you don't. Treat yourself like a neighbor who deserves to be loved. Then you've, you've, you, you're, you're just gonna burn out.
I mean, I, John Wesley did not say that, but I think, you know, that's, it's kind of part of the idea, right? And yeah, everyone has their own garden to tend, um mm-hmm. I mean, I, I used to be just all tied up in knots when I was, when I was younger, that I, I should be doing something more, like I should join Doctors Without Borders or something and I would be a terrible doctor.
I mean, I would genuinely be a terrible ter a doctor. I sympathy puke. I mean, if anyone else near me is puking, I puke. I would be terrible, doctor. Yeah. But like, I think I've found my garden. I think that I've found God willing, you know. Where I can use the gifts that God has given me and I do my best. Not often, you know, succeeding, but I do my best to be, to live out the beatitudes in my own life, in my own garden.
Right? Yeah. To be a peacemaker where I can and contribute where I can and yeah. And that's moderation and everything. That's what witnesses, right? It's, it's, um. I, I presume that I'll never be asked to die for my faith. If I was, I hope that I'd be brave enough to do it, but I presume that my faithful witness will just be kind of living, tending my little patch of garden.
Yeah. Um, the, uh, yeah, back just to close with virtue ethics, like it took me a long time, um, yeah. To, to realize it wasn't selfish to care for myself. Mm-hmm. And my partner, a lot of this language is learned, but. It's up to you to practice it. She's really good about encouraging me to take self care for me, that's physical skating, surfing, um, running err something.
Um, and that's, you know, shaped, uh, you know, by my gender and everything else. Um, but it took a long time to realize like what it really means that I bear the image of God in myself. Mm. Yeah. And if, if I'm not. Bearing witness to the goodness of myself. Um, then yeah, it's, you know, the, the chain link effect is gonna like, eventually begin to crumble.
Um, but I mentioned virtue ethics, like moderation, everything you can, you can love yourself without being selfish. Yeah. And as difficult as it is, yeah. It's a supreme tragedy that. Military service and combat service convinces people of the lie that their lives aren't worth very much and that they'd be better.
As not as a burden and it's, right, right,
right. That is, that's, that's a horrible tragedy. Can I, can I just say something really quick about the image of God thing and Absolutely. So my absolute favorite thing that I stumbled on upon in all of my research on the Beatitudes was this interpretation of what the beatitude blessed are, the pure in heart for they shall see God means.
Hmm. And there's one interpretation that's just like a few people. It's not a big one, but it's just a few people who say. If you are pure in heart enough, if you're, if you're. Clean enough. If your eyes are clean enough, your soul is clean enough, you will see God by being able to recognize the image of God in yourself and in everyone else you encounter.
Hmm.
And that, and that this your, your purity of heart. That's the blessing you get. You can recognize yourself as made in the image of God and you see your own deep value and you can look at every other person you meet and say, that person is also made in the image of God. Now, they may be deeply broken and they may be, you know, really tarnished by the fall, they may be.
An actually horrible person, but deep down in them somewhere they have the spark of the image of God and that you get to see that if you're, if you're pure enough to see it. I just, I just loved that and I, I, again, I don't always live up to that, but I try, when I go to the grocery store, I'm like, look at all these beautiful images of God walking around buying their groceries.
Yeah.
And it's, it feels self-righteous, but like. The people who are the most troubled have the most to gain by being reminded that God is within them. Yes, that's absolutely, and that's, I think that's, that's our te I think that's what peacemaking is, is like yeah. Once you discover what it means to bear witness to the truth in your very being
mm-hmm.
The next step is how do you help other people do that? Yeah,
absolutely. Absolutely. That's a great, it's a love, a lovely definition of peacemaking.
Well, I think there's no better time to stop than when I've said something good and important.
Um,
do you have any last words of inspiration? Hope for our listeners before we sign off?
I think that's a great place to end. I, I think the idea of just being reminded that, you know, especially if, if you're someone who struggles to see that, like you are precious and made in God's image and nothing can change that and hopefully, you know, to. Have the ability to see that in in other folks as well.
So
yeah, and just aware of my audience. If you need a veteran, a combat veteran to hear that from, I can only second it. You are beloved by God. I know. I've been through a lot and I know it. And if you need someone to remind you, um, find a friend, friend, a partner, help find me online. But Dr. Eklund, thank you for being on this episode.
I look forward to hopefully having you on in the future. Love that. Such a wonderful conversation. Thank you.
What a pleasure. Thank you so much.
