Christian Practice Part 1: Modern Chivalry

How many Christians actually feel transformed by the faith? How many actually let the Spirit guide their actions? I fear that Christianity is indeed shrinking, not just in the obvious sense of more people are turning away from the faith. But also in the sense of people simply not caring about it outside of Church. MAYBE they will read the Bible, or pray every once in a while. MAYBE. But how well does Jesus’s saying in John 13:35 actually match up to modern Christians (Specifically in the West)? Jesus says “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”. Can anyone of us really claim that title? Can anyone of us really call ourselves a disciple of Christ? We may love our loved ones. But is that graciousness extended beyond? Can we muster up more then simply “being nice” for our fellow man? I would argue that many of us are not measuring up to that standard. That’s, of course, not to say that I am any better. But I think my words here could do some good, I can only hope I myself can live up to them.

What I am trying to do is examine some classic aspects of Christian morality and practice and try to see how we, as modern Christians, can live them out in our daily lives. The faith should not be just going to church every once in a while in an attempt to avoid hellfire. It should be a thing that’s lived, it should be trans-formative, it should rebellious, it should resist empire and the powers of this world (When the New Testament uses the word “World” very often it refers to what we would call “the system”). We are meant to be Davids, but everyday we worship Goliath. We leave a more authentic Christian practice to our monks, nuns, and friars. We let them live out the Gospel, when in reality, Jesus calls us all to.

The Importance of Love

Love is stated to be the most important virtue that Christians are supposed to possess. Jesus himself says that people will know we follow Him by the way we love one another. But what does the Bible mean by love? What is the nature of the biblical sense of love? What even is love? Let’s look at a few common types of love as defined by the ancient Greeks. There is Storge which is defined as the love you feel for your family, Philia which is the love you feel for your friends, Eros which is the love you might feel for a romantic or sexual partner, and lastly Agape. Agape is the highest form of love according to the Bible. When John says “God is Love” in 1 John 4:16, the Greek word used for love is Agape. Agape is defined on Wikipedia as “a profound sacrificial love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstances”. It is love for everyone around you regardless of who they are. It is love that seeks the highest good of those around you.

Agape is the Love of God. God, an immaterial, dare I say, extra dimensional, being, emptied himself into the lowly form of atoms so that Creation could exists, as we covered in the last post. This happened billions of years ago, the Big Bang was the first great act of Agape love for creation. He loved creation so much that he emptied himself into it. Much, much later on, He emptied himself into the form of a human being around 2,000 years ago. He incarnated as Jesus so that He could express his deep and profound Agape love for creation. It was self-sacrificial, so that He could personally lead humanity into battle against the evil that pervades existence (I am choosing to define evil as simply the absence of love.) Think about it. Christ was born, through His teachings, He showed humanity how to live, and how to interact with creation. Then He chose to suffer death, a humiliating death on the Cross, one of the worst forms of execution that humanity has to offer. He undertook this to show us the true power and depth of His love for us. It was self-sacrificial. It was God showing us the truths of His creation. On one hand, there is a profound lack of love, the lack of love, the evil, lead to the torturous death of God Incarnate on Earth. But in the Resurrection, God showed us all that evil is no match for love. Love conquers all. Jesus, in His life’s work, showed us the love He was destined to embody. He knighted us in his ministry. With the call to advance the Kingdom of God (The Divine Realm), He made us knights of love. Charged with showing that self-sacrificing, all-encompassing, universal love for all of creation.

Chivalry

I recently read an article from Christianity today about Fred Rogers (You probably know him as the host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, a children’s show on PBS). The article details his inspiration for hosting the show. Mr. Rogers originally went to college to pursue a career in music. But after his first encounter with the, at the time, new technology of television, his career path changed. He thought that the medium of television was incredible. But when he saw the content that was being produced for children watching television, he became incensed. It was all slapstick humor, and practical jokes. Nothing wrong with a little of that, but is this all that adult society thought was acceptable for children? Is this all children were to their parents? This incredible tool was being used to sell things to children, to turn children into good little consumers. I don’t think many people realize that the drive to start his show was driven by anger at how the world treated children’s minds. Mr. Rogers did not see children as consumers, he saw them as little human beings, whose minds needed to be shaped and prepared for the real world. Not with products and advertising. But with compassion and kindness. Around the same time he first entered television, he was also ordained a Presbyterian minister. He considered his show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, his form of ministry. Not once did he ever mention God or Christ on his show. But the lessons he spread on it contributed greatly to the well-being of the children who watched. This was a show that embraced the Greatest Commandment, Loving your neighbor as your self. This love, the love that his show spread, was Agape love. Self-sacrificial, universal, and for the benefit of your neighbor.

So what does this have to do with the medieval ideals of chivalry and knighthood? Well, attached to the article was a drawing of an angry looking Fred Rogers, wearing a drawn on knights helmet, presumably fighting a dragon. This really spoke to my romantic and fantastical side, I found the idea of knighthood and chivalry to be a way to contextualize Jesus’s call to spread the Divine Realm, an heavenly realm of pure Agape love. I am not (for the most part) talking about actual, historical, medieval knights here. Knights were, most of the time back then, just an example of what happens when you give people power and weapons. It was very much not pretty much of the time. No, what I am talking about is the ideals espoused in chivalric romances, and modern fantasy stories. Growing up a huge fan of the Legend of Zelda fantasy video game series, and more recently becoming a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, these ideals and imagery really spoke to me.

Knights in chivalric romances and fantasy stories, do not fight merely for their own sake. They fight for something greater then themselves. There’s the tried and true tale of the damsel-in-distress, fighting a dragon to save a poor maiden, but I think that should be expanded. There are numerous dragons in the world. Evil (the lack of love) is ever present in this universe. This is what we are knighted as Christians to fight against. We are called to fight for the well-being of our neighbor, no matter who they may be, or the cost to ourselves. Christians today forsake this epic quest of bringing the Divine Realm to Earth. We forsake it in favor of simple, easy, actions such as going to Church every Sunday, reading the Bible, and praying every once in a while, if even that. But, while I do believe those actions are very much necessary and worth it. We treat our faith as if it is simply fire insurance, you know, just in case God actually is real. There is more to our faith then that. It is a lamentable travesty that for so many, Christianity is at best an afterthought, and at worst, an opportunity to spread evil for the sake of our own greed and hubris.

So what are we to do? How does one be a chivalric, Christian, knight in our modern world? It’s a simple answer, but it isn’t easy. Follow Jesus. Just like the knights of medieval Europe, we have a manor to protect, an epic quest to complete, and a Lord to serve. Our manor? Reality itself. Our quest? We seek the Grail, to bring the Divine Realm into reality. Our Lord? Well, I don’t think I need to explain that one. Jesus, our Lord, the first Knight of the Divine Realm, sets the example we need to follow through his life and teachings, death, and resurrection. In all actions, we must love our neighbor, in all actions we must use our hands to relieve the suffering of others. We must strive to make life easier for everyone, especially for those of us who have been dealt a bad hand by the system. The stereotypical example of modern chivalry is holding the door open for women. But we must do things like that for EVERYONE. Another word on that, many people, men specifically, do these nice things purely so people will like them. If you think yourself a chivalrous man, but only do chivalrous actions so people will like you, you are missing the point entirely. We love our neighbor regardless of whether they love us back, simply because it is the right thing to do. Do not give into the rage you might feel towards the people around you. Do not make a mountain out of a molehill. Let the Agape flow through you, do your holy duty as a knight of Christ, love your neighbor as yourself.

You might be wondering, “What about sin?”. I believe that Christianity, especially in the west, focuses far too much on the matter of individual sin. “Am I going to Hell because I had sex with this person?”, “Are video games sin?”, “Is it a sin if I divorce my spouse?”. So much I, I, I. Very rarely, it seems in the Bible, does God deal with sin on such an individual level, as we western Christians have come to view it. How many times does Jesus condemn one individual sinner? I can’t think of a single instance. I can think of many where He condemns the sins of a group though. Jesus condemns the system, (the “world” as the New Testament calls it), far more then any individual.

If, in our quest to bring the Divine Realm into reality, we encounter the unimaginable evils that crucified Christ. What do we do? We could resort to violence, it is cathartic, but in the long run, it isn’t very useful. What does Jesus do? Well, when He encounters empire in his day, He didn’t raise an army, He simply refused to participate as Richard Rohr explains. He doesn’t rely on or participate in the system of might makes right, He elevates women to a status of equality virtually unknown in the ancient west. He avoids the monetary system by relying on a common purse shared by all his followers. He lives, to quote the Franciscans, “on the edge of the inside”, He is not a hermit living in the woods, you cannot bring the Divine Realm to Earth if you are cloistered living in the woods. But He also refuses to partake in the unimportant, and sinful aspects of society. The things that rely and spread domination and profoundly lack love. The “wickedness in high places”, to borrow a phrase from St. Paul the Apostle.

So how does this have any bearing on us today? I feel like it’s a little obvious. Look around you!! There is evil afoot. These big tech corporations are taking advantage of our loneliness to make money. They are ripping Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood apart. Big commercial dating apps have monetized and commercialized romance, AI chatbots are replacing real relationships with people, social media drives us apart and feeds us garbage, big online retailers like Amazon destroy local businesses. These tools, in many ways, can be very useful. But the ones run by Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos are built soley on domination. If they split us apart from each other, we are easier to control and profit off of. We simply must not participate. That’s only one example of evil but it is one I am very familiar with. Over the past few years I have begun to break away from relying on big tech. Big Tech is used by empire to keep us divided and weakened. I don’t use any social media, except Tumblr and SpaceHey, I don’t buy things on Amazon and I have stopped using any big tech AI platform, among other things. Obviously not everyone can do this 100 percent, but a lot of us can at least on some level. I do not think Christians are called to completely separate from society and live in caves. But we should live on the outskirts. Far away from the matrix of Empire (Side note I am NOT advocating for not voting or not being involved in the political process, if you live in a country where you are able to actually vote for who leads you, you should exercise that right, so many lives could be improved if everyone voted). Instead of non-voting, what I am advocating for is a refusal to chase trends, a refusal to give in to cheap consumerism. A refusal to bend the knee to the commodification of love itself. Find ways to live on the outskirts of empire.

Just as the knights of our myths and legends fought seemingly unbeatable dragons, so to must we, as modern day Knights of the Divine Realm, fight on against the powers and principalities that seek to replace love with mammon and hubris. You may be thinking “Joe, quit being so childish, knights? Dragons? This is kids stuff, grow up”. Ah, but the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who have the eyes of a child. Can’t you see it? Reality itself IS a fantasy story. Reality IS romantic! Is it a coincidence that the Bible describes the Divine Realm as a wedding banquet so many times? I do not think so. God loves His creation the way someone loves their beloved. The way a Mother loves her child. The God I worship, the God I follow, the God I believe in, loved His creation so much, that He gave up His only son, to save us all. God IS Agape. Fantasy romance might not be factually correct. Zelda and LOTR might not be factual stories. But they are deeply human and true. The themes contained in them speak to all of us. Listen, we as Christians believe that a Man came back from the dead, do you think we would believe that loving our neighbor is “unrealistic”? We are called to emulate His example. Jesus is the First Knight, the example we are called to follow. We do nonviolent battle with the evil within us, as well as without us. Each chivalric action we take for our neighbor, no matter how small, is a step towards the Divine Realm.

Bible Verse - “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” - Luke 10:36-37

Prayer: Lord, make us an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let us bring love. Where there is injury, let us bring pardon. Where there is discord, let us bring union. Where there is error, let us bring truth. Where there is doubt, let us bring faith. Where there is despair, let us bring hope. Where there is darkness, let us bring your light. Where there is sadness, let us bring joy. O Lord, grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love, for it is in giving that one receives, it is in self-forgetting that one finds, it is in forgiving that one is forgiven, it is in dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen.