Flagellating Myself With An Ethernet Cord

In an attempt to understand the monastic practice of flagellation, I found a short blue ethernet cable in my office that worked nicely this morning.

Now before you think that I’ve gone completely monastic, let me explain.

Luther’s Lashes

Martin Luther was once caught in a terrible thunderstorm in Stotterheim, Germany. He made a vow that if he survived, he would become a monk.

He did survived, and in 1505, he enrolled as an Augustinian monk at the Black Monastery in Erfurt. To the great disappointment of his family (his father wanted him to be a lawyer), Luther began to study Greek and Hebrew for his theological education.

The following two years were excruciating for Luther. I often think he must have been a type “A” perfectionist sort of guy. Luther struggled to reconcile every detail of what he found in the Bible with what he practiced as a monk.

So began months of self torment – fasting, sleeping on stones, obsessive confession, and flagellation.

In the past, monks used all sorts of things to whip themselves: birthwood branches, tongs, sticks and rods of all sorts. They thought that the practice could bring purification. In fact, the early church required those who were disobedient to whip themselves in penance. Spare the rod, spoil the soul. In 1259, Raniero Fasani of Italy organized a brotherhood of flagellants who would later punish themselves in hopes of ridding the population of the Black Death.

That Albino Guy

In an age of therapy, spa treatments and self help guides, we watched in horror as Silas, the Albino monk in The Da Vinci Code, whipped his body into submission. Today, we’d probably send someone like that to a therapist, if not lock him in a padded room altogether.

Yet in our reaction against self-mortification, perhaps we Protestants have lost something in our protesting.

We live in a culture of self-preservation. Comfortability has become the god of our game. What do you need to live comfortably? A good education, a tenured post with great benefits, a nice car, a handsome retirement package, perhaps a summer home, and so forth.

Yet what has this done to our faith? Has the sacred marriage of entertainment to the church robbed us of an understanding of the costliness of Christianity? A. W. Tozer once said that we want to be saved, but we insist that Christ do all the dying.

What would happen if we as evangelicals, emergents, and Christians of all shades of denomination, gave ourselves to a stricter kind of Christianity? Not self-mutilation or flagellation, but costly sacrifice and disciplined faith.

Theology of the Ethernet Cord

In many ways, technology has benefited Christianity.

It has opened doors for ecumenism (in the best sense of that word). It has revolutionized prayer ministries and mission efforts. It has shown us a global God who is internationally involved. Perhaps the song was right after all: “He’s got the whole world in his hands”.

Yet technology does not come without a price tag. What lashes will our generation have to show in thirty/forty years?

Luther made a wonderful discovery in that monastery. He opened his Scriptures to Romans 1:17 and rediscovered a grace-based theology that had been replaced by a works-based rendering of righteousness.

Turns out, it was Christ who took the punishment for sin. Jesus was the one who was “striped”. Luther’s back could finally begin to heal as he exegeted the beauty of the doctrines of grace.

Today, the whole idea of substitionary atonement is hard for many Christians to palette. But for Luther, it was a breath of fresh air. A source of spiritual (and physical) healing.

And in 1517, Luther found something else to beat – a nail into the Castle Church door in Wittenberg.

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