A Real Christian Hero
When we talk about heroes, the name of Dirk Willems isn’t one that automatically springs to mind. Our ideas of heroes, shaped by popular culture, tend to be those who displayed great bravery in times of warfare. The acts of heroism that we find the most poignant are those of warriors who laid down their lives in battle, saving colleagues and frequently managing to kill copious quantities of enemy combatants in the process. If you walk through any of England’s lofty cathedrals it is striking to see how many memorials have been dedicated to those who perished in battle (even if they seem to favor honoring the generals and the nobility rather than the average conscripts who died in far greater numbers).
Or else we honor non-violent heroes who nevertheless stuck determinedly to their task until they achieved their lofty goals. The stories of men like William Wilberforce or Martin Luther King, for example, inspire us to believe that a flawed individual can indeed change the policies of nations for the better.
But Dirk Willems fits neither of these categories of heroes. He never fought in any battles or killed anyone. Nor did he succeed in persuading any government to pursue actions of righteousness. His heroism was not in winning any battles or changing any laws. In fact, in most people’s eyes, he died a failure. The only thing he really succeeded in doing was in being a Christian.
Dirk Willems was a Dutch Anabaptist at a time when the Netherlands were under Spanish rule. He came to believe that baptism was an act for believers, not a rite to be enforced on infants. This conviction, which was opposed by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Reformers in the 16th Century, led him to be baptized again as an adult – and for this he was imprisoned by the Catholic authorities. One winter’s day he escaped from prison and ran away across the frozen moat. A guard pursued him across the ice. Just as he was reaching dry land, Dirk heard a crack behind him, and he turned to see that his pursuer had fallen through the ice.
Dirk turned back and bravely saved the life of the drowning guard. As a result he was captured and returned to his prison cell. There he was placed in a more secure cell and locked in the stocks until the 16th of May 1569, when he was duly condemned by the Catholic authorities as a heretic and burned at the stake.
As an Anabaptist, Dirk Willems’ convictions were that a Christian should not use violence to take the life of another, and in this case he interpreted that as meaning that he could not allow another man to die as a result of his own actions – even though such principles resulted in his own death.
Over the next few posts I intend to explore the ideas that led Dirk Willems to his radical act. How do we square the words of Jesus with our modern day attitudes towards war and violence? What have been the historic attitudes of Christianity? How do such ideas work if we are threatened by an intruder in our home? What if the intruder is threatening our family? If we were all like Dirk Willems, then who would have stopped Hitler? These are the kind of questions we need to consider.
