Entitlement

The idea was popular in 17th century England: the Protestants must be right because they suffered so much. Truth in Areopagitica, a political tract by Milton, is hewn into a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds. Not only is Truth tortured, she is Truth BECAUSE she is tortured. Martyrology goes hand-in-hand with an apocolyptic mindset: the end is coming because -look!- everything is so bad.

The worst thing about the concept of martyrology is the sense of entitlement it grants to its proponents. I'll use the mormon church as an example, just because I am so intimately aquanted with it. Mormons are, from birth, imbued with the sense of being a peculiar people (just as a side note, the word peculiar comes from an English tax, and that which was taken was understood as "belonging to the king"--see, do you see how it connects?), a fact that they are proud of. Different is good and essential. Don't you see what a horrible place the world has become?? However, the problem comes in opposition to the accepted and sanctioned mindset. It doesn't matter what is proposed to followers of the mormon church; the fact that there is such a huge "anti" mormon movement PROVES that the church is true. If it weren't true, people wouldn't devote their lives to arguing against it. There is no way to argue with a position like that. No matter how articulate, convincing, and/or aggressive opposition becomes, the faithful gather together in the sure knowledge that what they believe is true because there is so much loud evidence to the contrary.