October 2, 2013 – 2 Maccabees 6

Wow, what a story of martyrdom.  I don’t know if I have ever read this story before.  Told to eat meat, Eleazar refuses and is tortured and killed.  Even more than his martyrdom is his reasoning and explanation.  People were telling him to fake it and only “act” like he was eating the pork so that he could live.  He basically said that if he did that it would cause scandal to any of the young Jews that saw him and they would think that it was ok to eat the pork in order to save your life.  He refuses and says it is better to die and be an example of obeying God than to survive and cause that scandal, even if he would never actually break God’s law.  He died not because he wasn’t willing to break God’s law, because he could get around that, but died so that no one would even think they could break the laws and to see how important obeying God was.  That is a strong argument for the power and evil of the sin of scandal and how important it is for not only what we say to be in accord with God, but how we act because people watch us and rely on what we do for their example.  What an example.