“…the world was not worthy of them…” (Hebrews 11:38)
Our clumsy attempts to restore wounded dignity often bring to mind Jan Hus’s famous words: “O, sancta simplicitas!”[1] Since that dark day of July 6, 1415, we’ve inherited this sorrowful, resigned exclamation from the great and humble Czech scholar and reformer, a Bible translator who uttered it as he stood at the stake, condemned by the Inquisition of the Holy Roman Empire. Perhaps this is how religious persecution begins: when an empire calls itself “holy,” there may no longer be room for those who are truly sanctified by God.
In late 19th-century France, a case emerged that would become emblematic of how fragile and flawed our efforts are to restore the dignity of someone we have wronged. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was falsely accused of treason and sentenced to life of hard labor on Devil’s Island. After twelve years of public scandal that split French society and exposed its hypocrisy, arrogance, ingratitude, and… “simplicity” (between 1894 and 1906), the authorities finally rehabilitated him.
But can a person truly be restored after such suffering—physical, mental, and spiritual? After collapsing inwardly and losing not only his livelihood, but also his friends, career, health, youth, years of his life, his confidence, his faith in humanity, perhaps even in the Divine?
Throughout history, the ways in which individuals have been morally condemned—or redeemed—have reflected the value placed on certain ethical ideals: honour, reputation, and social standing. For centuries, the duel served as the ultimate code of chivalric morality—a ritualised method of avenging an insult or reclaiming a tarnished name. Literature bears witness to this fervent, and often deadly, pursuit of dignity. Joseph Conrad, in his novel The Duelists[2], captures this oppressive moral code—one that people often carried with them to the grave or wore like a badge for life. His two Napoleonic-era hussar characters live out this very reality, challenging each other to a duel over the course of 15 years, every time fate brings them face to face. Shakespeare offers other perspectives on the fervent pursuit of honour—or the deliberate staining of another’s reputation—through characters like Othello and Richard III, or in his description of the feud between the Montagues and Capulets.
Across the ages—from ancient palace intrigues to Émile Zola’s explosive article “J’accuse!”[3], from the false righteousness of Potiphar’s wife in the Bible[4] to media manipulation, from the crime of lèse-majesté[5] to forced marriages as a way to “repair” a young woman’s reputation, from the misuse of human rights rhetoric to financial compensation for moral damages—a recurring theme persists: a naïve and often futile attempt at moral restitution.
There is a kind of dignity in the eyes of society, and another in the eyes of Heaven—it all depends on which one we value more. Romanian intellectual Adrian Papahagi once remarked in a television interview on the peculiar phenomenon in today’s society: people who seem “pre-offended,” always ready to take offense or press charges—sometimes even before you’ve said a word.
Even dictionary definitions of the word dignity suggest subtle semantic slippages toward vanity, pride, or arrogance. Unsurprisingly, those who shout the loudest about dignity and reclaiming lost honour often reveal themselves to be so vain that they forfeit the very respect they seek. The fight for personal rehabilitation, when pushed to the extreme, can turn into a caricature.
If we could see, on a metaphysical level, the Luciferian mark of pride behind so many human personalities and behaviours, we might stop believing that this world can truly offer justice or appreciate dignity in any absolute sense. We would approach life with the humility of someone who refuses to harbour anything in their being that evil could cling to or claim. We’d understand that we cannot represent anything truly valuable in this world based solely on ourselves and human hierarchies. The world is too fickle, too ungrateful; to rely on it—even in the hope of posterity—is to build on sand. The Bible, too, offers this warning: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord’” (Jeremiah 17:5).
One of the most famous episodes in the history of philosophy and world culture remains the trial of Socrates, in which the profound and wise thinker of ancient Athens—admired especially by the city’s intelligent youth eager for moral refinement—was sentenced to death by a democratically elected tribunal, accused of corrupting the minds of Athenians. Given this, how much trust can we truly place in crowds to think honestly, to consistently uphold human dignity and wisdom?
Unmatched in injustice, however, is the trial in which the sinless and blameless Saviour was condemned and mocked, while a thief and murderer was preferred for pardon in His place. Yet throughout the entire course of that carefully orchestrated spectacle, from an immediate, worldly perspective, Jesus maintained His dignity in absolute and perfect form.
In all of this, we can discern that dignity may be the subject of struggles and efforts at self-defense against unfounded accusations. Yet, on the scale of destiny, history, or the universe, such efforts become relative and fade in significance. From the perspective of eternity, true dignity is not conferred by fallible human beings, subject to error, forgetfulness, indifference, ignorance, judicial mistakes, intrigue, selfish schemes, whims, or malice. Authentic dignity exists in the eyes of God—or not at all. To give some faint idea of the value we hold in His sight, the Bible compares us to “the apple of his eye” (Zechariah 2:8). This is the only valuation that truly matters in eternity.
Jesus Christ also speaks about the violation of dignity—specifically, about being humiliated by corrupt fellow men—listing it among the nine beatitudes, in the final one: “‘Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:11–12). Far from suggesting that the violation of dignity is desirable, Jesus points instead to God’s recognition of the dignity of those who endure such suffering in order to keep their faith. At the same time, He offers the comfort of a promise: that justice will ultimately be done for all these precious souls in His eyes, beyond the cruelty of the “powers of the day.”
Thus, the restoration of dignity that endures forever takes place before God. Only He will lift up, at the final and irrevocable judgement of the universe, those who have been cast down, humbled, persecuted, humiliated, and despised by others. They are the saints beneath the altar seen by John in the book of Revelation: “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained” (Revelation 6:9).
Can you imagine these pure, good, and gentle souls demanding, with loud voices, their vindication before the very ones who persecuted them out of sheer, Luciferian cruelty? In truth, they knew there could be no shared language with those who had brutalised them. To ask for the restoration of their reputation would have been to assume their persecutors were capable of fairness—something they knew was not the case. They knew on whose side they stood in a conflict where there could be no compromise between light and darkness.
That is why the stories of the martyrs, whether from ancient times or more recent history, continue to stir our hearts: their dignified bearing in the face of slander, their heavenly resignation, knowing they were already citizens of Heaven, detached from this brutal and earthly world. They were the light of the world, resembling their Saviour—those of whom “the world was not worthy.”
