Guilty. The verdict is not a surprise. No one actually expected the Chinese Communist Party to acquit Jimmy Lai. That would be to admit that it was wrong in imprisoning him in the first place. And admitting wrongdoing is nowhere in the totalitarian playbook.

But the verdict still hurts. It hurts because it’s personal. And it’s personal because, in a sense, Jimmy Lai stands for each one of us. Lai is the embodiment of heroism that each of us is called to and that deep down each of us aspires to. Each of us has a stake in his principled stand against evil.

His story is a timeless one. Since the dawn of Christianity, we Christians have been asked to accept martyrdom as a possibility. For some Christians, that martyrdom has been horrifically violent. For others, it has been a quiet martyrdom, hidden away in a solitary jail cell.

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