The true cost of Christianity....
This Thursday at Cineworld we are gathering again as a group of young adults to share an evening of music, a thought provoking talk and great community. The subject this time is "The Cost", more specifically the cost of being a Christian, of being a follow of Jesus and this got me thinking.
Even before I was a Christian I understood enough about Christianity to know that Christians believed that Jesus was God, that he died on a cross and that he told people how to live their lives. I was also aware that he had a group of people following him around that we often referred to as disciples. From the outside it looked like the disciples had a torrid time and in fact all Christians now still had a torrid time, hopeless trying to follow rules. Even after the person they believed was God has been killed and all they had left was these impossible standards which just left them trying harder and harder to do more and more "good", but just left them being mocked by a world that considered them nothing more than do-gooders. An all this, in an effort to try and achieve a place in heaven, a place I hoped didn't really exist because if it did, it probably meant I was going in the opposite direction.
Just from the few bits of the bible I knew, it backed up my view, things like the 10 commandments, the time when Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek, to love their enemies. Come on it's the 21st century, you've got to be a bit streetwise and stick up for yourself I thought.
However when I began to explore not what the world says about the bible and Christianity but what the bible actually says, what the Christian message is really all about, I was surprised and challenged by what I discovered. I came across this word that changed everything, grace. At the core of all Christianity is the cross, but not as a place where the "founder" of Christianity died but as the place where he paid the price and laid down his life, so that anyone who believes in him would have new life, life to the full (John 10:10) and ultimately eternal life (John 3:16). This changed things because no longer was Christianity about rules and regulations it was about a relationship with Jesus, the one who was willing to pay the ultimate price because of his love for us.
However as I began to read and explore the bible more and more I saw all these passages about Christians being persecuted, about them being martyred, about them being suffering for the gospel. This didn't sound like what I had signed up for.
One bible passage I knew even before I started reading was Psalm 23, or part of it, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me". Before I'd concentrated on the "I will fear no evil", wouldn't it be good to be that person who thought that, who felt that. But what I realised on later inspection and concentrated on, was that it even Christians have to walk through the proverbially valley of the shadow of death; for many Christians, like the lady in Sudan at the moment it can be a much more real valley and death because of faith in Jesus is a stark reality and the true cost of following Jesus. Fortunately we live in a country where there isn't such a real threat but for many Christians around the world the cost of following Jesus, is the real possible of death.
So why don't all Christians just turn their back and give up, renounce their faith when life it isn't  all sunshine and roses, so to speak but it involves hardship, pain, suffering and even the death?
Not an easy question to answer, itâs so complex and by no means can I explain it all, all I can do is offer my experience of what keeps me walking when actually it seems giving up my faith would be the easy way out. Simply put the bedrock of my faith is that I believe in a God who created the heavens, the earth and as the bible says, calls the stars by name (Isaiah 40:26), He created us an object of his affection for relationship with him. And through Christâs sacrifice, the cost he paid we can be restored to that relationship and no matter what we go through, we can say âI will fear no evil; For you are with meâ. So being a Christian doesn't mean an easy life, it means a life of sacrifice, of service, it means putting somebody else in charge, releasing control, it can be painful, it can mean suffering, it can mean forgoing your desires but it ultimately leads to a beautiful relationship with a God who loved you so much he sent his Son to be the ultimate example of somebody will is willing to pay the cost.
