There is a story of a young Salvation Army girl in Scotland who approached a stranger on the street and asked if he were a Christian. He turned an angry and stern face toward her, and replied, “Young lady, I am a professor of theology! Of course, I’m a Christian!” To which she quietly responded, while walking away, “What a face for a Christian!”
As we read the book of Acts, and in other scripture passages, we have a general record of the earliest Christian communities. Jesus’ teachings and his popularity upset the Jewish hierarchy, which led to angry encounters on the streets of Jerusalem, and that upset the Romans.
In reality, the Christian way was different from the very start. Now we know that Christians do not have a monopoly on truth and virtue. There are both charlatans and cheaters and liars among the Christian ranks and non-Christian. On the other hand, there are strangers to the faith in whom truth, justice and love of God are transparent and a way of living.
But, when all that has been said, the fact remains that the Christian way is not a synonym for more or less decent civic behavior but it involves some characteristics that are extremely rare, and may I say, not easy! I mean, being a Christian is more than a life of joyfulness, we who are Christians, do not return evil for evil, do not think being comfortable is man’s chief end, and we are more eager to affirm another human being than use that person as a steppingstone.
We must note the obvious, that the Christian way is not an easy path. Jesus said “The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” No Christian seeks martyrdom. That would be sick. And it should be said that Christianity it’s not an artificial discipline that we apply during high holidays. But if we do not feel the tension to walk in the Christian way, we could never know peace. That’s true in our personal life, if we feel no strain of conflict between our behavior as Christians and the potentialities God puts before us for our response, we’re dead. It is as simple and as uncomplicated as that!
If you think that the Christian way is not really so evident among us, then the problem is not that the way is not different and not difficult, then we are not faithful followers in it. Karl Barth once said that “the church which has no great anguish in its heart will have no great music in its lips.” Ever wonder if we have lost our capacity to feel the hurt of others, to be callous and indifferent to faraway sufferings? To fail to feel the outrage of violence and humiliation and evil? Please note, these are all symptoms of what it means to be damned.
Have we ever been bold enough in behaving the right way, to run the risk of being hurt? Christianity, a different and difficult way. It ain’t easy. Have we on our own volition stepped outside of our comfort zone, our protective zone, in order to do the right thing? Is our way not hard because we rarely risk walking a path that might be difficult?
Jesus has not ignored how the world reacts to Christian faith. “Blessed are you when men revile you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of things about you, falsely, on account of me.” (Matthew 5:11)
Pastor Ellen White, co-founder of Seventh Day Adventist Church and sometimes poet, penned this encouraging statement of Christian belief:
Truth is forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne:
Yet that scaffold sways the future, And, behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadows, Keeping watch above his own.
Faith means following a way which leads to a bend we cannot see around, simply trusting that, for our personal destinations and for the destiny of the world, whatever is done in truth, in justice, in love, will never, finally, be in vain. That is the pay off.
Final point. What is it that moves us to walk along this different and difficult road, when we cannot see around the bend? What keeps us on this “road less traveled”? It is, quite simply, a personal sense of the reality of God who challenges and sustains us. I say ‘Amen’.
For What It’s Worth.
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