“…even though we’re the most blessed society in the history of the planet-our best selling literature (speaking of Christian literature) still focuses on how we can be more blessed.”*
Somewhere along the lines we forgot that Jesus’ simple request was to “follow me”. Jesus was a martyr. Even the guys who hung with Jesus, the guys who never really understood him or his mission until he was long gone, even those guys understood that to follow him meant possible death. Peter exclaims “we are willing to die with you!” Jesus asks us to take up our cross as a part of following him! Do we pause to realize how radical and awkward that statement would be during that time? The cross was a symbol of death, torture, public shame. “If you want to be my disciple you must take up your noose and follow me.”
Does Christianity today require death? What are we called to die to? Is it possible that many of us have so missed the point that the only death mainstream Christianity has asked us to partake in is the death of listening to quality “Christian”** music?
Not exactly connected to the thoughts in this blog is another great blog that a friend of mine pointed me to. Check it out if you have time.
Good luck finding your death.
*borrowed from Erwin McManus’ book The Barbarian Way
** It hurts me to use “Christian” as an adjective. It should be a noun.
It's very intriguing to me that this post has received zero comments. Does that bother you? Do you read into stuff like that? Does it make you come to certain conclusions? Just curious really.
maybe it was just a downer. Or maybe it was a boring blog. Or maybe people prefer their easy spirituality. Or maybe people were just too busy to comment.I think that I prefer to believe that people were to nervous to comment on my blog kind of like when you see someone famous and you're not sure if you should talk to them or not. I'm kind of like a famous person to many of my readers so it makes perfect sense.
I think the reason no one has commented is because this blog was rather hard to find ^^ I only stumbled across it while searching for a particular song title. Anyway i find this post on "death" very deep and i might be misinterperating it, however when Jesus said to follow him and bear the cross, it might have meant death in that time. In my opinion things have changed. What is the cross in today's modern times and are we as people willing to bear it??