“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” – G. K. Chesterton; Chapter 5 of What’s Wrong With the World, 1910
If you ever have a moment or two, go Google G.K. Chesterton. He was one of the best writers of the 20th century and you will find that most, if not everything that he wrote, can be applied as much now as it was then.
I chose this quote to write on because it rings so true.
Many people study religion. Many people spend a lifetime gathering information and facts. Yet, I think it would amaze us how few of those people actually learned something and where sincerely changed by what they learned.
Everyone is our culture has something to say about everything.....from what clothes we should or should not wear, to who should be the next president. No one is shy in sharing their opinions. We live in a very bold and opinionated time.
Even still, we hear so little about this Deity that so many people call God. Sure, there are many murmurs about Jesus being a good man and living a good life. When I hear those murmurs, I just shake my head.
I believe C.S. Lewis worded it best:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say.
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.
You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
See, none of us can make the claim that Christ was merely a good teacher; it is not logical or practical! Even if it was, the Christian ideals are not based off good teachings.
In our culture, people like compliments. They like to hear what sounds good and what makes them feel good. Dear one, when you read through the Bible, it is going to hurt. Truth cuts through the fluff and stuff and gets right to the point. People say the Bible has gone out of style, but the truth is that the Bible hasn't gone out of style, it just doesn't give us warm fuzzies when we read it because it shows us where we fall short and are in desperate need of grace.
Following Christ, being changed from the inside out, and understanding your daily need for a Savior is painful. It is not easy. I like easy and I like comfortable, but following Christ is neither of those.
When people hit something new or difficult, their instinct is to give up or sit down before things get worse. That isn't how following Christ works. Anyone who has become someone of character has had to persevere through something.
Dear one, our God is not so small that we cannot test Him or question Him. Psalm 34:8 says, "Taste and see that the LORD is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!"
God desires for us to have all the blessings that He has to offer, which are too many for human minds to fathom, but first we have to take a leap of faith; we have to dig into God's Word and ask the hard questions.
Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? More than mere words can say.
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