Something To Live For

For once I cannot remember the exact moment I was listening to 29th Chapter and heard the line “Dying for truth is one thing, living for truth is hard”, but it struck that certain note within that all my ‘epiphany’-like moments seem to hit. It took me back to my secondary school days, on my way to French and I was walking with a Muslim friend and few others and someone asked me that question: “If someone put a gun to head and asked you believed in God, would you say yes?” 

Of course I said yes, well my answer was “you don’t know until you get put in that situation but I really hope I did or I would be ashamed of myself for the rest of my life”. Couple of funny looks from Miss Sceptic-with-the-brown-hair, but my Muslim friend agreed with me – there was one thing we agreed on!

As I’ve grown older (though still very young!) I have realised more and more it is not just about would I be willing to die in the name of my Saviour; that is almost too easy. It is about living for Him, standing up against the tidal wave of secular, politically correct, “every god other than Jesus” ideologies that have saturated our culture and bombard us day and night wherever we look. The temptations, the twisted doctrine, the mockery of our Lord, I admit there have been a few times in my life where I have cried out to God “This is too flippin’ hard!! Take my life God please, I’m done with this.” This was partly out of frustration and impatience, partly because I’m wondering whether I will make it to end of this and “finish the good race” with my integrity still intact. Maybe I’m exposing myself too much, but this is reality.

Obviously God never took my strangled cries seriously, but where can we find solace and comfort when we’re faced with all of this. I remember feeling physically sick as I sat through a lecture from one of the senior subject leaders at my university and as part of his presentation he showed a video of a man dressed up as Jesus (complete with crown of thorns and loincloth) running down the street singing “I will survive” before being hit by a bus. Times like this it’s easy to sit passively, trying to show we still have a sense of humour, but does living for Christ mean standing up in the middle of it and ranting and raving (cue image of my standing on the desk shouting “REPENT! FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND!”), well does it?

In such situations I cannot give a definitive textbook answer as in the way to react, I’m still young and still learning, but one thing I know is that done are days of us being passive “rainbow-strapped guitar and sandals” Christians. Done are the days of us keeping to ourselves nicely awaiting the Lord’s coming, Jesus said “the Kingdom suffers much violence and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). We need to be Christians actively living and standing for truth, like when Jesus threw all the merchants out of the Temple, let us be Christians who challenge the culture. Ask a large group of people proclaiming to be Christians whether they would die for their faith and you would probably get a majority of would-be martyrs, even if some sign up slightly unsure and other just do so because obviously it’s the correct answer isn’t it? But how many of us are willing to live a life completely abandoned to devotion to the Truth. That means putting down our own desires and submitting our will to God’s not just being sucked along with the current and closing our eyes when the bad bits come, and raising our hand at appropriate intervals.

Being a Christian is not just about being able to tick certain boxes in the face of hostility, we need to live our day to day lives to bring honour to Christ Jesus, and also so that the lives of the Christian martyrs from this generation and previous, which brought us the freedom we live in now, would not be in vain. They died for Truth, but never forget they also lived for it.

 
Jeni Diamondz - RTS

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