Cha Ching! Pain at the Spiritual Meat Cooler

I was required to take only one semester of economics in college (THANK GOD!).  To be honest, I don't remember much, except for my round-faced, five feet something, pipe-smoking attorney for a professor and something about how costs are driven up in an economy due to a variety of factors.  Just a few months ago, I had an economic flashback, when I paid $7.50 for a pound of bacon.  Between the meat cooler and checkout counter, I was trying to understand how this could be--Was the factor or factors driving this the price of corn?  Transportation costs?  Health care?  Labor disputes?   Could pigs have possibly read H.G. Wells classic book, Animal Farm, and rebelled?  Regardless of what factors were at play, I paid the price, because we were celebrating my oldest daughter's twenty-third birthday, and I considered the occasion more than worth it.

When it comes to the cost of being Jesus' disciples, we ought to consider what factors are involved which can cause the price of following Him to increase.  In Acts 4:2, we learn that the first factor was annoyance. Those who chose not to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah and Savior of the world were "greatly annoyed because {Jesus' followers} were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead."  Like I do when mosquitoes are flying around my ears, these unbelievers did something about it--they arrested, jailed, and threatened the disciples to keep them quiet. Cha ching!  Rising costs!

In Acts 5 we find a second price-increasing factor:  jealousy.  God was doing such an awesome work, adding multitudes of both men and women to the faith, that it was driving the cold and lifeless religious elites mad!  Not liking what they were hearing and seeing, jealousy drove them to once again arrest and jail Jesus' followers.  When the disciples told them they must obey God rather than men, "they were enraged and wanted to kill them" (Acts 5:33).  However, they opted for more threats and added a beating to make their point. Cha ching!  Price increase!

In Acts 6-7 we read of a disciple named Stephen, who learned that the most prominent factor which drives the cost of following Jesus higher and higher to be hatred.  "When {the unbelievers} heard these things {spoken by Stephen} they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him....  They cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him.  They cast him out of the city and stoned him {to death}" (Acts 7:54, 57-58a).  Cha ching!  Price through the roof!

This should not surprise God's people.  Jesus had said, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you" (John 15:18).  Make no mistake about it--identifying with, pledging allegiance to, and following after the Lord Jesus Christ will annoy and eventually anger those who reject who He is, what He has said, and what He has done.  And because they cannot take it out on Him, they will certainly vent against those who are called by His name.  Cha ching!  The cost of following Jesus will increase.

Will Jesus' disciples consider the occasion of worshiping and serving the resurrected and ascended Son of God more than worth the cost?

In the next post, I will explore some Scriptural, historical, and contemporary examples of the costs of following Jesus, as well as believers' response to these increases.

Introducing a Blog Series: The Rising Costs of Following Jesus

In this post, I want to introduce some initial thoughts on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and to explore a truly biblical principle of the costliness of following Jesus and the recent trend of ever rising costs in identifying with and faithfully following this One whom the Bible claims to be the Son of God who came into the world to save sinners.

Since our nation's birth in 1776, disciples of Jesus Christ have, for the most part, enjoyed relative acceptance and harmony with the culture at large.  The spiritual heritage of the first colonists, as well as that of many of the Founding Fathers, is well documented.  United States history is replete with accounts of citizens' encounters with God, in both private and public domains.  Even as recently as the late 20th century (1980's-1990's), Christians were generally viewed as people with good morals, family-focused, and active within the life of their respective communities. Politicians who did not identify themselves with the Christian faith were rare, given the fact that the majority of the electorate identified itself as Christian.  Business deals were often made only after a discussion of one's religious beliefs and practices.  Schools opened with prayer; Bibles were routinely carried to both work and school; meals were introduced with blessings and prayers of thanksgiving.  From the northernmost corner of Maine to the southernmost corner of California, and everywhere in between, people found comfort and counsel, hope and healing, peace and purpose from the Bible and God's called out and gathered people, the church.

Fast forward to 2013, and it would be an understatement to say "Times have changed."

To begin this discussion, we can go to no better source than Holy Scripture, whose favorite word for God's people (in the New Testament) is not the expected "Christians" (used only three times), "believers" (15 times), "saints," (63 times) or "church," (110 times), but God's word of choice is "disciples," (over 250 times).  The very word carries within itself a richness of meaning (a learner in relationship with a teacher, an apprentice in relationship with a mentor, and a follower in relationship to a master).  Given that meaning and the encounters those first disciples had with Jesus, as well as the instructions He gave them and had recorded for us, it should come as no surprise that being a disciple of Jesus Christ is pricey.

The next post will identify some of these costs, as recorded in God's Word.