To Live For Christ

If a casual, non-rationalistic Christian was to find himself or herself in a situation where they might be killed unless they deny their allegiance to Christ, perhaps they would still have the determination to die rather than give in to the demand.  This is what many evangelicals insist they would want to do, even though evangelicalism is in many ways nothing more than a horrendous distortion of Biblical Christianity.  To die for Christ in this way is in truth far, far easier than to live for Christ without assumptions or insincerity.  To live in this way is objectively a greater task than submitting to death, sort of that death being prolonged and agonizing.

At first, it might seem like it would be more difficult to remain resolute when faced with death because one is a Christian than it would be to wholeheartedly live for Christianity.  However, say, waiting to be shot for not renouncing Yahweh or Christ might take only a few moments; to actually live for any true or probabilistic worldview, Christianity included, takes sustained effort or consistency for the rest of a lifetime.  The point could of course come where living for something is easier or even practically effortless, but either way, there is a much greater kind of commitment in living for something like Christianity than there is in quickly dying for it.  The difference is enormous.

Also, being killed for a worldview is not necessarily a matter of choice, while living for anything of significance that is probably true (Christianity) or inherently, transcendentally true (rationalism) cannot be brought about in the most genuine sense by external coercion.  Whether a person lives to be 20, 30, 40, 50, or many more years of age, their commitment is an ongoing one that might encounter emotional or social obstacles.  For some Christians, living for just 10-20 years without the favor of the secular world might be all that is needed to crush their spirit even more than someone holding a gun to their head and demanding that they deny their commitment to Christ.

There is also the fact that rational, holistic commitment to Christianity and thus to Jesus involves a lot more than casual thought or a vague intention to love God and others.  Not only can Christianity not be understood except in light of reason and its philosophical truths that are reality whether or not the Bible is, with the Bible demanding the avoidance of assumptions (1 Thessalonians 5:21), but to love Christ in the fullest sense inescapably involves submitting to his commands.  "If you love me, you will do what I command," Jesus says in John 14:26.  Of course, Jesus affirms the non-ceremonial tenets of Mosaic Law, with all of its criminal penalties rooted in God's nature (Matthew 15:3-9), so to love Christ wholly and sincerely is to strive after the true obligations of Christianity as are ultimately revealed mostly in the Torah.

Short of at least genuinely striving for perfection, everything else a person who supposedly loves Jesus can do is insincere or incomplete.  There is mercy for those who stumble and turn to God (Matthew 9:13), but doing what God commands, which is in turn the same as doing what Jesus commands (Matthew 5:17), is not achieved by just having a subjective fondness for the idea of Christ or by showing devotion to Christian philosophy only in moments before a likely death.  To live for Christ with all that this entails, one must understand, seek, and practice the righteousness of the obligations unveiled in Mosaic Law.  This is more than a moment's worth of courage and resolve when confronting death could amount to.