The Cost of Non-Discipleship
Ever feel stressed out by the sheer number of details flying at you?
I’m almost there at the moment. Coming at me right now are a slew of things large and small, not the least of which is the impending arrival of our new baby girl, who will combine energies with her two brothers to make our home, very likely, EXPLODE with energy. It’s exciting, if just a bit overwhelming amidst the pressure of several other things going on.
And then there’s this nagging demand I face — perhaps you face it, too — somehow amidst all of this to make time to get down and be serious about this faith I confess. Following the One who came ministering, healing, touching, humbling, One who exuded incredible power because of his knowledge of Scripture, his time devoted to communion with the Father, and his single-hearted determination to usher the first waves of the Kingdom of God into a rebellious and resistant world. He pursued this cause to his death … and He asks us to do the same.
How do I cope with that?! I’m just barely getting by, here.
Funny thing is there are a number of people who’ve dealt with a whole lot more than I have, and yet they pursued God long and hard enough that they began to ask the opposite question: “How could I cope with the pressing details of life without first and foremost devoting every ounce of myself to God?” They did crazy things like waking before dawn to pray. (Jesus did that, too.)
Struggling with that thought, I was ripe to receive this word from Dallas Willard.* Yes, Willard points out, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right when he wrote The Cost of Discipleship. The cost of following Christ is steep. It does demand our all. It calls for sacrifice, for taking the difficult way, for giving up things the world admires and keeping our eyes set on things not yet seen. If we aren’t paying a price for following God, Willard frankly states, we have reason to wonder where we stand with God.
And yet to focus on this way of putting it is to have things just a little bit in reverse. There is always another option that’s less difficult but in fact it costs us more dearly: “The cost of nondiscipleship,” Willard writes, “is far greater — even when this life alone is considered — than the price paid to walk with Jesus.”
He continues with this observation:
Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated through by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10). The cross-shaped yoke of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him …
Without pursuing Christ first, we get none of the above. We wind up powerless in the face of it all — torn — twisted — ultimately enslaved.
Thus, “[t]he correct perspective” on this problem, Willard writes, “is to see following Christ not only as the necessity it is, but as the fulfillment of the highest human possibilities and as life on the highest plane.”
I know just enough to realize Willard’s right. And I find myself wanting to grab onto God more firmly even as I try to come to grips with this mess that’s streaming at me.
Maybe I won’t get buried. Maybe something better can happen.
*Quotes are from an appendix to Willard’s book, The Spirit of the Disciplines.