A Faith of Convenience or a Faith with a Cost?

I was going back through some of the first things I posted here, and was challenged again, but something that I wrote near the beginning of having this blog. I had been watching one of my favourite TV shows at the time and something one of the character's said had stuck with me. When I read it again today, I was again struck by the comment.

Here's most of the post that struck me from October of 2008. (You can find the original post here.)

I was watching Season 10 of M*A*S*H after I got home from work. In this particular episode, Father Mulcahy (the company priest) is talking to a soldier who has gone AWOL from his unit. When things go wrong and the soldier turns on Father Mulcahy with a rifle, Father Mulcahy utters these words while trying to talking to talk the soldier down: "A faith of convenience is no faith at all."

I think that we often do have a faith of convenience. We are willing to call ourselves followers of Christ so long as everything is going right. But, as soon as things get hard or someone says something disparaging about Christians we no longer claim the Name.

Why do we do this?

We know that it's not right . . . that we have not chosen a faith of convenience . . . but a faith that costs us much. Yet, it is so easy to fall into a mindset of only following it when it is convenient.

I don't want to just have a faith of convenience, because that really is no faith at all. I pray that this is not what you want for yourself either. We need to be willing to have a faith of inconvenience . . . a faith that is costly!

I was reminded again today, as I read this post that choosing to follow Jesus isn't about making life easier or more comfortable. It's about choosing to follow Jesus even if life isn't easy or comfortable at that moment.

We weren't called to a faith of convenience. We were called to a life of sacrifice for the sake of others. A life of service - rather than looking to be served.

It's not an easy way to live. It's not the way we naturally live, or the way our world tells us to live. But it is the way that we are called to live. And it is the best way to live in the end.

Do you have a faith of convenience? Or is it a faith with a cost?