Belief and Cost

The other night Doug said to me, "You know what a fundatmental flaw to modern Christianity is?" (Doug tries to avoid these type of conversations, so I was interested.) "We are told that we choose to believe in Jesus Christ." He went on to say that you can't CHOOSE what you believe. Through various experiences, conversations, and soul searching you realize that you already or have come to believe this or that. You can profess to believe whatever you want, but whether or not you actually believe it is something else altogether.

I thought about this for the next day or so. I began to wonder how do you know what you actually believe? Like I said, you can profess anything-that is EASY. I started to realize that beliefs have costs (usually NOT monetary). Some costs are small and some a large. How much you actually believe something can dictate how much you are willing to pay for it. For instance, I believe that our country should not be so reliant on foreign oil. I DO believe that, but I drive a car everyday. Our kids go to a preschool that is 30 miles away and Doug works downtown. The cost of taking the bus, taking my kids out of a great preschool, or buying a diesal car and filtering old cooking oil is more than I am willing to pay at this point. That can give you an idea of HOW strongly I believe what I profess about the oil situation.

My final conclusion about this (at this point in my thought process) is that I think you don't ACTUALLY know how much you believe something until it costs you BIG-sometimes MORE than you are willing to pay, but you pay it anyway. Remember the account of the Christian girl at Columbine who had a gun pointed at her face and the Trenchcoat guy asked her if she still believed in God. Knowing it was going to cost her her life she professed what she actually believed-you could tell from her actions.

So, what do you believe? What if your friends don't? What if ALL your friends don't? What if you are sad inside about it? What if you have to move? What if you have to get a different job? What if you have to buy a smaller house? What if you have to eat Ramen for months at a time? What if you have to stand up alone? What do you believe? What are you willing to pay? What if you don't know what it costs until you get to the "checkout line".?