life isn't hard enough

Acts 14.

After healing a man and insisting on giving God his due glory, Paul gets beat up, stoned, and left for dead in the city of Lystra.

Now, it should be no surprise that Paul would live a life of hardship and suffering. It's the first thing we heard after his conversion when God tells Ananias, "I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." But we soon find out this idea--choosing a life of sacrifice, loss, hardship, suffering--is not limited to Paul alone.

When he gets up from his stoning, he and Barnabas take a trip to strengthen and encourage the new believers in the towns they had already visited. Out of all the discipleship that took place, the many conversations, and all the the words exchanged, one quote is recorded:

"We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God."

And as we explore a little further, we see this theme scattered throughout the messages of Christ, Paul, Peter, and others. It's a rare message nowadays, one we may tend to avoid.

Perhaps the most startling is when Paul, speaking to Timothy, says: "In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." Rules of logic state that this also means if you are not being persecuted, you are not living a godly life.

Here, two illegitimate responses typically follow from American Christians:
1. "This is America, a Christian nation full of all sorts of freedom, and that's why we don't face hardships or suffering or persecution."
2. "I face all sorts of hardships! Last week I missed the football game because I was at church. And when I told my coworker that the next day, he called me a Jesus Freak! I felt so persecuted!"

The second response is simply preposterous. The first, though, has some amount of validity. It's obvious we do not experience the same amount or degree of persecution and hardship here in comparison with many other countries. (But NOT because we're a "Christian nation.") Despite this, I don't think it means hardship and suffering will be eliminated.

So all this begs the question, why aren't we facing hardship or suffering? How can we live more "godly lives" that might bring about hardship and suffering?

I've arrived at a few conclusions:
1. Start with an attitude of humility and selflessness, thinking of others before myself.
2. Continue with being a bit less obsessed with my own comfort.
3. Open my mouth more, sharing the sometimes-unsettling-truth of the gospel with those around me.
4. Serve others.
5. Let every decision I make be driven by an eternal perspective rather than typical American ideals. For example, choose a job not because of the money and security but for the opportunities to interact with and serve a variety of people. Or, choose a place to live not for convenience and safety but for the needs in a community that could be fulfilled by my presence.

Starting with these ideas, a little more suffering might come my way.

Of course, all this is completely at odds with the typical American way of living. It's yet another area where we Christians need to take a good hard look at which ideas are American and which are Christian, realizing the two are not always (and perhaps very rarely) as compatible as we're told.