The Interference of the Cross

“Things have come to a pretty pass,” said a famous Englishman testily, “when religion is permitted to interfere with our private lives.”

To which we may reply that things have come to a worse pass when an intelligent man living in a Protestant country could make such a remark. Had this man never read the New Testament? Had he never heard of Stephen or Paul or Peter? Had he never thought about the millions who followed Christ cheerfully to violent deaths, sudden or lingering, because they did allow their religion to inter- fere with their private lives?

But we must leave this man to his conscience and his Judge and look into our own hearts. Maybe he but expressed openly what some of us feel secretly. Just how radically has our religion interfered with the neat pattern of our own lives? Perhaps we had better answer that question first.

“The heart that learns to die with Christ soon knows the blessed experience of rising with Him.”

I have long believed that a man who spurns the Christian faith outright is more respected before God and the heavenly powers than the man who pretends to be religious but refuses to come under its total domination. The first is an overt enemy, the second a false friend. It is the latter who will be spewed out of the mouth of Christ; and the reason is not hard to understand.

Take Up Your Cross

One picture of a Christian is a man carrying a cross. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). The man with a cross no longer controls his destiny; he lost control when he picked up his cross. That cross immediately became to him an all-absorbing interest, an over- whelming interference. No matter what he may desire to do, there is but one thing he can do; that is, move on toward the place of crucifixion.

The man who will not tolerate interference is under no compulsion to follow Christ. “If any man will,” said our Lord, and thus freed every man and placed the Christian life in the realm of voluntary choice.

Inescapable Interference

Yet no man can escape interference. Law, duty, hunger, accident, natural disasters, illness, death, all intrude into his plans, and in the long run there is nothing he can do about it. Long experience with the rude necessities of life has taught men that these interferences will be thrust upon them sooner or later, so they learn to make what terms they can with the inevitable. They learn how to stay within the narrow circular rabbit path where the least interference is to be found. The bolder ones may challenge the world, enlarge the circle somewhat and so increase the number of their problems, but no one invites trouble deliberately. Human nature is not built that way. . . .

But we must not get the impression that the Christian life is one continuous conflict, one unbroken irritating struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. A thousand times no. The heart that learns to die with Christ soon knows the blessed experience of rising with Him, and all the world’s persecutions cannot still the high note of holy joy that springs up in the soul that has become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.