The Cost of Non-Discipleship

I've been reading Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt (thanks Mom!).

It's a simple book with a simple message. It's aimed at startling us. And causing us to reevaluate whether or not our understanding of discipleship is colored by the hues of our culture's value system.

Platt wants us to ask ourselves if the Jesus we have in mind is a "Jesus who doesn't mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have . . . A Jesus who brings us comfort and prosperity as we live out our Christian spin on the American Dream."

Platt argues that the biblical picture of Jesus represents a radical contrast:

This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches.

The cost of nondiscipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him.

—Platt, Radical, 18.

The chapters are short. Easy to read. And refreshingly direct.

I've heard this message before. And my responses to it remind me that I need to hear it again. I recommend the book w/ little reservation.