Count the Cost

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote “The Cost of Discipleship” to help Christians understand that if they take discipleship seriously, they will always be in trouble and paying a cost.  Many have echoed that warning through the centuries.  Simone Weil wrote, “If we want a love that will protect the soul from wounds, we must love something other than God.”  William Russell Maltby insisted that Jesus promised those who would follow Him only three things:  that they would be “absurdly happy, entirely fearless, and always in trouble.”

There is a “cost to be paid” for any stand (position) one takes, no matter what that position may be:  religious, moral, or political.  My youngest son got riled up years ago (and I didn’t blame him a bit) when right-wing Christians wanted certain books banned from the public schools.  He wanted to resist and to respond by writing an editorial letter to the local newspaper.  I warned him that doing so would create feedback and that feedback (cost) might be very difficult to handle.  He wrote his letter and received a barrage of negative responses—and a few positive, but he handled it well.  There is always a cost in taking a stand.  A “stand” includes just standing by watching and doing nothing—even that kind of  stand carries an extremely heavy cost.

There was a cost paid that day when Dr. Martin Luther King, Congressman John Lewis, and others attempted to walk across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama.  The cost of the venture nearly cost John Lewis his life! 

Do you remember the little restaurant (The Red Hen) that refused to serve Sara Sanders? Some argued that such an action was totally unjust (even if done in protest). Yet some of the same folk protesting that happening think it is perfectly okay to refuse service to persons of certain lifestyles,  or as a pharmacist to refuse to sell birth control pills because of one’s religious belief.  All of these are “stands” and every stand is costly.

America is all about being free to take your “stand.”  That doesn’t mean it isn’t going to cost you “a pretty penny” for doing so.  In fact, the cost is more costly now, given the hate and division of our times. The owners of The Red Hen received this note after the incident:  

‘‘Hello Intolerant, intellectually-challenged, psychotic, socialists! Your so-called business is in jeopardy. Rest assured this is not a threat but simply a warning that predicts your downfall. . . . When your treasonist hypocrite lowlife Obama took our nation into despair (for 8 yrs) we didn’t do or say the things you do. Get over it, before it’s too late! BTW, there are a lot more of us than there are of you (italics added).’’

The Peonies Awaken