The final chapter is called "Suffering: The Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism." He begins by telling of a Cistercian abbot who was interviewed by Italian TV.
And I would agree. I've been in the process of re-evaluating my life for a while, and here is another call...somewhere...but where? How do I choose suffering - in my life, now?[The interviewer] asked the abbot, "And what if you were to realize at the end of your life that atheism is true, that there is no God? Tell me, what if it were true?"
The Abbot replied, "Holiness, silence, and sacrifice are beautiful in themselves, even without promise of reward. I still will have used my life well." ...
Paul's answer to the interviewer's question was utterly contrary to the abbot's answer. The interviewer had asked, "What if your way of life turns out to be based on a falsehood, and there is no God?" The abbot's answer in essence was, "It was a good and noble life anyway." Paul gave his answer in 1 Corinthians 15:19, "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied." This is the exact opposite of the abbot's answer...
Why didn't Paul say, "Even if Christ is not raised from the dead, and even if there is no God, a life of love and labor and sacrifice and suffering is a good life"?...
It seems that most Christians in the prosperous West describe the benefits of Christianity in terms that would make it a good life, even if there were no God and no resurrection... So if we get love, joy, and peace from believing these things, then is it not a good life to live, even if it turns out to be based on a falsehood?...
Paul tells us the best way to maximize our pleasures in this life [if this is all there is]. "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrrow we die" (1 Corinthians 15:32). He does not mean something so naive as sheer epicureanism and debauchery. That is not the best way to maximize your pleasures, as anyone knows who has followed the path of alcoholism and gluttony...
But what he does mean by the phrase, "Let us eat and drink," is that, without the hope of resurrection, one should pursue ordinary pleasure and avoid extraordinary suffering...
When Paul says, "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink," he does not mean, "Let's all become lechers." He means, there is a normal, simple, comfortable, ordinary life of human delights that we may enjoy with no troubling thoughts of heaven or hell or sin or holiness or God--if there is no resurrection from the dead. And what stunned me about this train of throught is that many professing Christians seem to aim at just this, and call it Christianity.
Paul did not see his relation to Christ as the key to maximizing his physical comforts and pleasures in this life. No, Paul's relation to Christ was a call to choose suffering--a suffering that was beyond what would make atheism "meaningful" or "beautiful" or "heroic." It was a suffering that would have been utterly foolish and pitiable to choose if there is no resurrection into the joyful presence of Christ.
This was the astonishing thing I finally saw in pondering Wurmbrand's story about the Cistercian abbot. In Paul's radically different viewpoint I saw an almost unbelievable indictment of Western Christianity. Am I overstating this? Judge for yourself. How many Christians do you know who could say, "The lifestyle I have chosen as a Christian would be utterly foolish and pitiable if there is no resurrection"? How many Christians are there who could say, "The suffering I have freely chosen to embrace for the cause of Christ would be a pitiable life if there is no resurrection"? As I see it, these are shocking questions.
