What It Means to Die for What You Believe
When Faith Becomes More Valuable Than Life Itself
There’s a question that separates people who talk about their beliefs from people who actually have them: what would you die for? Not what cause would you support, not what principle sounds noble at a dinner party, not what position you’d argue for online. What truth have you encountered so completely that you’d choose torture over betraying it? Most of us will never answer that question because we’ve spent our lives avoiding it, arranging our comfortable existence so we’re never forced to choose between our convictions and our survival. But some people have answered it. The apostles of Christ answered it when they were boiled in oil, flayed alive, crucified upside down, and dragged through streets by horses until they died. They answered it not because they were religious fanatics divorced from reality, but because they had seen something so real that denying it became impossible even when den…
