To Die For

We’ve been watching that show “America: The Story of Us” on the History Channel. It’s been pretty awesome, I have to say. We watched the final episode last night, well most of it but then Meghan fell asleep so I paused it and saved the last half hour for later. They were finishing up American history post-WWII, and one of the things they kept doing was showing clips from previous episodes, so as to show the connections between what happened before and what was happening now.

One of the throwbacks was to the steel workers who built the skyscrapers in America’s ever-growing cities. They gave a statistic that I guess I just missed last time, 2 out of 5 of those high rise workers died on the job. That’s crazy! And what was really crazy to me was that they died not for the building, or the city, or the country, but for the dollar. They worked that dangerous job and were willing to die in the hopes that they might make some good money fast.

And this got me really thinking “what would I be willing to die for?” I know for sure I wouldn’t do the job they were doing, there’s no way I’d die for that. But there are some important things in my life, like my family and my faith. Jesus said in John 15:13 that “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.” Would I be willing to die for the cause of Christ, that my friends, neighbors, and associates would know the love of Christ? I don’t know, and I hope I never have to find out, but if I’m seeking a deeper spiritual experience, then this is a reality that I’m going to have to deal with, this question of “would I be willing to die for this?”