"That is the verse they quoted to me!"
Last night I listened intently as Daniel explained a conversation he had had recently with some "friends" of his in his neighborhood. They were quoting John the Baptist to him (as found in Luke 3) and taunting him: "You say you are a Christian, you say you are going to go to seminary, then PROVE you are a Christian."
They were rudely testing the sincerity of his faith with their demand that he make a willing sacrifice.
In the American church, we speak of the sacrifices associated with faith in Christ in largely abstract terms most of the time (- if we speak of sacrifices at all).
We might sacrifice our "time", our "resources".
Daniel's neighbors were asking him to sacrifice his cat.
Not to become someone else's pet. But to become someone else's dinner.
[Please note that eating cat here would be sort of like eating squirrel in the States in that some Americans enthusiastically eat squirrel - on rare occasions - while most would be turned off by the very thought of it. I don't think Daniel's "friends" wanted the cat because they were starving and there were no other food options, but rather because it was a somewhat novel "food" and they were trying to goad him into an unchristian reaction.]
"When they said to me that they wanted to eat my cat and that he who has two coats should share one, I told them, 'I only have ONE cat. And he keeps the rats and mice from chewing on my book.'"
They persisted in asking for the cat.
Daniel resisted in giving it.
But in the end, the "friends" forcibly took the cat. Daniel came home one day a few weeks ago to find it cooking in a pot.
"So what did you do?" I asked him.
"What could I do? As a Christian, I had to forgive them, and I did. I did not want them to become my enemies."
And that was that.
With his eye on becoming a pastor, Daniel will be starting a course of study this coming August with our friends at Emmaus Biblical Seminary just down the road.
I think he's going to do all right...
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