To Whom Shall We Go?

A friend of mine, who is a far better Christian than I can ever hope to be, once shared with me that her family sneers at her belief system and lifestyle.

She believes in fairy tales they tell her. She’s looking for simple solutions from a kind-faced man in the sky because she doesn’t want to grapple with complicated answers to complicated problems.

Religion, they argue, is the easy way out.

As she spoke about this, her voice became unsteady. Not with anger, but with emotion. “I would never call this life easy,” she said. “If I was looking for something that was easy, I wouldn’t choose Catholicism.”

What was unspoken was why she has chosen Catholicism. I know the answer, but only because I know her. I knew her before she chose it wholeheartedly, and I know her now, and I see the difference. I see that these words are written so clearly across the days of her life: “Master, to whom shall we go?”

Once the truth is known in your soul, you see, it can never be unknown.

Following Christ is not about easy answers and simple teachings. Sure, it all sounds very basic: love one another as I have loved you. What could be more straightforward?

But what does that mean? What does that look like in daily, modern life, in a world full of the fallen, whose flaws have given us rough edges and weakened wills?

I’ll tell you what it looks like — it looks like a struggle. It looks like failure and mess and confusion and losing your way and finding it again, all because you remembered that within you there is a compass pointing due north. It’s a constant state of wandering in the dark, following a Voice that asks you to go where you’re afraid to go. And you follow the Voice not because it’s the only voice there is and not because it’s the voice that says what you want to hear, but because it’s the only one that speaks the truth, and the truth pulls on you in a way you can’t quite resist.

When Christ asks, “Do you also want to leave?” he is not gaslighting us. It’s a genuine question. We are free to go. We are not prisoners.

But we have heard the words of everlasting life, and now we can only have peace if we follow where they lead.

“As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” — Joshua 24:15

©LPi