Count the cost

I recently saw this quotation from Mama Bear Apologetics:

Most people don't really want the truth. They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth.

At the same time, I'm reminded of what Blaise Pascal said: "Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it."

Of course, the statement is indeed the case for many people, but let me take it in a different direction:

Many people might want the truth if they're able to receive the truth in a way convenient to their lives. However, when it comes to the truth of Christianity, that's not possible, because Christ and Christianity teach a message that's quite inconvenient to us, to say the least! The gospel cuts to the core of our beings. Our acceptance of Christ means the death of the old, death to old patterns of thinking and living, death to our very selves. Indeed, the Bible exhorts us to count the cost of living a life committed to Christ. Many people aren't willing sacrifice their very lives for this truth which is The Truth. Many people aren't willing to crucify themselves so that their old selves are dead and buried, laid to rest six feet under, even though the one who does will receive a new birth with a new life, better than anything they could have ever imagined in their prior life, for what was prior is death, compared to the life to come. A life eternal.

Changing the biblical metaphor, many people prefer to remain in the womb and die there. They're like a baby who refuses to be born. A baby who prefers swimming in the swishy safety of his mother's amniotic fluid rather than coming into the solidity of life. A baby who prefers to have his lungs breathe in liquid rather than to have his lungs take in life's first breath and expand to fulsome health in oxygenated wholeness. A baby who prefers to remain attached to and reliant upon his mother's cardiovascular circulation system rather than to have a living heart beating and pulsating and perfused with a newness of life all its own. A baby who prefers to remain with his eyes tightly shut rather than coming into the world to behold its bright colors and beautiful sights and (surely best of all) the face of his maker who loves him and called him to come forth.