Is Christianity a Straitjacket?

Is Christianity a straitjacket? People make excuses to reject Jesus Christ, but they're just smokescreens to avoid having to wrestle with the cost of being a Christian. They think it's too confining, too stifling; they have to give up too much in order to follow Jesus. What they fail to understand, however, is that the "confinement" imposed by Christianity is a means to liberation.

Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, offers the following insight regarding the liberating properties of the right kind of confinement:

If you have musical aptitude, you may give yourself to practice, practice, practice the piano for years. This is a restriction, a limit on your freedom.....if you have the talent, however, the discipline and limitation will unleash your ability that would otherwise go untapped. What have you done? You've deliberately lost your freedom to engage in some things in order to release yourself to a richer kind of freedom to accomplish other things.

Keller goes on to note that love is the "most liberating freedom-loss of all." In order to benefit from the liberating, fulfilling, security-inducing power of love, limitations are placed on your freedom. Keller writes:

You cannot enter a deep relationship and still make unilateral decisions or allow your friend or lover no say in how you live your life. To experience joy and freedom, you must give up your personal autonomy.

When you decide to follow Jesus Christ, you enter into the ultimate loving relationship. As your Lord and Savior, Jesus definitely has a say in how you live your life. He has all the power, and you must adjust to Him.

Just think of how He served and adjusted to us by His atoning death on the cross:

After the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed all night. The gospels note that in anticipation of the suffering He would have to endure the following day, Jesus began to sweat blood - a known medical condition called hematidrosis, which is associated with extreme psychological stress.

The flogging He received at the hands of a Roman soldier the next day was so vicious that it ripped into Jesus' flesh, causing Him unbearable pain and the loss of a great deal of blood. Then He staggered up the road to Calvary, carrying His cross. What came next, of course, was His Crucifixion, where He died a slow, unbearably painful death by asphyxiation.

Though we do not deserve it, He endured this unspeakable agony for us. As theologian John Stott notes:

"How can we deny or reject such a lover?"