It is one thing to profess Christianity and to adhere to it as a form of religion, but another thing to truly understand the heart of Jesus' concern and to seek to follow it with dedication in one's life.

Christianity as a form of religion is rather simple to follow. All it takes is the observance of some rituals that serve to initiate and retain one in the church institution. If you're seen often enough in the church and contribute enough to the life of the community, nobody really cares if you're living a life that's thoroughly compartmentalised or if you're ignoring (or even defying) all your professed beliefs in other spheres of your life. You can be a professional crook in the marketplace or a business person who thrives on bribery, and yet still be a deacon or an elder in the local church. Really, nobody really cares.

However, Christianity as a path to unity with the divine (theosis), as a spiritual journey in which one seeks to embrace in totality Christ's message of the Kingdom, is bewildering. It's almost oppressive, and yet it sets one free. It's oppressive in the sense that it provokes one to consider the cost of following the way of the Kingdom - it costs you your wealth, your family, your social networks. Actually, its costs you your kingdom, in exchange for an eternal one. It's strange when people profess full commitment to the faith of the Kingdom when its impact on their vocations, their relationships and their wealth remains utterly unchanged. It's almost as if they wished it to be so.

It's difficult to take too seriously what Jesus says in the gospels. Because if we do, we'd know exactly how far we've fallen short of the Christianity he's speaking of. So we settle for a lesser rendition by practising the faith but denying its power.