This is a Blessing??

So we are strolling along through the beatitudes, the verses in Luke 6 that start with "Blessed are you...", and we see the way these first few play out. We have this bad thing going on and Jesus gives us hope for something better.

Bad Thing	Good Thing
Poor in Spirit	Yours is the Kingdom of God
Hunger for Righteousness	You shall be filled
Weep now	You shall laugh

This sounds pretty hopeful.  We find ourselves in a world where there are evil things going on, it effects our feelings.  We feel poor in spirit, hungry for justice and sad because of all we see.  So these couple of verses we have looked at so far give us hope as we look to Jesus.

THEN BAMM!!! We read the next 2 verses:

Luke 6: 22 Blessed are you when men hate you,
And when they exclude you,
And revile you, and cast out your name as evil,
For the Son of Man’s sake.
23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy!
For indeed your reward is great in heaven,

For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.

Wait a minute!  What is going on here.  I can understand being poor in spirit, hungry for righteousness and being filled with grief.  But why would I want to put myself out their for my faith and have people hate me, exclude me, revile me and call me evil?  I thought Jesus was our savior?  I thought he came to make our lives better.  Aren't Christians supposed to be happy?  Why would people want to bother you for being a Christian?  That's supposed to be a good thing.

If Jesus simply came a brought a message of brotherly love.  Kind of a "...go along to get along".  Don't make any judgments about others and they won't make any judgments about you.  This is the popularization of the gospel message.

But we can see from these verses that is not the case.  If we are going to buy into this radical gospel message that Jesus brings us, then we will not be popular.  I won't use this post to list all the evidence in our popular culture that rejects Christians and their beliefs you only need to read the news, share the gospel with friends and mention that you go to church on Sunday to get a cool reception from some.  In the USA we have it mild.  In south east Asian countries, .  Philippines, China, etc being a Christian pretty much unlawful.

So the reality is we can have a milk-toast Christianity that does not offend, in which case we will not really be following Christ.  Or we can give our lives totally to Him, which will lead to hate, exclusion, revile (taunting) and being called evil.  At that time we need to "...rejoice and leap for joy, for indeed your reward is great in heaven".