Alan Hirsch poses the question, How did the number of Christians in the world grow from as few as 25,000 one hundred years after Christ’s death to up to 20 million in AD 310? A footnote in Alan’s book The Forgotten Ways refers to Rodney Stark as the authority on these issues, so I bought and read his book The Rise of Christianity. But I found that disappointing, because his research was based on the Moonies cult, and the implication seemed to be that any new cult spreads the same way – slowly, from family member to family member, increasing at a rate of around 40% per decade.
But why do people really choose to follow Jesus? There is something compelling about who Jesus was and what he taught. His lifestyle was significantly different from that of other religious leaders. He never used power to accumulate wealth or for political or personal ends. His message was about love, serving, humility, forgiveness and repentance. If you want to get wealthy you must give everything away. If you want to live, you must die. If you want to lead you must be a servant of others.
What Jesus said and did was, and still is, significantly different from the accepted practice. But somehow it resonates with the human condition. The contrarian lifestyle proclaimed by Jesus is bold and risky, but it offers compelling answers to the questions of life’s purpose and meaning.