The question is obviously derived from a familiar scenario Christians sometimes think about:<\/p>\n
You’re in church one Sunday morning, and a gunman enters the building. \u00a0He comes over to you, points his gun in your direction, and says “Deny Christ or die<\/strong>“. \u00a0What should you do?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nI remember hearing a few sermons preached on such a topic. \u00a0And it saddens me greatly that there are true stories of such horrible events taking place in our world. \u00a0But the question is an interesting one. \u00a0It can be difficult to answer such hypothetical questions, but recalling my Christian days, I remember thinking “I hope I’d have the courage to die for my beliefs”<\/em>, and I strongly believe that I would have done just that. \u00a0I was confident that I was looking forward to eternal life, so my earthly life being cut short like that wouldn’t really matter in the long run. \u00a0What’s more, my death as a martyr might just prove to be a compelling witness to others, and I might just achieve more for Christ in my death than I ever could in my life. \u00a0There’s also the possibility of a miracle. \u00a0And besides, “Not my will, but yours”<\/em>, right? \u00a0So I fully understand the Christian who responds to the question by saying that you should not deny Christ even if meant your demise.<\/p>\nThe message seems to be that your loyalty to Christ should come above everything, even your own life. \u00a0But should it really come before\u00a0everything?<\/em> \u00a0How about…<\/p>\nYou’re in church one Sunday morning, and a gunman enters the building. \u00a0He comes over to you, points his gun in the general direction of the other church goers, and says “Deny Christ or they all die<\/strong>“. \u00a0What should you do?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThere’s a lot I could say about this, but I’d prefer to leave it open for people to mull over it. \u00a0I’d really like some Christians to have a good hard think about their response, without trying to avoid answering the question. \u00a0If you were in that situation, what would you do? \u00a0What should<\/em> you do? \u00a0You only have two options: deny Christ and your fellow church members survive, or profess your loyalty and see them all killed. \u00a0So what would you do? \u00a0And why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day, at the Unbelievable? forums, a Christian user asked atheists if they would deny their atheism if…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,66,64],"tags":[191,194,197,222,212,220],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-martyrdom","category-thought-experiments","tag-christianity","tag-faith","tag-god","tag-martyrdom","tag-religion","tag-thought-experiments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}