These Taliban threaten me. But I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us. I know what is the meaning of cross and I am following the cross. And I'm ready to die for a cause. I'm living for my community and suffering people, and I will die to defend their rights.

- Shahbaz Bhatti, martyred Pakistan minister of minorities

These words were recorded several months before Bhatti was gunned down by four gunmen as he left his mother's house on March 2. Bhatti was the only Christian member of Pakistan's cabinet and an proponent of reforming the country's blasphemy laws for Christians and Hindis.

And I'm really ashamed- of myself- when I read these words. Unworthy of being called by the same name as a man like him. Would I be so bold as to expect to die for my Jesus like him?

No, I carp about the songs I don't appreciate in the Sunday service and complain about having to drive more than 10  minutes to church. I fall asleep on a regular basis when I'm reading the Scripture.

Do I - do we Americans - know what "the meaning of cross" is? I hardly think we have a clue. We're too busy debating whether Scripture is really written by God and whether that Scriptural definition of Hell is really just a cultural straight jacket that enlightened and post-modern people need to redefine. We think we are enough. We don't see need for a Saviour to save us because we're up to our eyeballs wallowing in stinking rotten self-absorbed pride. In the words of Stuart Smalley, whose words ring true more times than ever imagine, we're good enough and smart enough and doggone it, people like us. Or at least that's our main ambition: to be well-liked.

Which is true. You don't pick up friends with talk of eternal torture for rejecting God in life. It's hard to swallow. The "everybody-goes-to-Heaven-because-God-is-loving" goes down so much easier.  Like lots of the Old Testament talk about the Israelites having to kill all the men, women and children of people groups they conquered. It's much nicer to suck on peppermints and sit cross-legged and hum about a world with no war, no guns and no right-wing extremists.

But let's snap up to reality. Has there ever been a minute in history that someone hasn't been fighting? Nope.  Not in a world full of sinners. Especially those who feel they are good enough on their own.

I've noticed a disturbing and convicting trend among those "little Christs" as the word Christian is defined, around the world who suffer for claiming to know Jesus: they don't ask for prayer for relief from their trouble, they want strength to endure it. Ouch.

While we're too busy trying stripping out the cross and pews and replacing them with creepy candles and round tables where we can drink coffee so those "seekers" among us won't be offended by churchy things.

Laura Story's song here brings me to reality that I need to be a little more far-sighted than I am. If I claim to be a little Christ, then my hope is not to be sunk in a fallen world, but to point a fallen world to a place that my Jesus is preparing for me and those who aren't ashamed of Him.