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Christianity Will Cost You Everything

January 25th, 2017 | 1 min read

By Jake Meador

Vanauken:

Apart from Lewis, we read G. K. Chesterton, who with wit presented in The Everlasting Man and other works a brilliant, reasoned case for the faith. And Charles Williams, theologian and novelist, who opened up realms of the spirit we didn’t know existed, was tremendously important to us both. Graham Greene showed—terribly—what sin was, and what faith was—also terrible. Dorothy Sayers made Christianity dramatic and exciting, and attacked complacency and dullness like a scorpion. We had read T. S. Eliot for years, but now we began to see what he was really saying in Ash Wednesday and the Four Quartets—and it scared us, rather. His description of the state of being a Christian lingered in our minds: ‘A condition of complete simplicity/(Costing not less than everything).’ Everything!

Jake Meador

Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. He is a 2010 graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he studied English and History. He lives in Lincoln, NE with his wife Joie, their daughter Davy Joy, and sons Wendell, Austin, and Ambrose. Jake's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, Christianity Today, Fare Forward, the University Bookman, Books & Culture, First Things, National Review, Front Porch Republic, and The Run of Play and he has written or contributed to several books, including "In Search of the Common Good," "What Are Christians For?" (both with InterVarsity Press), "A Protestant Christendom?" (with Davenant Press), and "Telling the Stories Right" (with the Front Porch Republic Press).