THE CHRISTIAN LANDSCAPE is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half-built towers…the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish…

For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow Him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so.  The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so-called “nominal Christianity”. 

In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity.  They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved; enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable.  Their religion is a great, soft cushion.  It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their conveniences.

No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism.  John R. W. Stott

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’?  Luke 14:28-30

–Mike Benson