The encounter between Peter and Jesus (Mk 8:27-9:1) makes clear that the story of Jesus, like most good stories, changes the hearer. A story that claims to be the truth of our existence requires that our lives, like the lives of the disciples, be changed by following him. Jesus asks what no man should ask from another--his life. To be a disciple of Jesus requires a training beyond what any of them had imagined.
"Jesus deliberately rejected force and chose truth. Whenever Christianity shows an inclination to use constraint in its own defense or support, it thereby furnishes presumptive evidence that it has become a thing of this world, for it finds the means of this world adapted to its end." Walter Rauschenbusch, The Righteousness of the Kingdom, 1968.
