A comic where someone drops the most honest theological take: “But I don’t want to believe in Jesus.”
Gorgocutie says:
This captures something that people rarely admit out loud: religious conversion is often a choice, and not everyone wants to make it. In the early days of Christianity, plenty of Romans, Greeks, and everyone else looked at the new religion and said “no thanks, I’m good with my current gods.”
The Romans were actually remarkably tolerant of other religions — you could worship whatever gods you wanted, as long as you also made a sacrifice to the Emperor now and then. Christians refused to do that, which is why they got thrown to the lions. Not because they believed in Jesus, but because they refused to play along with the imperial cult.
So “but I don’t want to believe in Jesus” was basically the motto of the Roman Empire for the first three centuries AD. It took Constantine having a vision at the Milvian Bridge to finally tip the scales. And even then, a lot of Romans were probably thinking “but I don’t want to…”
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