Have We Been Fooled into Following a Different Jesus?

Chapter 4 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book The Cost of Discipleship is fairly spectacular.  I have included an excerpt below which is broken up by two sections of comment.

"To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.  When it comes, it is not an accident, but a necessity.  It is not the sort of suffering which is inseparable from this mortal life, but the suffering which is an essential part of the specifically Christian life.  It is not suffering per se but suffering-and-rejection, and not rejection for any cause or conviction of our own, but rejection for the sake of Christ.  If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life.  We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.  The Psalmist was lamenting that he was despised and rejected of men, and that is an essential quality of the suffering of the cross.  But this notion has ceased to be intelligible to a Christianity which can no longer see any difference between an ordinary human life and a life committed to Christ.  The cross means sharing the suffering of Christ to the last and to the fullest."

Comment Section 1:  We are reminded here of what we are really signing up for when we tell Jesus that we will follow Him-- suffering-and-rejection for the sake of Christ.  Those who have followed Jesus for "emotional uplift" or other reasons have probably already stopped following Him.  Many feel cheated and disillusioned when they find that a comfortable "American" or "Western" style Christianity is not found among the sacred pages.  If they have not left Him they are left with a non-intelligible Christianity which worships a God of their own making.  Real Christianity is wedded to suffering-and-rejection.  It is this kind of life which Jesus has promised to all his would be followers as we see from even a shallow reading of the new testament. Are our lives just ordinary human lives, no different than those around us?  Is the only difference that I have drug Jesus out in front of my name and labeled myself a Christian?

Bonhoeffer continues: 

"The cross is laid on every Christian.  The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world.  It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ.  As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death - we give over our lives to death.  Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.  When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. . . If we refuse to take up our cross and submit to suffering and rejection at the hands of men, we forfeit our fellowship with Christ and have ceased to follow him.  But if we lose our lives in his service and carry our cross, we shall find our lives again in the fellowship of the cross with Christ.  Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer."

Comment Section Two:  Those who are most intimate with Jesus are those who have walked along the road of suffering-and-rejection with and for the Messiah.  Again, read about all your heroes in the Scriptures.  What do you find?  Hmmmm.  A pattern, a template for communion with God.  And in each case is suffering-and-rejection.  Will we shed our comfortable discipleship of cheap grace, self-will, and comfort (this popular yet false gospel is an empty illusion) and embrace a Christ-centered discipleship which is a walking straight into the death of ourselves?  Remember, resurrection (or resurrection power) is only for those who have died.  By the same token the comfort promised by the Holy Spirit is not needed by those who are already comfortable.  Well, what am I to do now?   Perhaps I need to reconsider whether or not I am willing to follow Jesus at all.  If Bonhoeffer is right then it could be that you or I have been following a different Jesus than the one we meet in the gospels and books that follow them in our Bibles.