The Danger of Delay When Not Choosing Jesus Is a Choice

It usually does not feel like a big deal in the moment. You are talking to someone every day. It feels like a relationship. You act like you are together. But when the question comes up what are we, you dodge it. Not because you do not care, but because defining it feels risky.

What if it changes things. What if it costs you something. So you delay.

And nothing explodes. Life keeps moving. It even feels easier this way. Until one day, you realize something important quietly slipped through your hands. That is how passivity works. It rarely looks dangerous at first. It feels safe. It feels like keeping your options open. But over time, it begins to shape your life in ways you never intended.

Passivity is not doing nothing about something that does not matter. It is doing nothing about something that does.

It is choosing not to choose when a decision is actually required. Most of us are not passive across the board. We are often highly driven in the areas we care about. We plan our careers. We optimize our schedules. We chase opportunities. But at the same time, we drift in areas that matter more than we want to admit. Relationships. Character. Faith.

We tend to be passive in the areas that matter most. Sometimes it is because something does not feel urgent. Other times it is because making a decision takes courage. Decisions close doors. They expose us. They force us to deal with consequences. So we tell ourselves we will deal with it later.

You can see this pattern everywhere. In relationships that stay undefined. In majors that remain undecided. In life directions that stay open ended. We are overwhelmed by options and afraid of choosing wrong, so we do not choose at all. Indecision feels like safety.

But there are some things in life that are too important to delay. Some decisions demand a response. And when it comes to Jesus, passivity is not neutral.

To see this clearly, we need to step into a moment that was anything but neutral.

Pontius Pilate stood at the center of one of the most volatile situations in the ancient world. As the Roman governor of Judea, his job was to maintain order in a region constantly on the edge of unrest. The Jewish people lived under Roman rule and longed for freedom. There was a history of rebellion. Religious leaders held deep influence. Rome demanded control.

And now it was Passover.

The city of Jerusalem was packed. The air was charged with national longing and political tension. This was the time when people remembered deliverance from oppression. It was not hard to imagine how quickly things could turn into revolt. Then Jesus entered the city to crowds shouting for salvation.

From a political standpoint, everything was unstable.

And then Jesus was brought before Pilate. At first, Pilate approaches it like any other case. He asks if Jesus is the king of the Jews. It is a political question, the kind he is used to asking. But Jesus does something unexpected. He turns the conversation.

He asks whether that question is Pilate’s own or something he is simply repeating. In a moment, the dynamic shifts. Pilate is no longer just evaluating Jesus. He is being evaluated.

Jesus tells him that he came into the world to bear witness to the truth, and that everyone who belongs to the truth listens to his voice.

Pilate responds with a question that has echoed for centuries. What is truth.

But the defining detail is not the question. It is what he does next. He does not wait for an answer. He walks back out to the crowd. Not rejection. Avoidance. Pilate is not uninterested in truth. He simply has no room for it. There are too many pressures. Too many expectations. Too much at stake. In that moment, truth feels less urgent than survival.

It is not hard to see ourselves in him. We may not be governors, but our lives are full. Classes, jobs, internships, friendships, expectations. Many of us feel like we are barely keeping up. And in the middle of all of it, Jesus speaks about truth. About who God is. About what actually matters. About life, death, and eternity. And our instinctive response is the same.

Not now. Later. When things calm down.

But that moment rarely comes. Life does not simplify. It expands. Responsibilities grow. Pressures increase. The idea that there will be a better time to deal with ultimate questions is often a myth. Pilate shows us where delay leads.

From that point on, he begins moving back and forth. Inside with Jesus. Outside with the crowd. Inside, he is confronted with truth. Outside, he is surrounded by pressure.

Each time he steps away from Jesus, the noise grows louder. The tension rises. The cost of doing what is right becomes clearer.

And something subtle begins to happen. The louder the crowd becomes, the quieter the truth sounds. You can feel this in your own life. The constant noise. Notifications. Opinions. Expectations. The pressure to keep up, to fit in, to succeed. It does not usually argue directly against truth. It simply drowns it out. Until eventually, you can barely hear it at all.

In the end, Pilate tries to escape the decision. He attempts to hand responsibility over to the crowd. But the crowd has already been influenced. The momentum has already shifted.

Then the decisive pressure comes. If he releases Jesus, he risks everything. His position. His reputation. Possibly his life.

The cost becomes too high. So he gives in. He publicly washes his hands as if to declare his innocence. He tries to separate himself from what is happening. He tells himself it is not his responsibility.

And then he hands Jesus over to be crucified. An innocent man condemned. A decision shaped not by truth, but by pressure. This is what passivity does. It does not leave you neutral. It slowly moves you in a direction, often without you realizing it, until one day you arrive somewhere you never meant to go.

We often believe we can stay undecided about Jesus. That we can revisit the question later. That we can hold a neutral position without consequence. But neutrality is an illusion.

There are always forces at work. The pull of comfort. The fear of cost. The influence of culture. If you are not actively moving toward truth, you are drifting away from it.

Most people do not abandon faith in a single moment. They drift. Slowly. Quietly. Through a thousand small decisions to delay. A thousand moments of saying not now. But the story does not end with Pilate trying to avoid responsibility. Because at the center of this moment, when everyone else is passing the weight, Jesus does something entirely different.

He takes it. Blame moves from person to person. The crowd deflects. The leaders deflect. No one wants to carry the weight of what is happening. It is too heavy. This is what we do as well. We minimize. We justify. We shift responsibility. The weight of our own failure is more than we can bear.

But at the cross, Jesus steps forward and says he will carry it. He does not defend himself. He does not redirect blame. He does not say this is not mine. He absorbs it.

The injustice. The sin. The weight that everyone else is trying to escape.

This is the heart of the gospel. Not that we fix ourselves, but that Jesus takes what we cannot carry. And that changes everything. Because the reason we avoid truth is not just because we are busy. It is because we are afraid of what it will cost us. Afraid of what it will expose.

But the one who confronts us with truth is the same one who offers to carry our burden.

Which means we do not have to run anymore. We do not have to delay. We can face the truth because we are not facing it alone.

So the question remains. What will you do with Jesus. You do not drift into following him. You only drift away. Pilate thought he could deal with it later. But later never came.

And many of us are doing the same thing. Not rejecting. Just delaying. But delaying your decision about Jesus is your decision about Jesus.

So do not walk away.

Do not wait for a less busy season that will never arrive.

The moment is now. What will you do with him.

© 2026 David Jun. Want more content like this? Explore more articles in Knowing God.

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