How Great Are Your Convictions?

This post is a conversation from Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals. He is here talking to his grandmother, a Jewish survivor from the Second World War:

“I became sicker and sicker from not eating, and I’m not just talking about being skin and bones. I had sores all over my body…I ate things i wouldn’t tell you about…The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.

“He saved your life.”

“I didn’t eat it.”

“You didn’t eat it?”

“It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why?”

“What because it wasn’t kosher?”

“Of course.”

“But not even to save your life?”

“If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”

I read this quote in the school magazine as part of an argument for veganism, but I don’t think that that the grandma had that in mind at all. The quote is more directed at religious conviction–for her it was the Mosaic law. I am continually mystified by this Christian faith of which I consider myself a part, that would give up so much for God. Surely, we must truly believe in God to fulfill how much Jesus demands of us.

What convictions do you have, and how far would you go to save it?