The one that I personally can't get past is believing that hundreds of people would choose persecution, family rejection and many of them death for something they knew to be a lie.
Except they didn't.
You are creating a false dichotomy between actually seeing the risen christ or deliberately lying about it. Human psychology is more nuanced than that.
They believed Jesus was still with them in some sense. It is a common phenomena when somebody close has died and even more so when all of their hopes had been dashed by Jesus' death.
These men had walked out on their families to follow Jesus. Their emotional investment was as great as any of the millions who have died for religious delusions.