It's something that most of us would like to forget. It's something that I believe the enemy works with all his strength to keep out of our minds in the moments when it counts the most: the fact that we're supposed to die.
The self-preservation instinct is an annoying little necessity. It makes men cowardly. It prompts over-caution and can drain much of the spontaneity and daring out of life. Yet it keeps them here to fulfill the years that the Lord has appointed for them.
But self-preservation, when applied to situations in which the supposed "danger" is a mere figment: a risk that threatens only that part of ourselves that is supposed to die; that instinct quickly turns into self-promotion. It is a monster that crouches low in each of us, trying to blend into the scenery, trying not to call attention to its own vile presence, but that lashes out in fierce self-defense whenever it is so much as alluded to. Because of course, our motives in a situation could never be selfish.
The Bible tells us that we are not ignorant of the enemy's schemes. But what of the scheme of prompting us to indulge emotion at the expense of rational thinking in a moment of confrontation? What of the scheme that prompts us to question our every action in a given situation, reevaluating it a hundred times over, without ever considering our motive? Most of all the motive of simple, ghastly selfishness.
I'm selfish. You're selfish. We're all selfish.
I wish I were less selfish. So do you. I bet we all do.
I'm trying to be less selfish. So are you. So are all of us.
I'd appreciate a little mercy while I'm in the process of becoming less selfish.
I bet you'd appreciate that too.
I bet we all would.
These are not complicated facts. We have no problem mentally acquiescing to them as we read them here: calmly stated and unconnected to any particular person or situation.
But why is it such a different matter at the time of an altercation? When faced with a situation in which two parties disagree over how something should be done, why do we never ask the painful question: am I doing this for selfish motives?
Am I doing this to save myself some work? Because I don't feel like it? Because I feel slighted? Because I want more? Because I want better? Because I want to be... whatever.
Why do we never ask the painful question? Because it's painful. Because it hurts. And anything that hurts badly enough can kill. And so self-preservation pretends to have been called for. Because we've forgotten the truth with all of it's sharp edges: some things are supposed to die.
I am supposed to die. Daily, Paul says. By willingly taking up and carrying, one agonizing footstep at a time, the very instrument of my execution. I'm supposed to bear in every step a little bit of death. Sound awful? Talk to Jesus. He said it, not me. "Take up your cross and follow me." Carry the thing that's killing you. Through the crowd of people that are killing you. To the very place where all of this will culminate in the one thing you've spent your whole life resisting: death.
Dylan Thomas says "Do not go gently unto that good night." Jesus disagrees. Walk right up, calmly stare death in the face, realize that you have looked eye-to-eye at something far more powerful and drink the cup that you've spent a lifetime begging the Father to pass from you. Just die already.
Without death, there can be no resurrection. Without death, there can be no Christ-likeness.
"I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me. And this life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. And I do not lay aside the grace of God. For if righteousness comes through the law then Christ died in vain."
The end of Galatians 2 makes one thing very clear: Christ did not die in vain. His death purchased my righteousness. But that doesn't exempt me from dying. In fact, because He has recovered for me the righteousness of God that I had hopelessly lost, I now have the blessed privilege of finding freedom from the disgusting instinct of self-preservation that, when allowed to have its way in me, yields self-promotion.
I can now again look like God. And selflessly lay my life down for another. "Greater love has no man than this, that he should lay his life down for his friend."
But anyone can jump in front of a bus in a moment of adrenaline-induced heroism. Death to the body is so much easier than death to the ego, death to the will, death to our childish sense of "fair".
Anyone can jump in front of a bus. Far fewer people can get up and take out the trash when they're dead tired, every day, year after year, without scowling at their spouse as though said spouse were the entire reason there were such a thing as garbage in the universe and a sanitation system in this nation.
Anyone can jump in front of a bus. Far fewer people can show mercy when another selfish-brat-in-recovery rudely insists on an arrangement that leaves them with more work or fewer benefits and do it as unto the Lord with all the might they possess while still recognizing that person as in-recovery and on their way to selflessness.
It takes the mighty to die daily.
Some men die once. Others die daily. And it is the daily deaths that really hurt.
Self-promotion crouches within, screaming "it hurts; I'm tired; it's not fair; I'm getting the worse end of the deal; they're not taking care of me the way they should; I'm not living the life I could; I'm not as happy as I should be; this is killing me!" And truly it is. Killing that heinous little monster within that insists on special treatment. Killing the part of us that is supposed to die. With little blows day by day, with splinters in the shoulder... that carries the cross...
But remember, beloved, though your body is burdened and breaking, though your feet ache and your mind wrestles with a thousand cries from your little monster. Though you are weary and broken and bleeding. Though you bear in every step a little bit of death...
Forget not, as you carry the thing that's killing you... through the crowd of people that are killing you... and as you are painfully aware of the cost in obeying when He said "take up your cross..."
That He also said "and follow me." Forget not that you are not the first to pay the painful price.
Lift your eyes but a little bit, beloved, and you will see Jesus laboring on ahead of you. Bearing on His own shoulder a million, million crosses; your own included and none His own. Dying that you may live. That you may live truly: a life not of self-preservation or self-promotion, but of self-sacrifice. Just like Jesus.
As you wind up that terrible hill, with the agonizing steps of death that your interactions today will doubtless bring, remember that Jesus has gone on ahead of you and that you look more like Him every time that monster dies.
Take up your cross. And follow Him.
"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." Hebrews 12:2-4
Today, I look into myself and say without a shred of mercy: just die already.
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