I get monthly e-mail newsletters from the church I attend out here in Madison. Good for information and to keep updated, but I never really took the time to read the reflections before. I did this time around and it floored me. Take a peek:
On the Purpose of Self-Denial
{crazy emphasis added by Carrie Kern}
The first man, Adam, also denied himself when he fell into sin, but he denied his real, true self. Seeking from men that they deny themselves, the Lord seeks that they deny their false selves. Put more simply: Adam denied the Truth, and clave to a lie; now the Lord seeks of Adam’s descendants that they deny the lie that cleave once more to the Truth from which they had fallen away. Therefore, to deny oneself means to deny the deceitful non-being that has been imposed on us in place of our God-given being. We must deny the earthboundness that has, for us, replaced spirituality, and the passions that have replaced good works; the servile fear that has darkened in us our sonship of God and the grumbling against God that has killed within the spirit of obedience to Him. We must deny evil thoughts, evil desires and evil deeds. We must deny the idolatrous worship of nature and our body. In brief: we must deny all that we reckon is “me”, but is in reality not us but the devil and sin, corruption, illusion and death. Oh, let us deny the evil habits that have become second nature to us; let us deny this “second nature”, for it is not our nature as God created it, but an accumulated and hardened illusion and self-delusion in ourselves - a hypocritical lie that goes by our name, and we by its ... For, by this [self-denial], the old, animal-like man in us is put to death, and the new man, made in God’s image and immortal, is raised to life. As the Apostle says: “Our old man is crucified,” and explains at once why: “that we should not serve sin” (Romans 6:6)... [And by this self-denial] we shall find our strength in Him our courage and our consolation. He will be to us light on a dark path, health in sickness, a companion in loneliness, joy in suffering and riches in want. A lamp is left burning all night in a sick-room, and in the night of this life, Christ’s inextinguishable light is needed, to ease our pain and keep alive our hope in the dawning of day.
Doesn’t it make you ask the question, who am I really? What am I like in essence? What is this full self of mine?
I’m an expert at asking questions that can’t really be answered. I’ll just put that out into the universe and let it sit. But that sure is mind-blowing.
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