Self-preservation is Over-rated
“You cannot be my disciple without giving up everything you own. Can I have all of you?”
When a friend told me she’d heard this, in the closest thing to audible words she’d ever heard from God, I sat up straight.
Because that’s how God talks. When people tell me God said, “I’m going to give you everything you ever wanted” I think, “Hmm, maybe.” But when God says, “Give it all up” I know it’s not our imagination talking.
We would never tell ourselves that.
But what kind of God is this who asks everything of us?
Why does God seem to love our suffering?
I’m writing from an echoing house. Every day I wake up to sort through 20 years of bank records, family photos, towels and dishes. I’m walking away from 20 years of church, work, neighborhood, friendship, leaving my favourite restaurant, hair dresser, doctor to move to the other side of the planet. Every day is an emptying. On the other side of the planet the filling will begin but for now it’s just emptying.
I have no idea what the filling will be and can’t entirely put into words why I’m doing this. But I have a strange, vague peace from God. So I’m doing it. And every day requires a new devotion to the giving up.
It’s easy to feel resentful or entitled—look at all I’m doing for you, God.
There’s the kind of suffering that is a normal part of life in a broken world—death, illness, loss. And then, on top of that, there’s the suffering that God invites us to choose—giving things we’d rather keep, taking risks we’d rather not take, surrendering our resources, our relationships, our will. Giving it all up. Why does God like to make us suffer?
It’s good to acknowledge how hard it is to obey. At the same time I’m starting to see some new possibilities: What if he knows something we don’t know—that the things we think we need are actually draining our life? That the identity we imagine for ourselves is a pastiche of false selves? What if it feels like death to give it up simply because we haven’t yet seen what he’s offering us instead? We’re too stuck in what we think is life to recognize God’s invitation is towards actual life.
In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul says, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” So what feels like death to us will look like life to others. When I think of it, the people I know who are most free, generous and whole also happen to be the people who have surrendered a lot, over and over again.
Today my sorting and packing took me through my old paintings and when I came to a small, square canvas I had to stop.
In the center of the canvas is a picture from an old children’s book. It shows a little boy, releasing himself with abandon down a slide. I’d chosen it to represent the Jesus we know from Philippians 2 “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”
The little boy in the picture book calls “Here I go!” as he lets himself slide. He abandons himself with joy into whatever is to come. If you look closely, I’ve painted in a little crown he’s tossed aside in the grass and on his head instead is a rusty halo. And at the bottom of the slide a large mud puddle awaits.
There’s nothing about Jesus’ story which makes me think he gave himself begrudgingly. Sure, he wrestles in moments like Gethsemane (which makes his story more relatable) but he chooses the surrender over and over. There’s a joyful abandon, even in the inner turmoil. The total gift of himself. Even though it means casting aside his crown and landing in the mud.
I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve had this all wrong. I’ve imagined God in his comfy throne room calling me once more to do a hard thing. I eventually say yes, hoping he’s finally happy and will leave me alone for a while. But this image of a joyfully abandoned God, sliding into messy human existence, has me wondering—maybe he is asking us to surrender ourselves to join him in the surrender? How might it look for us to not just grudgingly surrender but release with abandon, with, as Catholic mystic, Caryll Houselander describes it, “a fling of the heart to God.”
I’ve had enough experiences like this now to remember that something comes after what feels like death. What if I behaved on this side of the death as if I really believed in the life on the other side? How might I jump in with abandon as an act of faith (even if it involves mud puddles)?
Jesus promises “whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” So why are we surprised that this life we spend building for ourselves, ensuring comfort and success, is never enough? We’re gradually losing everything anyway—not just our physical lives but our social, relational, professional, material lives. Our health, our youth, our possessions and relationships will all slowly drain from us, leaving us at our dying moment in a place where it’s just us and God. Why save that intimacy for that day? Why not choose to surrender everything, with abandon, every day, over and over? To, as missionary (and martyr) Jim Elliot put it, give up what we cannot keep to gain what we cannot lose?
We may learn that even if it kills us, it won’t kill us.
Friends for the (sometimes terrifying) journey:
The lyrics of Jason Gray’s song, Order, Disorder, Reorder help me step into the abandon. (And dancing to it helps me practice.)
Flo Early, Cheese Chasing Champion makes joyful abandon an art. Watch her (literally) launch herself down a hill and come up bruised but smiling.