"IS HE MOSTLY DEAD, OR ALL DEAD?..."
By Melinda Fish
No wonder Jesus said to us that the key to true discipleship is reckoning oneself dead. After almost fifty-eight years as a Christian, I'm beginning to understand why and what He really meant. I realize now that for much of my Christian life, I was hoping He just meant "mostly dead." Maybe I could get by with faking it by looking spiritual. I identified with Wesley, the protagonist of the movie, "The Princess Bride," when his friends brought him in unconscious to Miracle Max ( Billy Crystal).
Miracle Max asked, "Is he all dead or just mostly dead?"
Who wants to be "all dead?" When you are "all dead," there is no going back. You lose it all including your life, your agenda, your reputation, your defense, your control and all your rights including the right to choose. Who wants to go there?
It's not just a one time choice, either, Jesus said we have to die every day. The paradox is that your death, as His was, is the secret of experiencing the power of His resurrection in your life.
Back in Jesus' day, capital punishment wasn't as easy as it is now with lethal injection, you actually had to suffer physical torture in a gruesome public display known as crucifixion. It served as warning to everyone who walked past your rotting body that you were deserving of this shameful torment. It was a form of punishment, sometimes lasting for days, that embodied the words "cruel and unusual."
In World War II, the Japanese kamikaze pilots displayed such devotion to the emperor that they hardened themselves and drove their planes into American ships in the hopes of destroying them. They were feared more than any other Japanese weapon. When the sailors on board the target ships heard the deadly whistle created by their final plummet, they knew there was no weapon to stop them. Like the jihadists of today, the decision to reckon oneself dead was their key to spreading terror.
But Jesus wasn't talking about committing suicide in which you are in control. When you die on a cross, you can't put yourself there. Others, particularly your enemies, will be very happy to help. Nor is it like suicide which we commit to get this "dying thing" out of the way.
Have you ever tried to heed a preacher's admonition to "die to yourself?"
I have. I've tried to give up things for Jesus like the privilege of having a new blouse or a new refrigerator. I thought that if I was willing to give up stuff, I was taking up my cross, but it was only a pathetic attempt at what I thought Jesus wanted. So is any form of sacrifice such as giving my body to be burned, selling everything I have to feed the poor and going to a third world mission field. You can do all of that and even fast for 40 days, but according to the Apostle Paul, it is not what Jesus was talking about. Do all this and you will still only be "mostly dead."
Why? It is only appeasement, something you do to satisfy your religious self and just another thing in which you can take glory.
The kind of dying Jesus meant isn't subject to your convenience. In fact, when and how is not up to you. You give up entire control over it until you draw your last breath. No one can or should try to shame it out of you. And no one should over dramatize his own death by bragging about it to inspire you to donate money in the offering plate. That only glorifies the self, hiding it under a veil of self-sacrifice. That opposes the very thing this death is designed to do: remove the only barrier between receiving His unconditional love and giving it away freely.
The moment you really die may be a secret, because likely no one will know it but you. You will give Him permission to carry out the sentence at His convenience, whenever and wherever He chooses. It may be quick, but it may not be. It may be embarrassing or not. You will not threaten or scream, you just simply decide to let go and lose yourself in Him.
Then it happens. You find yourself at peace and flooded with Divine joy. When your self-love dies, you realize you are the object of His magnificent love and the wall in your heart falls down. In that moment, He starts flowing out of you to the other "objects" of His love all around you. God releases His secret weapon of mass destruction-pure, selfless love.
God isn't calling you to be "loving," to imitate what only death can produce. And He isn't interested in your blouse or refrigerator. Those things are only a mockery of real death. He is just asking for you, just as you are, to give up and stop resisting the inevitable.
Shakespeare wrote, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once."
What are you waiting for?
