Sacrificial Love
Taking up a cross.
I began the reflection on Love by wanting to understand where kindness, care, selflessness, and forgiveness come from. In a world filled with so much indifference, hatred, selfishness, and greed, it seems like a worthy quest.
We are not born with love in us. We are born clueless. It is love that assigns babies value in a dangerous world and protects them. Love is an action, never a reaction. It is a decision of the will, a choice to be made.
Most love songs, poems and stories are about response. This is how we get the false idea that we “fall” in love. If what I am saying is close to true, then when I respond to being loved, I am showing appreciation, not love in return.
True love involves denial of self. It is the opposite of survival of the fittest And yet nothing has been designed to bring more happiness than living as part of a healthy functional family where love lives supreme. Such an institution deserves, and often requires sacrifice, but the results are profound in how they can bless not only family members but t society as a whole
Before you read Jesus’s challenge to the people at large (you and me) and his own disciples, recall what Jesus’s purpose or mission was. He came to save us and bring us into his own family. He was and continues to fight for the family of God.
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Mark 8:34-38 (ESV)
We begin the process of wishing to improve our lives and our relationships, especially those within our families, by considering how we might love and encourage ourselves and them to grow closer to one another. Jesus then tells us essentially that this won’t cut it. It isn’t enough. It is like putting a bandage on a critical gunshot wound.
To have what we most want, we must give up, what we think we can’t live without. In this case, to have the marriage and the family we most want, we must first sacrifice our lives.
But here is the good news.
We are to give up our lives, not to other people, but to God.
And what does this look like?
It is being willing to follow him to the cross (the end of ourselves as autonomous beings). Complete surrender to God as best we can and trusting that God will always care and protect us, ironically saves our souls. To live with our souls intact means we do not lose the very humanity within us that the world is out to destroy. Being now powerfully linked to God, to include identifying Jesus’ suffering on our behalf, we become complete (perfect) vessels to carry his love to our loved ones. No half-measures will work.