{"id":125,"date":"2012-05-31T10:45:48","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T10:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meditations.kafkasworld.com\/dir\/?p=125"},"modified":"2012-05-31T10:45:48","modified_gmt":"2012-05-31T10:45:48","slug":"forgetfulness-and-dying-to-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/05\/31\/forgetfulness-and-dying-to-self\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgetfulness and Dying to Self"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
Forgetfulness and Dying to Self
\nCopyright 2011 by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n

Living out the Christian life requires dying to self. This is a recurring and primary theme in the New Testament. For many earnest believers it is also a theme which causes some puzzlement. Just how, exactly, do we die to self? What part of ourselves are we dying to? Does this mean that we are to somehow annihilate any consciousness of our own existence, as some Eastern religions appear to teach? Should we hate ourselves in order to die to ourselves? The entire concept seems a bit strange to our natural eyes and can even be interpreted in such a way as to inspire great fear, fear of what this \u201cdying\u201d means and fear of what may happen to us if we can\u2019t accomplish it. It is, after all, a divine mandate. Without dying to self the Scriptures indicate we cannot truly follow Christ.<\/p>\n

At least part of the answer to this problem can perhaps be found in something C.S. Lewis once wrote. He said that our best spiritual moments came when we forgot about ourselves in the contemplation of God. In other words Lewis did not so much counsel annihilating oneself as losing oneself in gazing at Something, Some One infinitely greater than us. Whenever our spiritual eyes are fixed on God we lose our natural self-centeredness in the process. It was, for Lewis, a matter of focus. Inwardness is displaced by an \u201coutwardness\u201d that comes with focusing on our Lord.<\/p>\n

I would submit that this profound forgetting is, at the very least, the beginning of the dying that the Bible speaks of. As we become more and more drawn to the glory of God in Christ our Adamic self-obsession begins to fade. Our self-centeredness becomes God-centeredness.<\/p>\n

Of course the Christian life must be something other than a continuous rapturous gazing at the divine. In this world, at best, we seem able to have only limited experiences of \u201cthe Beatific Vision\u201d. A constant knowing of God in this way will have to wait for Heaven for even the most contemplative saint. No one can spend all their waking hours in such a state of meditation, nor should they, for our mission as sons and daughters of God on Earth requires that we live out a good deal of our lives here in loving action towards others in the name of our Lord and Savior. In other words, dying to ourselves in times of \u201cGodward\u201d contemplation should result in a further dying to ourselves through the act of loving others. When the Bible speaks of this process it is often in the context of learning to love others in very practical and sometimes very sacrificial ways.<\/p>\n

However the proverbial baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater. An old Christian clich\u00e9 concerns the benighted believer who is \u201cso heavenly-minded that he\/she is no earthly good.\u201d The implication is that some Christians are so obsessed with spiritual visions that they have forgotten that God primarily wants them to be about the business of good works. An assumption is made here that these two things are somehow mutually exclusive. This is, I think, rarely if ever true. Many of us try to love through sheer self-effort, accent on the self. Consciously or unconsciously relying on our flesh to provide the power to love is a tragic error. In trying to love others in this way we find ourselves doing so for the wrong reason and under the wrong power. Such \u201clove\u201d ends up being much more about us than about the supposed object of our love and the act of \u201cloving\u201d ends up based on the very self we are called to die to. As such it becomes narcissistic and compulsive. True love is neither of these things.<\/p>\n

It is only through being filled with the love of Christ that we can \u201coverflow\u201d that love to others and an indispensable part of this happening is making the decision to spend substantial periods of time centering our consciousness on our Lord and on our Lord alone. Whether this comes through worship or biblically-congruent forms of meditation it is absolutely necessary to becoming more genuinely loving. Again it is largely in forgetting ourselves through focusing on the divine that we die to ourselves. In focusing on God we open up a primary means of both loving Him and being filled with his love for others. While we will not always (or even often) be caught up into utter spiritual rapture through such focusing, with time we can come to almost always connect with God in a profound way. This contemplative connection serves the purpose of enabling us to better love our Creator and Redeemer because we end up experiencing His love for us in a very real sense and, as Scripture tells us, \u201cwe love because he first loved us\u201d. Beyond that this experience can more than fill us leading to that overflowing love for others.<\/p>\n

Through the help we receive from God in spending time with Him in this way we can further our self-forgetfulness and truly \u201cdie to self\u201d in a way that does not cause fear as much as a joyful sense of expectation. It is the expectation that knowing and loving God will set us free to know and love others\u2026.and in doing so find a deeper, more blessed union with Christ, the One who loves us more than we can know in our wildest imaginations\u2026.that is until we meet Him face to face.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forgetfulness and Dying to Self Copyright 2011 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Living out the Christian life requires dying to self. This is a recurring and primary theme in the New Testament. For many earnest believers it is also a theme which causes some puzzlement. Just how, exactly, do we die to self? What… <\/p>\n

Read more Forgetfulness and Dying to Self<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-christian","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6GkOA-21","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":759,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2015\/12\/08\/is-self-hatred-christian\/","url_meta":{"origin":125,"position":0},"title":"Is Self-Hatred Christian?","date":"December 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved \u201cThough the command to hate oneself in order to follow Christ can be grossly misinterpreted, it makes perfect sense if it is understood as a relinquishment of the biopsychosocial and ethical self who lives autonomously in relation to God\u201d. -Eric L. Johnson Through\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":980,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2017\/02\/08\/self-denial-versus-self-condemnation\/","url_meta":{"origin":125,"position":1},"title":"Self-Denial Versus Self-Condemnation","date":"February 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved There is a fundamental difference between the actions of self-condemnation and self-denial - one is of God and one isn\u2019t. Some believers tend to equate these actions with each other. It is a sure recipe for a defeated life. This is because, when\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":513,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2014\/05\/14\/why-dying-to-self-is-a-good-thing\/","url_meta":{"origin":125,"position":2},"title":"Why Dying to Self is a Good Thing","date":"May 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved. \u201c \u2018Cause love never claims the victory until it finally gives it\u2019s all.\u201d The above line, from a Ginny Owens song, speaks volumes about the Christian life. We find it so hard to believe that sacrifice is a good thing. In our fallen\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1076,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/13\/the-judgment-paradox\/","url_meta":{"origin":125,"position":3},"title":"The Judgment Paradox","date":"July 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Though we often are not consciously aware of it I believe there is something in us that actually craves the coming of God\u2019s final judgment on the world. We desire to see all things put right that we sense are wrong in our\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":628,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/26\/human-connection-and-a-new-reformation\/","url_meta":{"origin":125,"position":4},"title":"Human Connection and a New Reformation","date":"February 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Relationship is at the core of the Christian life. This should not be surprising as the God we worship is a Trinity, living eternally in relationship within the Godhead. As creatures made in God\u2019s image we are utterly relational beings and apart from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":634,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2015\/03\/05\/salvation-and-self-condemnation\/","url_meta":{"origin":125,"position":5},"title":"Salvation and Self-Condemnation","date":"March 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Self-Condemnation is no remedy for self-centeredness. In fact self-condemnation is, by definition, self-centered. Some Christians have made the mistake of thinking that by mercilessly condemning themselves they are somehow cooperating with God\u2019s plan for enabling them to die to self. This is a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}