Overcoming isolation within the self
“True self-denial (the denial of our false, fallen self) is not the road to self-destruction but the road to self-discovery.”14
Brett McCracken • Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community
The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social
... See moreC. S. Lewis • Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics)
It is this experience of ministering to our neighbor that allows for a cruciform transcendence that answers Secular 3 with a faith manifest in love of God and neighbor. It’s not that you suck or that when God looks at you, God only sees Jesus. Rather, you are invited to recognize and admit your places of isolation, rejection, loneliness, and fear a
... See moreAndrew Root • Faith Formation in a Secular Age : Volume 1 (Ministry in a Secular Age): Responding to the Church's Obsession with Youthfulness
Gregory Boyle ministers to gang members in Los Angeles and captures the difference between a life lived for self and one lived for others: “Compassion is always, at its most authentic, about a shift from the cramped world of self-preoccupation into a more expansive place of fellowship.” It’s one of the inescapable truisms of life: You have to lose
... See moreDavid Brooks • The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
How might I, in union with the Trinity, receive other people and respond as myself? How might I lean in to my identity as beloved and cooperate with the Father, Son, and Spirit by creating space for people to step out of their own false story and wake up to their unique contribution to the making-new of all creation?