Title: Life in Search of Self
“And he who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me; whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:38,39).
Everyone's life will be a journey to find their true self until they die. In a word, it is to seek the answer to the question, “Who am I?” Specifically, questions such as who I am, how I came to this place, this time, and this form, how I should live for what purpose in the future, what death means to me and what will happen after I die will be included. is.
There is virtually no one who does not seek answers to these questions. No matter how much you pretend to be uninterested and detached, in reality you are not. I was looking for an answer and couldn't find it, or it was too difficult, so I pause for a moment and pretend that it is. Inwardly, I'm still looking for an answer.
In other words, as long as you get clear answers to these questions, your life is successful. Even if you find the answer but do not live according to the answer, it is not a half success, but a great success. Because most people end their lives without even getting an answer.
Every human life is a series of struggles in the search for self. Because there is no God, the atheist has the answer that he is a material being, and that he is a being with a high degree of designation, unlike animals. Islam believes in blind obedience to Allah, Judaism is a sense of choice, Confucianism is an ethically controlled life, and Buddhism in particular believes that you can find your true self if you kill yourself.
How about Christianity? Jesus told us to take up our cross. So does that mean it's like the Buddhist way of discovering the self? It's not like that. In Buddhism, the work of killing oneself ends only in killing oneself. Since human greed for the world is the cause of all contradictions, sins and suffering, we work to eliminate it to the end, but no one has succeeded, and even if we say that we have succeeded, the end is nothing.
Then, considering the process up to that point, it means that there was no meaning. If the results of all your life's efforts are nothing, then why did you live that life? Also, the effort to completely kill one's self is, in fact, another greed and delusion.
No matter how hard a human being, who is obsessed with all kinds of greed, will he get more than that of course? Simply put, do national students have to spend their whole lives solving calculus problems to never get the correct answer? Human beings are imperfect, so we strive to achieve the Path of Deuk, but if the starting point is incomplete, the destination will also be incomplete. In this way, the Buddhist self-discovery work is bound to fail objectively and forever, and ironically, after only getting the answer that it failed for the rest of his life, he misunderstands or argues that it is the correct answer.
Believers must kill themselves, but must die on the cross of Jesus. An imperfect man can never find his true self in his imperfect self by imperfect effort. To kill yourself, you must first realize this fact. In a word, realizing that human beings are too imperfect is the beginning of Christian self-discovery.
Being imperfect has some good points, but it is not a lack of perfect. It means completely imperfect, that is, perfectly imperfect. If it is simply imperfect, it must be corrected and supplemented and moved toward perfection. On the other hand, if it is completely incomplete, you have to completely destroy the old one and start over. However, if it is completely destroyed, it will still become nothing like Buddhism. It must be filled with new things in the place where it is broken and lost.
Therefore, the Christian's self-discovery must be the image of bearing the cross in Jesus. And the cross is never about trying to be righteous and good on your own. That is to say, it does not mean that we strive to develop our character and character and live a morally good and religiously pious life.
As with Christian truth, the believer's self-discovery must be paradoxical. You are fully aware that you were in a state of complete depravity when God was excluded. It is acknowledging that the ego state prior to knowing Jesus could not bear any good fruit, and that no matter what he did, he only smelled dirty and ugly. You must be convinced that killing the self is the greatest benefit to you, and not killing the self is the greatest harm.
The self without Jesus is not and cannot be the true self, so we must give up our self as soon as possible. It's not about finding the self, it's about breaking the self. And we must fill that empty state with the love of Jesus on the cross. Even a sinner like me must confess that the grace that He loved enough to give His life and adopted as your child is so precious. Therefore, we must interpret and judge everything within that love, become a person worthy of receiving that love, and train and practice to share that love with others.
As William Jenkin said, "There is nothing to lose by being sanctified except to kill the self." As a believer, you lose only one self, but you gain “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). When the believer's self is completely broken, He fills it with the fullness of Christ who fills all things.
In other words, only those who believe in Jesus can discover their true self and lead a successful life. And that happens the moment you confess that Jesus is Lord. So, the life of a believer is not a journey to find the self for a lifetime. It is to enjoy and live a true and blessed life in the newly found perfect self. The moment you believe in Jesus, your life is completely turned upside down, and because you are in Him, you can boldly face people, sin, and Satan. No longer swayed by delusion, conflict, and confusion. Instead of wandering around as a seeker for the rest of your life, you are living a life of walking with Jesus as a believer in God.
Then, what kind of cross should a believer carry every day? Is it the trials and tribulations that come with your own strength? Is it ugly and dirty thoughts and greed? So should I try not to sin and live a life like Mother Teresa? no. Efforts to find one's self in human, worldly, and religious ways are still the cross that believers must bear. The imperfect self stops trying to find the self in the still imperfect self. It is an immediate cessation of any attempt to find the self anywhere other than in the cross of Jesus Christ.
Again, the believer no longer has to make an effort to find himself. Because they have already discovered their true self. Even so, unfortunately, there are too many people who believe in Jesus and find who they are in the religion of Christianity, which is wrapped up in the name of justice, morality, or even faith. What did Jesus say? Didn't he say that he who loses his life for you will find the true life, and that that is what it means to take up the cross? Doesn't that mean that if you risk your life on something other than Jesus, you will only get the answer of nothing if you go through your life?
Are you completely surrendering the self you have already found in Jesus to His grace? Or are you trying to find your self in Christianity and realize it yourself?
7/30/2006