I'm A Dead Man (And Other Lies We Tell)

"I'm a dead man."

I'd heard him say it before, maybe a year or two ago. I don't see him often, but our paths had crossed again. Once more the familiar words rolled out of his mouth as he reclined on a sofa in rude health, having just enjoyed a large and sumptuous meal.

A few minutes earlier he had been excitedly relating to me the latest on his search for the ideal retirement community – one which would doubtlessly be warm all year long and situated near a golf course. But conversation had now moved on to the topic of life with Christ, and his language suddenly changed so as to suit the occasion.

"I'm a dead man."

I didn't believe his claim the first time around, and this second pass wasn't any more convincing. I've never seen a more self-satisfied dead man in my life. I know something of his daily life, and best I can tell it has precious little to do with daily death.

So much for this other fellow. What about me? I ate that same tasty meal he ate, and I hope to retire one day too. Am I really different? if so, not nearly enough.

We all, to varying degrees, leave the dying to Christ. We are in the business of comfortably living. Our common desire to arrange for a suitable retirement is just the final chapter in a book devoted to the same enterprise.

Christ's participation in our lives is always commensurate with our participation in his death. Given that we devote our lives to avoiding crosses, why should we be surprised that the American church evidences so little of his resurrection power? Only the dead can be resurrected, and we refuse to die.

The question inevitably arises.... What does it mean to die with Christ? The entire New Testament is an end-to-end answer that question. So why then is the question so inevitable? It's inevitable because we read New Testament like the consumers we are. We pick and choose what we read, notice and remember – and it's usually things we've been trained by our consumerist society to value. Given that our society places a premium on avoiding death, it's not surprising that we fail to notice that death to self is the first, main ingredient in God's recipe to make us anew into the image of Christ.

By avoiding the blindingly obvious scriptural call to die with Christ, we generally miss not only the forest but also the vast majority of the trees. Truth be told, it's a good day when we notice the shrubs. Take Mark 10 for a simple example. The entire chapter reeks of self mortification (both literal and figurative), but our consumerist take-away from Mark 10 is the two verses where Jesus promises us a hundred-fold return on whatever we give up for his sake. (1oo-fold? In this life? Yahoo!) Driven by our fleshly desires, we fix our eyes on a solitary shrub in a chapter full of trees.

Even the shrubs we do not examine too closely. Who remembers that in those same two verses Jesus also promised us persecutions? As the old joke goes... "Is that a promise? Or a threat?" At best we in the American church would take such words as "advance warning." Those who have died with Christ, however, call them a promise – and a good one at that. The Apostle Paul said as much in his letter to the Corinthians.

But we don't want a promise like that, so we firstly ignore it, secondly forget it, and thirdly (the coup de grâce) get offended when the promised persecutions arrive. (Witness the righteous indignation in those various circulating religious emails we all see from time to time.)

We forget everything else Jesus said in Mark 10 too, which explains why we proceed to divorce as often as anyone else, hoard up money just like everyone else (for our retirement, we explain...) and avoid placing ourselves in danger just like everyone else. Like the rest of the general population, we want nothing to do with carrying crosses, be they relational, financial, or physical.

Crosses are for dead men.

2 Corinthians 12:10
That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Mark 10:22
At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.