Lose Your Life
Most polls will tell you two things about Americans: 1) they don't approve of Congress, and 2) they approve of their Congressional representatives. How can this be? Easy: it's the fractured, pork-laden, and, some would say, corrupt nature of what passes for congressional politics nowadays. The rules of the game we don't like, but the fact that our guy or gal played it well makes them OK in our book.
I'm not here to excuse our elected officials -- I wish and work for things to be better -- but I understand their plight. After all, like all of us, they're looking out for their own jobs. All the things you don't like about congressional politics -- earmarks, gerrymandering, dirty campaigning -- can be explained by the fact that these people could lose their seat every two to six years.
It's no different in other fields, lest we unfairly heap all of our righteous indignation on the professional politicians. Unions, for example, lobby in ways that will protect their members' jobs and their business' opportunities, even if those ways are a net loss for society as a whole. You conspiracy theorists among you would argue that there are entire job categories that benefit from "the war on drugs" -- policemen, judges, prison operators -- that don't really want to win that "war" as much as make sure it stays well-funded.
On a personal level, we do things every day to demonstate we're more interested in personal protection than in societal benefit. We move our kids to better school districts instead of helping improve the ones we're in. We consume according to our own preferences for price and feature, not accounting for any social injustices we're supporting with those purchases.
Which is why Jesus' rhetoric about saving your life and losing your life is just so darn radical. Instead of protecting your own job, you use that job while you have it to benefit others? Instead of looking out for your own family, you work hard to help out other families? How quaint and unusual that is, in this day and age.
And yet the motivator Jesus uses isn't altruism but the opposite. "If you try to save your life, you'll lose it; but if you lose it for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, you'll save it." It's not bad to want to save your life, Jesus implies; it's the way you're going about it that's all wrong.
Here we are, looking for the politicians who can't be bought, for the leaders who stand for something greater than their own personal gain -- and we who call ourselves Christians, who of all people have a logical motivation to "lose our lives," haven't lived up to that calling.
At least in the political and civic realms, those who have stood out lately in this respect are people who are either so rich they can't be bought or so radical that they care nothing about what rules they're breaking or what conventions they're flaunting. Besides these two groups, the landscape is bland with people like you and me, who might mean well but at the core are in it for themselves.
Jesus calls us instead to be the salt of the earth, to spice up this monotony with radical living that trades self-saving with self-losing for the gospel and for others. Would that we who call ourselves by His name get a little saltier in the way we live our lives, in the way we approach politics, parenting, and purchasing; the way we do citizenship, commerce, and community; the way we steward our time, talent, and treasure.
I'm not here to excuse our elected officials -- I wish and work for things to be better -- but I understand their plight. After all, like all of us, they're looking out for their own jobs. All the things you don't like about congressional politics -- earmarks, gerrymandering, dirty campaigning -- can be explained by the fact that these people could lose their seat every two to six years.
It's no different in other fields, lest we unfairly heap all of our righteous indignation on the professional politicians. Unions, for example, lobby in ways that will protect their members' jobs and their business' opportunities, even if those ways are a net loss for society as a whole. You conspiracy theorists among you would argue that there are entire job categories that benefit from "the war on drugs" -- policemen, judges, prison operators -- that don't really want to win that "war" as much as make sure it stays well-funded.
On a personal level, we do things every day to demonstate we're more interested in personal protection than in societal benefit. We move our kids to better school districts instead of helping improve the ones we're in. We consume according to our own preferences for price and feature, not accounting for any social injustices we're supporting with those purchases.
Which is why Jesus' rhetoric about saving your life and losing your life is just so darn radical. Instead of protecting your own job, you use that job while you have it to benefit others? Instead of looking out for your own family, you work hard to help out other families? How quaint and unusual that is, in this day and age.
And yet the motivator Jesus uses isn't altruism but the opposite. "If you try to save your life, you'll lose it; but if you lose it for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, you'll save it." It's not bad to want to save your life, Jesus implies; it's the way you're going about it that's all wrong.
Here we are, looking for the politicians who can't be bought, for the leaders who stand for something greater than their own personal gain -- and we who call ourselves Christians, who of all people have a logical motivation to "lose our lives," haven't lived up to that calling.
At least in the political and civic realms, those who have stood out lately in this respect are people who are either so rich they can't be bought or so radical that they care nothing about what rules they're breaking or what conventions they're flaunting. Besides these two groups, the landscape is bland with people like you and me, who might mean well but at the core are in it for themselves.
Jesus calls us instead to be the salt of the earth, to spice up this monotony with radical living that trades self-saving with self-losing for the gospel and for others. Would that we who call ourselves by His name get a little saltier in the way we live our lives, in the way we approach politics, parenting, and purchasing; the way we do citizenship, commerce, and community; the way we steward our time, talent, and treasure.
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