Recently I’ve been wondering: if, when Jesus says deny yourself and follow me, that maybe it’s not about ensuring his followers are doormats. Maybe he’s inviting us to deny the part of us that wants to see itself as separate from God and others.
Deny the self that believes that spirituality should be a suffering avoidance program.
Deny the self that always creates a list of demands.
Deny the self that is so turned in on itself that it cannot see much of anything beyond itself…
Because in the end, one aspect of the whole death and resurrection thing that Jesus promised us is the death of the false self.
But the death of the false self doesn’t feel good. In fact, Richard Rohr once wrote that “holiness never feels like holiness; it just feels like you’re dying.”…
But no matter how painful, when the unhealthy ideas and habits and identities we rely on are taken away from us, it just makes space for that which is actually real and actually holy….
Nadia Bolz-Weber. Daily Meditation, CAC, August 31, 2026
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Those who follow Jesus
Have signed on to something weird,
A path that leads not to ascent
To what is normally seen as victory and success
But to descent.
To what is normally seen as renunciation,
Perhaps even failure and defeat.
Those who will be first must be last.
If you want to live, you have to die.
Give, if you want to receive.
Weird.
Or not.
Honestly, if I want to grow,
If I want to become a better human creature,
If I want to “move on,”
I must be continually letting go,
Continually dying.
Beginnings often can only come after endings.
If I am full of ego, for example,
Full of “me,”
(like someone we all know)
Then there is no room for other people,
No room for God.
And if there is no room for God,
Then I must become my own god
If I am too full of “victim,”
Then there is no room in my soul for self-examination;
“What about this mess I am in, is really about me, not them?”
If I can’t let go of my fear, I can’t be open to
Other people.
Change.
God’s new thing.
Maybe Jesus was on to something.
Deny the self,
Let it all go
Hand it all over.
And God will keep much of it.
But God will also hand back that which is worth keeping
And much more besides.
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