GOD LEADS THE WAY IN SELF-SACRIFICE

'...the way of renunciation is not alien to God. In Jesus, God has been there ahead of us...'

Gilbert Meilaender, Thy Will Be Done, p.123.

THE SELF-INTEREST OF CHRISTIAN SELF-SACRIFICE

'The principle runs through life from top to bottom. Give yourself up and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death or your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end; submit every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.225.

SUFFERING IS BETTER THAN SIN

'Sin is often thought of as being motivated by the temptation for pleasure. But perhaps the real power of sin lies in the avoidance of pain and suffering. It is better to suffer unfulfilled needs and desires than to sin. Is this not what self-denial means?' 

Karen H Jobes, 1 Peter: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, p.5. 

FOLLOWING JESUS HURTS

'No one who commits to following Christ, and does so, lives a life of ease. No one. If your Christianity has not brought discomfort to your life, something is wrong. A committed heart knows the discomfort of loving difficult people, the discomfort of giving until it hurts, the discomfort of putting oneself out for the ministry of Christ and his church, the discomfort of a life out of step with modern culture, the discomfort of being disliked, the occasional experience of having nowhere to lay your head.' 

R Kent Hughes, Luke (Vol.1): That You May Know the Truth, p.372. 

WHEN TALK OF DUTY HELPS

'We often use "care" or "carer" for people who would once have thought that what they were doing in say, looking after incapacitated relatives, was a duty. To call the act of changing someone's soiled underclothing an act of caring can make you feel as if you should be doing it because you want to do it, whereas the idea that you're doing it because it's your duty makes it more impersonal and therefore - to my mind, anyway - a lighter burden. It leaves you free to dislike what you are doing while still feeling you are doing the right thing in doing it.' 

John Lanchester in Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun, p.248. 

THE NEW MORALITY

'There is a new morality. The one indisputable law of the new morality is that you cannot deny yourself. Yet the call of Jesus is exactly that: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Lk 9:23).' 

Jeremy R Treat, 'Sexuality and the Church' in Beauty, Order and Mystery, p.56.

TRUE POWER

'True power is best seen in a life willingly offered as sacrifice for the sake of others. There is unexcelled strength in such sacrifice when it is embraced - not simply imposed or inflicted - as a way of aligning oneself with the good kind of power.' 

Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.274. 

A SOCIETY BASED ON SELF-INDULGENCE

'...industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.'
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, p.209. 

WHAT/WHO WOULD YOU DIE FOR?

'The beauty and the tragedy of the modern world is that it eliminates many situations that require people to demonstrate a commitment to the collective good. Protected by police and fire departments and relieved of most of the challenges of survival, an urban man might go through his entire life without having to come to the aid of someone in danger - or even give up his dinner. Likewise, a woman in a society that has codified its moral behavior into a set of laws and penalties might never have to make a choice that puts her very life at risk. What would you risk dying for - and for whom - is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and significant loss. It is a loss because having to face that questions has, for tens of millenia, been one of the ways that we have defined ourselves as people. And it is a blessing because life has gotten far less difficult and traumatic that it was for most people even a century ago.' 

Sebastian Jurgen, Tribe, p.59. 

THE SELF-SACRIFICE OF KINDNESS

'She had a kind heart, though that is not of much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation.' 

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop, p.1. 

CIVILIZATION

'Curbing personal dreams for a greater good is a defining mark of civilization.' 

Tony Little, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Education, p.10. 

VOCATION

'...vocations almost always involve tasks that transcend a lifetime. They almost always involve throwing yourself into a historical process. They involve compensating for the brevity of life by finding membership in a historic commitment.'

David Brooks, The Road to Character, p.46.

SELF-SACRIFICE

'...self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there we will be to help. Wherever men fail, there will be we to uplift. Wherever men succeed, there will we be to rejoice. Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others. It means entering into every man's hopes and fears, longings and despairs: it means manysidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies. It means richness of development. It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives, - binding ourselves to a thousands souls by filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours. It means that all the experiences of men shall smite our souls and shall beat and batter these stubborn hearts of ours into fitness for their heavenly home.'

BB Warfield, 'Imitating the Incarnation', p.8.

JESUS & LOVE

'We stand in the shadow of Jesus, who revealed what true human life was intended to be: He loved others even when he wasn't loved. Jesus shows us that to be truly human means that our desire to love others outdistances our desire to be loved ourselves. True humanness is found more in a sacrificial love for our enemies than in being the object of another person's affections.'

Edward T Welch, Running Scared, p.179.

LOVE

'What is the most important lesson that life has taught you?
Love is sacrifice.'
David Oyelowo, Guardian Weekend, 3rd October 2009, p.9.

SELF-GIVING

'For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being. For the Eternal Word also gives Himself in sacrifice; and that not only on Calvary. For when He was crucified He "did in the wild weather of His outlying provinces which He had done at home in glory and gladness". From before the foundation of the world He surrenders begotten Deity back to begetting Deity in obedience. And as the Son glorifies the Father, so also the Father glorifies the Son...From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever. This is not a heavenly law which we can escape by remaining earthly, nor an earthly law which we can escape by being saved.'

CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p.127.