“Leave all things and follow me”
You have to have it before you can give it away. You have to know yourself before you can move beyond yourself. Most people therefore just glaze over when they hear such impossible idealism.
“Take up your cross”
By and large, young people are not yet ready to understand “the cross.” It becomes a piece of jewelry instead of a real agenda for life. People in the first half of life are about growing up, not growing down. Most people are not psychologically capable of truly grasping the full need and importance of letting go until their fifties or sixties, and many not even then.
.. In the first half of life, you can’t let go or turn around. You’re rightly focused on creating a name for yourself, finding a spouse and job, accumulating money and possessions. But you must eventually let go so you can fall into your True Self that was always there, but that you were just not ready to meet.
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”
The first half of life uses the dualistic language of good guys and bad guys. The illusion is that some are all good and some are all bad, and the delusion is that we’ve got to kill all the bad ones. The first half of life is where we’re taught to separate from evil (see Leviticus 16-25). Paul says “Jesus became sin” (see 2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus became the problem; he became the broken, imperfect one. He entered into solidarity with the sin of the world rather than stand above or apart from it. Jesus absorbed evil. He didn’t think for a moment he could kill it. He let it wreak its havoc on his body to transform it there, rather than perpetuate violence on others.
.. Not willfulness but willingness
.. I’m not surprised that a well-dressed, thirty-year-old man wants his titles and diplomas on the wall. I surely still carry some status symbols, but it doesn’t mean much now. If you’re my age and you still need external symbols of prestige to tell yourself and others that you’re important
.. I don’t know why we picked and chose among Jesus’ teachings. But I think it reflects first-half-of-life morality. The church just wasn’t ready to follow Jesus all the way with his second-half-of-life wisdom.