Sacrifice

In today's Stillspeaking Devotional, Rev. Fitzgerald recounts the story of sixteenth-century Mennonite martyr Dirk Willems, who was incarcerated for his faith by the authorities. He managed to escape across a treacherously frozen river but turned around when the guard who pursued him broke through the ice. Willems saved the guard's life, was captured again and later executed. "It is a great story", comments Fitzgerald. "But it is a Christian story. Which is to say it has a cross in it."

Duly impressed with Willems' sacrifice, I continued my morning tour of the interwebs, only to stumble on this insightful little piece: a list of seven "habits of happy people". Most of those are common, wisdom-laden spiritual fare (embrace impermanence, don't crave approval, see rejection as guidance), but the first one got me thinking. "Happy people", the author boldly proclaims, "put themselves first". They take care of their own needs before they cater to anyone else's.

At face value, these two bits of writing seem to starkly contradict each other, and to sum up the range of options our culture provides re dealing with our own needs. On the one hand, there is the much-admired, but somewhat gloomy, Christian ideal of giving up our own needs for those of others. Which, as we all know, hasn't created spiritually mature people, but mostly suffocated, sour-faced killjoys and co-dependents. On the other hand, there is the sheer hedonism (or so it seems) of the me-first culture, which comes with materialism, selfishness, and a general lack of compassion and connection. 

Faced with these options, overall cynicism about the human condition would be the best response. But there is an alternative, namely, to realize that things aren't as simple as they look in superficial readings of both approaches. Let's go back to Willems' story. And let's imagine he had put his own wish to survive before the guard's. What would his life have looked like?

To answer this question, we must dig deep into the human condition and ask ourselves, "What is the deepest need we have?" Turns that out our deepest longing is not survival or even well-being, but meaning. As long as we can make sense of life, as long as it is meaningful to us, we can cope with almost any condition. And rarely do we encounter a suffering more agonizing than the absence of meaningfulness. All religion, philosophy, and much common sense as well as common nonsense, revolve around ascribing meaning to our existence.

Willems found his meaning in faith, and his faith was based on nonviolence, and radical love of God and neighbor. If he hadn't turned around to save the guard, odds are his life would have been meaningless from that point. He would have given up what was most important to him. He would have neglected his deepest need: the need for meaning.

His sacrifice, then, was not what we usually take that term to mean. He sacrificed his freedom and his life, yes: but not to suit some higher ideal or abstract faith statement. He sacrificed them for the sake of his own, deepest self. A self rooted in a reality more profound than the world in which we put survival and comfort above all else. We have to imagine that he was at peace with his decision: an all-encompassing peace, welling up from this deeper reality, which would have remained forever elusive had he chosen to run.

This is the true meaning of faith, and the true meaning of sacrifice. Any sacrifice that is not authentic, that is less than a completely truthful expression of who we are at our deepest level, is not an act of faith, it's an act of showing off. One of those Jesus warned against. 

And now it becomes clear that there is no fundamental contradiction between the Christian path of self-emptying love, and the contemporary insistence on pursuing our needs and wants. For in this day and age, meanings are no longer simply handed down to us. We have to find them for ourselves, and we have no place to start but ourselves. Therefore, our journey begins with taking even our sillier whims seriously. 

Craving pie, a burger, a trip to New Zealand? Don't dismiss those in the name of some misunderstood idea of spiritual discipline. Make them your discipline. Pursue them without mistaking them for absolute truth or final fulfillment. Look into them without judging them. Over time, they will reveal their fleeting, finite nature, and make way for deeper and deeper layers of longing: for they aren't your true goals, only signposts for the journey. They will evaporate,and you will become ever more authentic in the process. Eventually, you will encounter your own deepest meaning, and you will find that you'll have sacrificed your whims along the way. 

And no one can tell you what shape your particular sacrifice will take. Some of us who make the journey trade an all-too comfortable life for dramatic encounters with sheer existence. Others give up constant drama and impossible dreams for the peaceful routines of a life lived simply and humbly. Some experience both. Whichever form your path may take, one thing is true for all of us: ultimately, "sacrifice" is not giving up what is important to us, but living up to it. Thus, the true meaning of the term isn't to rid ourselves of who we are, but to let go of who we are not. To uncover the truth, the power and the glory which has been lying awake at the ground of our being since the beginning of time.