Life After Loss of Self
By: Elaine Murray
Tags: Christianity, Change, Healing, Forgiveness, Spirituality

Jesus’ words for the Rich Man begging to warn his people to change their ways and get it right are, “If they don’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, then neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.” Sigh.

Photo by Balloon Artist Blcksmth

It brings an air of hopelessness, “total depravity” with which my Calvinistic side would nod along. It’s true. There’s pretty much no miraculous intervention that would convince those caught in these kinds of destructive patterns to change their ways.

But what does?

The point of this parable is a humorous one, believe it or not. It’s a little clue to the soon-to-be-heartbroken listeners that the teacher they love is going to die and come back from the dead and there will be those, even then, who do not believe the truths he’s throwing down or change their ways.

Is it possible for someone to change?

The teacher, Jesus, is in a toxic relationship with the Roman government, with the leaders of his religion, and is misunderstood by most, including, on occasion, those closest to him. Instead of throwing up his hands and saying, “Y’all, I just can’t with you anymore,” he tells a story about change, about life, about death, about justice.

Is it possible to be reborn without going through the womb again, or coming back as a cockroach?

There are other times in the New Testament when Jesus addresses these questions, but what we’re invited to in a simple tale of a rich dude and his poor neighbor is to travel through death, hell, and suffering, and be remade into a version of ourselves that is more ideal — more faithful and true to what makes for an abundant world.

If you are in that place of death and scarcity, seeing perhaps for the first time where you are in relation to where you want to be, or what you’d hoped for life at 22, 30, 50, 75, 87 or more — the will of God is for more than a dip of water from the other side.

The will of God is that through suffering, through coming home to yourself and the realities of loss and life, you might become something more, something new.

“Let it be uncomfortable. Let the discomfort work on you and change you in the way you need to be changed.” — Laura Mckowen

Perhaps new life is a life of sobriety, or a life without a relationship on which you depended. New life exists in a new tax bracket or a new investment in the people, places, and things that matter. It won’t be a dead man walking that will change your mind, or if it is, the dead person may be the you that needs to go.

Photo by Baron Gimenez on Unsplash

At which point, one must cease looking to others for a drop of water or a hint of understanding and begin looking back, and at the present, and then towards the future for congruency. Where do our day to day actions line up with the person you want to be, this week, next year, when your children graduate, when you are in a seat on the other side?

Grace makes a way for us to be reborn, yes, in this life — for death, suffering, and resurrection to be part of human existence on this plane. Let us have ears to listen, courage to heed, and humility to submit the parts of ourselves that would suffer and die if not for God’s provision to keep going through transformation.

Elaine Murray is (in this order) a child of God, a mother, a pastor, a writer, a health coach, and a divorcee living courageously into futures she didn’t expect.