If anyone would come after me ...
Haven’t blogged for a while ... I have been reading this good book you see. Something is brewing, but just for now, something else I read in said book (Adam Bede, by George Eliot) that got me thinking is the passage below from a letter written by Dinah, the pure and lovely Methodist. George Eliot actually abandoned her Christianity (and "lived in sin" with G. Lewes, which flies in the face of so much of the instructional narrative of Adam Bede, as well as her other novels) so I read her insights cautiously. But this is what Dinah writes:
These thoughts have been borne in on me of late, and I have see with new clearness the meaning of those words, "If any man love me, let him take up my cross." I have heard this enlarged on as if it meant the troubles and persecutions we bring on ourselves by confessing Jesus. But surely that is a narrow thought. The true cross of the Redeemer was the sin and sorrow of this world – that was what lay heavy on his heart – and that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we must drink of with him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love which is one with his sorrow.
For starters, the verse has actually been misquoted in that it says "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (emphasis mine) - in Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:24 and Luke 9:23 of the ESV. If anyone out there has reason to believe the original Greek is ambiguous at that point then please let me know. So, we are not actually taking up the cross of Jesus himself, and are actually incapable of bearing the sin and sorrow of this world in the way that Jesus did, in taking them TO the cross to set the world free of them. We're taking up our own cross. George Eliot is right in saying that this passage is generally enlarged upon to mean those things we forsake, or suffer, or bear for the sake of following Jesus to heaven. But is she also right in saying that that is a narrow thought? Does, or should, our interpretation include the sin and sorrow of this world? How different would the application of that verse be if it did? (In context, Dinah goes out to work amongst all the sick, poor and sorrowing, and it is from there that she writes this letter.) I’m still thinking about it myself (and I haven’t quite finished the book yet, so this blog can’t expect my full attention) ... Your comments and thoughts appreciated ...