Self-life vs. Christ-life

Someone has been telling me his story.

It's a long story, with many chapters. Or layers. Or episodes.

In them all, though, he's the hero, struggling against great odds, alone and misunderstood, as is the way with heroes. He will push on, though. Heroically. In the end, he expects to win.

Another person has been telling me his story.

It's a different story, though. Instead of a hero, he's a victim. He's the eternal victim. Nobody understands. Many are against him. Especially the devil. It's hard, and someday he wants to be triumphant, but for now he's hanging in there, pushing on, etc. Someday he'll be the hero, but it seems so far away.

Then there's the story of the trickster/conniver. I guess it's a subset of the hero story, kind of an anti-hero. He wins frequently, and his story is about winning and winning again in life's little skirmishes. He is not always ethically consistent. Whatever. He just wins, which is the point of his story.

All these people have a story, and want to tell me about it. In every case they're at the very center of that story, and the world sort of swirls around them, or comes at them, or bears down in them, or whatever.

All of these people are Christians.

They frequently tell me their stories, the hero, the victim, the trickster. I want to say, "When you begin to die to self, your heroic self-image will die. Your whole story will shrivel up. It will be replaced by another story, greater by far than yours, a story with a different hero. You will be glad to give him the star part, the central role. When you begin to die to self, that is."

But I notice that a lot of Christian publishing thrives on promises that you too can be the hero of your story. That's why so many book covers depict people raising their hands in triumph atop rocky crags that they've just conquered. As if to say, read this book and become a hero, the prince or princess, the victorious warrior, the great man or woman that you are supposed to be.

This is idol worship, that's all.

The alternative? Not I who live, said Paul, but Christ lives in me. Who is the hero in such a statement?

When the serpent tempted Eve, it was by telling her that she could be a star! She bought it, she bit it, and the rest is history. The tendency of the flesh is toward repeating the very same behaviors that alienated us from the presence of God in the first place.

Bad idea, you might think. But to put it aside seems a massive and very unpromising project in self-denial, even should the spirit be willing.

Who will save us from this body of death, I wonder?

And then I remember my hero, Jesus Christ.