Lifeguards attempting to rescue a drowning person are sometimes hindered in their attempts by the panicking of the one they are rescuing. This usually results in their wildly thrashing around in the water and being unable to stop trying to save themselves and allow the lifeguard to do his/her work. This is somewhat analogous to Jesus’ assertion that whoever wished to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Like the drowning person futilely trying to save himself, our spiritual efforts at saving ourselves actually risk the loss of ourselves. And so the question becomes: Why do we attempt to save ourselves and resist allowing ourselves to be saved by Christ our Savior?
Along with the probable presence of foolish pride in the face of the seeming humiliation of needing to be saved, there is also, perhaps, a panic similar to that experienced by the drowning person. This, in turn, is to assert that the act of being saved and rescued from our sinful misery and hopelessness doesn’t always feel like rescue or salvation—often just the opposite; it can feel like our disintegration and dissolution. This is a reminder that being rescued from the life-threatening waters of sin and alienation from God, is not some magical and instant divine intervention, but a long process that steadily disentangles our hearts from the shackles of sin.
Integral to this painful process is that growing self-knowledge that exposes the true extent of our sin and our unlikeness both to God and the person we are created to be. This usually first requires the dismantling of the façade (or veneer) with which we have shielded ourselves from the true extent of our sinful condition—that persona and the false image we have of ourselves, often involving the superficial criteria of our contemporary world. With grace’s steady dismantling of our persona and the veneer that shielded us from true self-knowledge, we seem to be disintegrating and losing ourselves. Then, like the drowning person we tenaciously make efforts to shore up our flawed self-image and resist God’s saving work.
Saint John of the Cross uses the image of the log thrown into the fire. Initially, the fire blackens and disfigures the log as it exposes what was otherwise hidden. Only gradually do the purifying flames change the log into the beauty of the fire that, while seeming to consume the log, is actually transforming it. Nevertheless, as beautiful as this resulting effect sounds, the transformation process is anything but beautiful and demands a deep faith that what seems like dying is actually a coming to birth—indeed, a birth into who we truly are under all the disfiguring accretions of sin and estrangement from God.
Jesus doesn’t use the image of a log thrown into the fire; instead, he speaks of the cross, and of denying oneself. Part of that cross and self-denial, is the willingness to trust God by enduring what seems like the loss of ourselves in the purifying flames of Christ’s love, but is actually just the prelude to new and true life—a life that none can take from us since it is eternal and inseparable from the Lord of all Life.