Self-care vs Self-denial
This blog forms part of a Restore Ministries series discussing the category of self-care in the light of scripture. Please ensure you read and watch these materials in context with the rest of the series on self-care as this discussion is much larger than any particular video or blog.
In this blog I want to address what I believe is the most obvious clash between self-care and scripture: the teachings of Jesus on self-denial.
If it were a boxing match, this would be the heavyweight match up. When you line up self-denial and self-care side by side, this is what it looks like:
Self-care according to Beyond Blue - “Taking care of yourself is the most important part of managing your mental health and wellbeing.” It is about “putting our own needs first.”
Self-denial according to Jesus - “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24–25)
So what are we to do?
Put ourselves first or deny ourselves?
Good question.
Some of you may respond internally by thinking death to self is a one off – that’s the way you get in, not the way you operate once you are in. But Jesus doesn’t let you off the hook. This is the rendering of the same saying by Luke, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
Daily.
And it gets worse.
As we look through scripture, it becomes obvious that death to self is not only a critical ingredient in salvation, but a critical ingredient of a fruitful life and ministry.
This, from the apostle Paul:
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4:8–12)
Paul would not make the cut for the self-care marketing campaign for Beyond Blue. He breaks all the rules. His self-denial is truly legendary. Go back and chew on verse 12 for a minute or two. What Paul is saying is the amount of life you produce around you is proportional to the amount of death going on in you. You just can’t be fruitful in life or ministry without regularly dying to self.
If death to self is an essential ingredient for fruitful life and ministry, then how do you die to yourself in a sustainable way?
Someone might say, “Yeah, but what about the person who is burnt out, who has nothing left to give?” On the surface I would respond by asking you whether our personal struggles exempt us from this command of Jesus. I don’t think they do, and I don’t think Jesus does either. The very raising of this question highlights a problem in the way we understand self-denial. For many of us, when we think of self-denial in the context of life and ministry, we think about burning the candle at both ends, forsaking rest and time with our family, or being a workaholic. Now whilst some of those things will be part of the self-denial package from one time to another, they are only part and not the essence of self-denial.
Stop for a moment and consider the benefits of dying to self. Granted, it is a strange thought, but hang with me for a moment.
1. When we die to ourselves, we get disconnected from things we thought we couldn’t live without.
Life is not always found in the places we expect it to be. Sometimes, the things we are connected to are unnecessary, other times they wage war against our souls. (1 Peter 2:11)
The truth is we just don’t need all of the things we think we need, and dying to self helps us to see the false crutches we lean on.
2. When we die to self, we discover the resources God provides.
God regularly takes his people right into the teeth of challenges they can’t do without him. Those of us who have been Christians for a while know this is classic God. His strategy is to take you to a place where your resources run out in order to teach you how to trust him and partner with him more deeply. If you love Jesus, expect to hear yourself thinking, “I can’t do this” regularly – because you can’t. He set it up so you would reach that point. He doesn’t want you to be able to do it on your own. He wants to do it with you. He did this very thing when he brought the Israelites out of Egypt and trapped them between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army (Exodus 14). Jesus did it when he invited the disciples on a quiet voyage across the Sea of Galilee at night (Mark 4:35-41) – what could possibly go wrong? For the Israelites, they had to die to trying to sort things out themselves, and the disciples had to come to the end of their resources – when they did, God worked on their behalf.
3. When we die to self, we sever our connection to what is toxic to us.
The truth is, we often love things which are harmful to us. Sometimes we love and trust these things more than we love and trust God.
But God’s heart is to purify us, and he does it by pressing in and threatening our false loves. And when he does, it can feel like the very things we need to live are being taken away from us - but they aren’t. What God is doing is connecting us more deeply to the one who is life itself.
In the moment, it feels like death to us, but for God it is always about life… more life.
These false loves may actually be part of the reason we are burning out or have burnt out. Take living for the approval of others for example. When other people and their opinions take the place of God in your life, trouble soon follows. They will kill you in the end. We learn sooner or later: you can’t keep everyone happy all of the time, and you can’t keep anyone happy all of the time. It’s just a thing.
Disconnecting ourselves from our dependency on the approval of other people through self-denial, and a corresponding centring on God, will lead to an increase in our capacity not a decrease.
Can self-care and self-denial dance together?
I don’t think so.
Self-denial has a PR problem. The way we conceptualise it is not always correct. We think it is mainly about missing out on good things - we give up what is good and enjoyable to focus on spiritual things. It is a kind of self-harm for a higher goal. This bears some similarity to those who promote an ascetic lifestyle where abstaining from pleasure is the key to the pursuit of spiritual things. But in the Bible, self-denial is not mainly about missing out, it is about turning away from evil and corruption, and turning towards the most amazing good, Jesus Christ.
Jesus never taught mere self-denial. We don’t turn away from pleasure in order to gain redemption or salvation, we turn away from sinful pleasures and doing life our way, and we turn to God.
Self-denial isn’t lonely, it is a relationally rich turn away from ourselves and our idols back to Jesus himself - it is a reversal of the fall of humanity in Genesis 3, a return to Eden. Look at the way Paul unpacks this in his testimony of a particularly trying time he went through:
For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. (2 Corinthians 1:8-11)
Paul and his companions found the energy and strength they needed from God himself. To be deprived of good things and be left alone is not a good outcome. But to be deprived of our own resources and our own way of doing life and walk with Jesus in his presence is energising and refreshing (Acts 3:20). You can see this death to self paradox (losing life yet gaining Jesus) in the most extreme of cases, the martyrs, even as they lost life itself (for example Stephen in Acts 7:55-56).
Allow me to finish with a couple of caveats:
1. Be careful not to simplistically go out and paint everything with the self-denial brush.
Many have done this, and it hasn’t worked out too well. Just because self-denial connects us to the one who is life doesn’t mean we can work unceasingly. There are creational realities in play as well (check out the Creator or Creation blog or Settle into your Finiteness video blog).
Try and stay nimble regarding what self-denial will look like for different people in different contexts.
For some, self-denial will look like a lie down in green pastures (Psalm 23:2) – especially if they have a tendency to want to control outcomes, or if they tend towards anxious toll (Psalm 127:2).
2. Be careful you don’t separate your life into spiritual and non-spiritual parts.
There is no such thing as a time in your life where you work for the Lord, and then another time where you look after yourself. God is everywhere and is in all things. He is into work as much as he is into rest. He is into pleasure as much as he is into self-discipline. The Lord is the one who has prepared good works for you to do (Ephesians 2:10), and he is also the one who has made the green pastures for you to lie down in (Psalm 23:1-2).