ACTION ATTITUDES of TRANSFORMATION: Sacrifice

Welcome back Viphilus*

This past week was quite the emotional-ride for many as global economic markets crashed. While much of the world focused on China where beasts of reaction broke off their chains, I was watching with fascination as those beasts broke out in every corner of the globe; beasts driven by one thing: financial survival.

Ironically, the final action attitude I’m speaking about this month is Sacrifice. Why ironically? Because the vectors of survival and sacrifice have polar opposite directions. Survival is selfish while sacrifice is selfless. Ultimately, this is about the vector of service where the vector is either pointing towards yourself (self-service) or towards others (selfless service of others). And, both the direction and magnitude of that vector depends on the other three attitudes that I’ve mentioned so far this month: surrender, submission, and suffering. Whereas, survival seeks self as the beneficiary of the service, sacrifice serves to add value to others. Whereas, survival is about intentionally protecting and sustaining self and self-interest, sacrifice is about intentionally NOT doing that in a direct effort to protect and sustain the life and interests of another or others.

Here’s my thesis. True transformation is where the vector has turned 180° away from self, resulting in the only life where 100% deep soul satisfaction (dare I say, “joy?”) can be achieved. Why? I believe it’s because that’s how we were made by our Creator.

Consider the following, written by the Apostle Paul to the young church at Rome:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:1-2)

The text goes on to speak about how this kind of action attitude in our life helps us discern God’s will and it helps us please Him as we put ourselves in proper perspective with everyone else. It speaks about how we are to share all that we have with others, whether it be our abundance our talents or our compassion. It ends with counter-intuitive (counter-survival) advice to become an advocate for our enemy … definitely 180° from anything we would naturally be inclined to do.

Interpreting Paul, full transformation (“metamorphosis” is the word he actually uses) begins with a reorientation of the vector fully away from self, as we offer ourselves as a “living sacrifice,” and it is completed by the ongoing retraining of our minds in a direction away from the worldly-intuitive direction of self.

In the context of daily living, this is where the word “passion” ultimately finds its home. To connect the dots, let me once again restate something from last week’s post, which itself was cropped from my May 25 post:

Our English word, passion, originates from the Latin word, patior, meaning to suffer or to endure. People endure hardships with passion and conviction for seemingly incomprehensible reasons, because those reasons reside in the core of their spirit. To resist {this} crushes the spirit because it is working against called-purpose. To fight the inner calling of passion is debilitating and disorienting and renders most other things to be of little importance.

The expression, “the passion of the Christ,” finds its truest meaning in this context.

Jesus had a deep calling from God to do three things: to teach people what God really meant all along, to train a handful of ordinary guys to carry on His work after He left, and to be the final sacrifice for all mankind (and end the bloodshed of the billions of animals that people were killing in order to please and appease God). That calling was anchored deep in His soul … a purpose to which he felt so drawn that He didn’t just deny Himself a long life by dying for us in his thirties, but He lived every breath of those thirty-three years with the vector pointing away from Himself and towards God and others as He served them.

Passion doesn’t come from an external source; it is intrinsic … calling us from within. And because it comes from something anchored in our spirit, ignoring or resisting that calling will only make our soul restless and sick. But when we surrender and stop fighting that passion, we start to come alive a bit. When we submit and are obedient to what it asks of us, life becomes a completely different experience (a very good one). When we submit to the point where we may actually suffer through the pursuit of its fulfillment, our own fulfillment skyrockets. And finally, when we do all these things fully so that the vector of service is completely away from us in sacrifice, we are enjoying the epitome of human experience (YES … “enjoy” may be a strange word when we consider that suffering may be in the mix).

The paradox
This doesn’t mean that you deny yourself protection; if our airplane depressurizes we are told to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first so that we will remain conscious and able to help the less-capable person beside us.

This doesn’t mean that you deny yourself sleep in order to work around the clock serving everyone who needs you (your spouse, kids, boss, friend, constituents, etc.); if you are sleep-deprived you will be unsociable, you will make mistakes, and you will get sick more easily … not to mention you’ll lose your sense of passion.

This doesn’t mean that you deny yourself emotional pleasures like recovery breaks, vacations and social outings; those very things help you metabolize stress so that it doesn’t build in you and turn to anxiety (which lies at the survival end of the spectrum).

You can do all of these apparently selfish things BECAUSE the vector is pointing away from you. There may come a time when you might be called to make the ultimate sacrifice for someone else and give up your life for them. But don’t worry, you will only actually accomplish that once. The rest of the time, you need to vigilantly maintain your greatest asset for serving others: Yourself. Yes - sacrifice might just mean taking better care of yourself.

An entire book can (and has been) written further on this but I will stop here because I simply wanted to establish the foundation of the 4 action-attitudes of service this month:

• Surrender
• Submission
• Suffering
• Sacrifice

Serve well, and have an amazing life!

Next month I’m going to take a fun look at some of the things that I learned from my Mom, so please take a moment to glance at the weekly topics at the upper right of this page. Also, feel free to browse through any of the previous weekly posts which you will find a little farther down from those topics.

I hope to see you back next Monday.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"