The point of life

"Human beings are only bearable when the last defenses of their egos are down; when they stand, helpless and humbled, before the awful circumstances of their being. It is only thus that the point of the cross becomes clear, and the point of the cross is the point of life." - Malcom Muggeridge in Jesus Rediscovered

We daily, hourly, minute-by-minute need the point of the cross to become clear in our life. Let me restate that: I need a moment by moment clarity of the purpose of the cross and the person on the cross. Not just I want it or would prefer it; I need it.

Because, as Muggeridge puts it, it is "the point of life." Without the cross, life is pointless. And not just pointless in an over-arching sense, but pointless in an instantaneous second by second sense; completely pointless.

The issue that causes my gargantuan ego problems is that this requires a lifetime, a yearly, a daily and hourly, humbling so I can see life, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, clearly. And in a life like that, there is faith, hope, and love.

Pretenses Relinquished

"The Way begins where for Christ himself its mortal part ended—at the cross. There alone, with all our earthly defenses down and our earthly pretensions relinquished, we can confront the true circumstances of our being; there alone grasp the triviality of these seemingly so majestic achievements of ours, like going to the moon, unraveling our genes, fitting one another with each other's hearts, livers and kidneys. There, contemplating God in the likeness of man, we may understand how foolish and inept is man when he sees himself in the likeness of God." Malcolm Muggerdige in Jesus Rediscovered

Insanely Optimistic

"It is a curious fact that today, as I have found, one is called a pessimist if one ventures to express a certain contempt for the things of this world, and dares to entertain the truly extraordinary hopes about our human destiny which buoyed up the first Christians when, in earthly terms, their master had gone from them and their cause was lost. What a weird reversal, as I should have thought, of common sense! What a preposterous distortion of language! How, I ask myself, can it be pessimistic to call in question the transitory satisfactions available in our mortal existence, and to contrast them with the enduring ones offered us in the Gospels and Epistles? I wonder whether, in the history of all the civilizations that have ever been, a more insanely optimistic notion has ever been entertained than that you and I, mortal, puny creatures, may yet aspire, with God's grace and Christ's help, to be reborn into what St Paul calls the glorious liberty of the children of God. Or if there was ever a more abysmally pessimistic one than that we, who reach out with our minds and our aspirations to the stars and beyond, should be able so to arrange our lives, so to eat and drink and fornicate and learn and frolic, that our brief span in this world fulfills all our hopes and desires." - Malcolm Muggeridge in Jesus Rediscovered

I can flee no farther

"However far and fast I've run, still over my shoulder I'd catch a glimpse of You on the horizon, and then run faster and farther than ever, thinking triumphantly: Now I have escaped. But no, there You were, coming after me. Very well, I'd decide, if I can't get away by running, I'll shut my eyes and ears and not see or hear You. No good ! one sees and hears You, not with the eyes and ears, but inwardly, with the soul, whose faculties never can be quite put out however gorged, stupefied and ego-inflated we may become. Now I can flee no farther; I fall. Mercy!" - Malcolm Muggeridge, from Jesus Rediscovered