Things to Die To and For

The Cross and Resurrection.

Within the whole Christian understanding of Resurrection is that it must be preceeded by a death to self such that following the way of the Cross in Christ's footsteps means living for a higher truth and reality-an eternal world hereafter-, and putting away anything that takes you away from that. The eternal world hereafter is bridged by Love, and one gets there by Love that is God through Christ whose atoning sacrifice is the Passover Lamb needed. His blood is that on the doorpost and lintel of your soul. When you drink his blood in the form of wine the angel of death cannot touch you-and you make it over to eternity. His body broken for you, the priest , in the priesthood now of all believers, is the lamb's blood like the Jewish high priests ate for the atonement of the sins of the people to re-establish covenantal grace.
So anything that takes you away from truest Love is bad, wrong, not in His plan. Love is who he is existentially. Anything that elevates rules (whether Talmudic picayune proscriptions on dietary laws, or canon laws) over Love is a bastardization of his existential reality. God is Love.
God is Love. God is Love.
In trying to bring this message home to the people he preached to Jesus did all kinds of things that were deliberately in your face of the rule driven Pharisees to make his point- he cured on the Sabbath-made a blind man see- when work was forbidden then. The Sabbath is made for man not the other way around- if your donkey fell in a ditch you would get him out on the Sabbath so why shouldn't anyone cure a human on the Sabbath restoring him to heath? You should be elated not annoyed. He spoke to a Samaritan woman at the well when Jewish men were not supposed to be addressing single women they didn't know on the street much less stranger Samaritans who were like social outcasts. His purpose in doing so was to show her the living water and reveal himself to her in a way that had her talking to the whole town and thus he turned her into an Evangelist. He broke the rules when not giving the Pharisees their place of presumed honor in addressing them "white-washed tombs full of dead men's bones" and "vipers" and essentially extortioners who placed burdens on men too heavy for them to bear with their oppressive rules without lifting a finger to help or save. Rabbis were supposed to kiss their rings in effect-they were the college of cardinals of the day. He broke the 'rules' when insisting over repeated objections of even his male disciples that Mary be allowed to rub his body with expensive perfumed oils (prefiguring his burial oils) -and that she be allowed to wash his feet with her hair. She touched him- intimately. And who was balking the loudest about the perfume waste? The disciple who was the crook- the one who had his hand in the till. The one stealing from the ministry. Because he wanted the money instead of using it to magnify the Lord.
This intimacy magnified the Lord. Her Love was His Love. She drew it from him and gave it back to him. God is Love. Jesus is Love. It was wrong to condemn its manifestation-then and now. Wrong.

Jesus taught that the Spirit of Love trumps the rules. Rules are guidelines to keep order. They are never to be idolized over or mistaken for Truth. The Truth Sets free, the rules bind.
Jesus is the Lord of even all the rules, all the Popes, all the canon lawyers and laws and
everyone who hangs their hat on them. Jesus is the giver of all life. The rules never birthed anything but canon law degrees.

So what should you die to and for? You should die to anything that binds you away from Love. Anything that cramps your ability to Love. Anything that hinders your Life Procreation.
God is at root CREATOR. If you deliberately hinder your Pro-Creation you are a stumbling block for God to live and move and have his being on earth.