April 5: Put to Death the False Self
♫ Music:
Friday, April 5
Put to Death the False Self
Scripture: Colossians 3:5-11
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Poetry:
Don’t Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve
by Adam Zagajewski
translated by Renata Gorczynski
Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
Let the radiant thought last in stillness
though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers
We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves
Knowledge grows slowly like a wisdom tooth
The stature of a man is still notched
high up on a white door
From far off, the joyful voice of a trumpet
and of a song rolled up like a cat
What passes doesn't fall into a void
A stoker is still feeding coal into the fire
Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
On a hard dry substance
you have to engrave the truth
PUT TO DEATH THE FALSE SELF
At the beginning of The Brothers Karamazov, Father Zosima offers this advice to the wicked old buffoon Fyodor Karamazov: “Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.”[1]
When I read today’s Scripture passage, I try to think about Father Zosima’s exhortation to not lie to myself. This is because, when I listen to Paul, I have to watch out for two opposing temptations. One is a temptation to presumption. Like a rich young ruler, I might be tempted to think that I am already keeping all these commandments.[2]After all, I am not given to coarse bestial pleasures or evil passions. I don’t slander or talk in an obscene way, and I am not subject to wrath. When I fall into this temptation, I skim over Paul’s earnest appeal and instead daydream about the pleasant promise of being made new in Christ. Another temptation is a temptation to despair. This is a temptation that I experience much more often. I ask myself: “How can I ever hope to fulfill Paul’s command to put to death what is earthly in me if I confess the same pitiable and noxious sins again and again, after five, ten, twenty years of Christian life?” I believe that God can grant a Christian miraculous victory over sin, but I lose hope that this power of the Spirit will ever manifest itself in my life. Then I am tempted to stay away from God altogether, to stop listening to Paul, to cover myself up in an attempt to hide from God.
Yet, surely, I lie to others and to myself when I fall into either of these temptations. I lie to myself when I believe that I am “fine” – that I am purer or better than I truly am. But I also lie to myself when I believe that my hideousness places me out of reach of God’s love. And if I lie to myself, how can I avoid lying to others? As an alternative to the self-created darkness of deception, the Apostle invites us to do a difficult work of living in the light of the fact that, in Christ, our old self is put off and Christ is all in all. We are neither Greeks nor Jews, neither slaves nor free. We have a new identity, and because of that, we can stop covering our unloveliness. Christ sees us as we truly were and are but still renews us in the image of our creator.
Prayer:
Eternal God, in whom we live and move and have our being, whose face is hidden from us by our sins, and whose mercy we forget in the blindness of our hearts: Cleanse us from all our offenses, and deliver us from proud thoughts and vain desires, that with reverent and humble hearts we may draw near to you, confessing our faults, confiding in your grace, and finding in you our refuge and strength; through Jesus Christ your Son.
Amen
--The Book of Common Worship, Presbyterian Church (USA))
Dr. Alina Beary
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Torrey Honors Institute
Biola University
[1]Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov. A Novel in Four Parts with Epilogue, trans. and annotated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), p. 44.
[2]Luke 18:21
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Golgotha, 1900
Edvard Munch
Oil on canvas
80 x 120 cm
Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Golgotha is primarily considered to be a religious painting as it represents the Crucifixion of Christ. However, there are many subjective elements found in the painting, including how the face of the Christ is a self portrait of Edvard Munch. The seven prominent faces shown facing towards the onlooker can be interpreted as the seven cardinal sins. The crucified man in Golgotha is shown with few defining features while the seven individuals in the foreground are depicted with prominent detail. Munch uses this as a symbolic representation to illustrate that man can have no identity if he is bound by the sins that confront him in life. The painting also bears witness to the faith Edvard Munch has towards Christianity. There is hope for redemption in the painting.
About the Artist:
Edvard Munch (1863–1944) was a Norwegian painter, whose best-known work, The Scream, has become one of the most iconic images of world art. Edvard Munch was a prolific yet perpetually troubled artist, preoccupied with matters of human mortality such as chronic illness and religious aspiration. He expressed these obsessions through works of intense color, semi-abstraction, and mysterious subject matter. Following the great triumph of French Impressionism, Munch incorporated the graphic, symbolist sensibility of Paul Gauguin and, in turn, became one of the most controversial and eventually renowned artists among a new generation of Expressionist and Symbolist painters. Munch came to treat the visible as though it were a window into a fundamentally disturbing human psychology. As his fame and wealth grew, his emotional state remained insecure. A breakdown in 1908 forced him to give up heavy drinking, and he was cheered by his increasing acceptance by the people of Oslo and exposure in the city’s museums. His later years were spent working in peace and privacy. Although his works were banned in Nazi Germany, most of them survived World War II, ensuring him with a secure legacy.
About the Music:
“Neharo't Neharo't” from the album ECM Selected Signs III - VIII
About the Composer:
In 2008, composer Betty Olivero started working on a project for the New-York based 92Y, a Jewish nonprofit cultural center. Deeply touched by the images of victims from the conflict between the Israelis and the Lebanese Hezbollah, she chose the elegies of mourning women as a starting point for her composition. The title “Neharo't Neharo't,” means 'Rivers Rivers' in Hebrew and refers to the rivers of tears shed by the women. Olivero taped women in mourning, and the elegies and love songs were performed by professional Israeli singers. The material was then edited into a sequence of vocal and instrumental sounds, which were added to the string orchestra. By bringing together this dialogue between disparate musical elements, Olivero underscores the universal nature of mourning. “Neharo't Neharo't “is a dedication to all those women and children living in the midst of war.
About the Performers:
Kim Kashkashian (b. 1952), from Detroit, Michigan, is a Grammy-award winning Armenian-American violist. Kashkashian is noted for commissioning new works for the viola, from composers such as Tigran Mansurian, Peter Eötvös, and Betty Olivero. Kashkashian currently teaches at the New England Conservatory. The Munich Chamber Orchestra (Münchener Kammerorchester, or MKO) is a German chamber orchestra based in Munich. Its primary concert venue is the Prinzregententheater, Munich. Alexander Liebreich, principal conductor of the MKO 2006–2016, conducts for this recording.
About the Poet:
Adam Zagajewski (b. 1945) is a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and essayist. He is considered one of the world's greatest living writers. Zagajewski was one of the “New Wave” writers in Poland; his early work was protest poetry, though he has moved away from that emphasis in his later work. The reviewer Joachim T. Baer noted in World Literature Today that Zagajewski’s themes “are the night, dreams, history and time, infinity and eternity, silence and death.” The titles of his collections of poetry suggest some of these concerns: Tremor (1985), Mysticism for Beginners (1997), and World Without End: New and Selected Poems (2002). Zagajewski writes in Polish but many of his books of poetry and essays have been translated into English. He has won numerous awards including: the Prix de la Liberté, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, a Berliner Kunstleprogramm grant, the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, and the 2017 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.
About the Devotional Writer:
Dr. Alina Beary
Assistant Professor of Philosphy
Torrey Honors Institute
Biola University
Dr. Alina Bearyis an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. She studies moral philosophy and Thomas Aquinas. A recent transplant to California, she lives with her husband and their two daughters in Santa Fe Springs, CA.