Daniel Jackson: “Maybe I've done
something good every now and again, but nothing I've ever done seems
to have changed anything.”
Oma Desala: “These tasks of which you
speak were great challenges, perhaps even impossible to achieve.”
Daniel Jackson: “Does that absolve
me?”
Oma Desala: “Do you feel you journey
must continue until you have found redemption for these failures?”
Daniel Jackson: “Nope. Not anymore.
Not if I'm dead.”
Oma Desala: “Exactly true.”
Stargate: SG-1,
“Meridian”
This dialogue is from what is perhaps
my favorite episode from the series “Stargate: SG-1”. The episode
is also my wife's least favorite because in it a much loved main
character dies horribly from lethal radiation exposure. But in those
moments before death he is visited by someone he had met before, an
old friend you might say. She is a member of a race of people that
learned to shed their physical form and “ascend” to a higher
plane of existence as pure energy. This particular ascended being had
then spent thousands of years helping others to do the same thing
when they were ready to die and leave their mortal existence behind,
and now she was here for Daniel in his final moments to help him. In
other words, she was there to help him ascend and become like her.
But Daniel doesn't believe himself to
be worthy of it. Part of the journey of ascension for him is that he
must release his burden, and for him, this means letting go of his
guilt and perceived failures as well as letting go of the mortal life
he clung to so he could follow her in ascension. Eventually, she does
guide him to the understanding which allows him to let everything go
and follow her, becoming a being of pure light.
This idea of the need to die and
release everything you're clinging to in order to achieve salvation
isn't new, and it isn't confined to science fiction:
“Because whoever would wish to
deliver his psyche will destroy it; and whoever would destroy his
psyche for mine and the Gospel's sake will deliver it.” (Mark 8:35)
This saying is found, almost word for
word, six times in all four Gospels. Twice in Matthew (10:39, 16:25),
Twice in Luke (9:24, 17:33), once in Mark (8:35), and once in John
(12:25). By anyone's definition of textual criticism, liberal or
conservative, this would mark this as something that Jesus Christ not
only actually said, but that it was so important to them, the Gospel
writers repeated it again and again. (Though not well known, “psyche”
is the transliteration of the Greek word used in all six occurrences,
and is the most accurate translation of the word as well because, in
its strictest sense, it encompasses the emotions, the reasonings, the
soul, the memories, and the physical being of the person, and not
just the mind or the soul.)
Submission to death and the letting go
of the things of this mortal life are fundamental concepts of the
path of Jesus Christ. St. Paul wrote about it several times in his
epistles, beginning with the letter to the Romans:
“Or are you ignorant that, as many of
us as were baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into His death?
We were therefore entombed together with Him through the baptism into
His death, so that just as Christ was awakened from the dead through
the glory of the Father, so also we should walk in newness of life.
Because if we have become grown together in the resemblance of His
death, but also will we be of His resurrection; knowing this that
our old human being was co-crucified so that the body of the sin
disorder would be abolished, for us to no longer be enslaved to the
disorder; because the person who died has been acquitted from the
sin disorder. And if we died together with Christ, we believe
that we will also live together with Him, knowing that Christ having
been awakened from the dead is no longer mortal, death has dominion
over Him no longer. So also you figure yourselves to be dead indeed
to the sin disorder yet living to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans
6:3-11)
Death acquits a person from sin. The
dead man no longer worries about the guilt and failures in his life.
He no longer worries about what he did wrong or right. The sentence
for his mistakes in life has already been carried out. Death has
absolved him. As Sirach says in 41:4 “There is in Hades no inquiry
into your life.” (SAAS) Yet in spite of this, the dead man must
still face the natural separation from the things of life he clung
to, being unable by nature to sense or recognize the God who
surrounds him with His love. Thus Jesus Christ, and His death and
resurrection.
St. Paul's argument is this, those of
us who were baptized were grafted into His death on the cross. We
therefore shouldn't continue in the way we lived before this baptism,
being subject to the sin disorder, because we died when we were
baptized, and the person who died has been acquitted from the sin
disorder. But his argument goes further in that just as we were
joined to the death of Christ, so would we be joined to His
resurrection. Just as Christ was raised immortal, so would we be
raised immortal, if we died with Him; if we accepted our death, and
let go of this world and stopped clinging to it.
This thinking was central in St. Paul's
understanding of what the path of Jesus Christ was all about. In his
letters to the Galatians and the Colossians, he brings it up as the
lynchpin of his arguments which all of his instruction hangs on:
“I was co-crucified with Christ; and
I live no longer; but Christ lives within me; and that which I now
live in the flesh, I live by the Faith of the Son of God who loved me
and gave Himself over for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
“But let there be
absolutely no boast for me except in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me and I to the
world.” (Galatians 6:14)
“If you died
together with Christ from the basic elements of the world, why are
you dogmatizing as living in the world? Don't handle neither taste
neither touch, all of which is for the decay to consumption,
according to the commands and teachings of human beings, which things
are a word indeed having wisdom in self-made religion and humility
and severe discipline of a body, not in anything valuable against the
gratification of the flesh. If then you were awakened together with
Christ, look for the things on high, where Christ is sitting at the
right hand of God; be mindful of the things on high, not the things
upon the ground. Because you died and your life has been hidden
together with Christ in God; when Christ your life is made to
appear, then you will also be made to appear with Him in glory.”
(Colossians 2:20-3:4)
In his letter to
the Philippians, this death is implicit in his rejection of all the
benefits of status which his ancestry and formal education brought
him as he says:
“But the things which were profit to
me, I lead these things loss because of Christ. But rather I also
lead everything to be loss because of the superiority of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, through whom I lost everything,
and lead it crap, so that I would profit Christ” (Philippians
3:7-8)
St. Paul knew that it is absolutely
important that we accept the sentence of death which has been carried
out on us through our union with Christ in baptism, and which is
brought to completion in the death of the physical body. We must live
as though already passed out of this world. It is nothing less than
accepting the original sentence passed on Adam instead of futilely
trying to fight it. We must be as a corpse is to the things of this
world: unfeeling, disinterested, detached, unmoved, and focused upon
the center of our existence, our God and Savior Jesus Christ, paying
only the attention we have to in order that Christ might live His
life out through us. Accepting that we no longer live, and releasing
the things of the world we cling to so tightly is the only path to
being joined to His resurrection.
If we reject this sentence of death and
cling to our life and things of this world, we incur judgment to
ourselves, not because God is cruel or because He wants to condemn
us, but because after death the object of our clinging has ceased
from our experience and we go insane, or rather our insanity is
brought to its culmination, total separation from everything else but
God, and unable to welcome or recognize God Himself.
Jesus Himself pleads for this and warns
about it in the Gospel of John:
“Stay in Me, and I within you. Just
as the branch isn't capable of producing fruit from itself except it
should stay in the vine, so neither you if you don't stay within Me.
I am the vine, you the branches. This person who stays within Me and
I within him produces a lot of fruit, because without Me you are not
capable of doing anything at all. If anyone doesn't stay within Me,
he has been thrown out as a branch and has been withered and they
gather them together and throw them into the fire and they are
burned.” (15:4-6)
We see this acceptance of death in the
lives of many if not most of the lives of the recognized saints. The
more one accepts this death with Christ and turns away from the
things of the world, the more Christ-like one becomes and the closer
to His resurrection one gets. The more one welcomes the things of the
world, clings to them, and fights against death, any death, the
farther from Christ one becomes, and the farther from His
resurrection. It is movement one way or the other. If you welcome
your death with Christ you are absolved of your disorder. If you turn
away from it, your disorder grows with all the consequences thereof.
The only path to ascension, as Daniel
discovered, was by letting go. The only path to resurrection is by
accepting one's death.
(Except where noted, all translations
from Scripture are mine.)
