How to Walk With God

" It is true that the idea of virtuous self-sacrifice is deeply embedded in Western culture (at least insofar as the West has been influenced by Christianity, which is based on the imitation of someone who performed the ultimate act of self-sacrifice). 

Any claim that the Golden Rule does not mean “sacrifice yourself for others” might therefore appear dubious. But Christ’s archetypal death exists as an example of how to accept finitude, betrayal and tyranny heroically—

How to Walk With God despite the tragedy of self-conscious knowledge

—and not as a directive to victimize ourselves in the service of others. 

To sacrifice ourselves to God (to the highest good, if you like) does not mean to suffer silently and willingly when some person or organization demands more from us, consistently, than is offered in return.

That means we are supporting tyranny, and allowing ourselves to be treated like slaves. 

It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, 

even if that bully is oneself.

I learned two very important lessons from Carl Jung, the famous Swiss depth psychologist, about “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you” "loving your neighbour as yourself.” The first lesson was that 

Neither of these statements has anything to do with being nice. 

The second was that both are equations, rather than injunctions. If I am someone’s friend, family member, or lover, then I am morally obliged to bargain as hard on my own behalf as they are on theirs. If I fail to do so, I will end up a slave, and the other person a tyrant. What good is that? It much better for any relationship when both partners are strong. Furthermore, there is little difference between standing up and speaking for yourself, when you are being bullied or otherwise tormented and enslaved, and standing up and speaking for someone else. As Jung points out, this means embracing and loving the sinner who is yourself, as much as forgiving and aiding someone else who is stumbling and imperfect.


As God himself claims (so goes the story), “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” According to this philosophy, 

You do not simply belong to yourself. 

You are not simply your own possession to torture and mistreat. 

This is partly because your Being is inexorably tied up with that of others, and your mistreatment of yourself can have catastrophic consequences for others. 

This is most clearly evident, perhaps, in the aftermath of suicide, when those left behind are often both bereft and traumatized. But, metaphorically speaking, there is also this: 

You have a spark of The Divine in you, 

which belongs not to you, but to God. 

We are, after all—according to Genesis—

made in His image. 

We have the semidivine capacity for consciousness. Our consciousness participates in the speaking forth of Being. 

We are low-resolution (“kenotic”) versions of God. We can make order from chaos—and vice versa—in our way, with our words. 

So, we may not exactly be God, 

but we’re not exactly nothing, either. "