Wash Off The Ashes And You Are Still Made Of Dust

Turns out I need to revise my plans for Lent and give up, on day one, binge watching Rachel Hollis videos. As usual, it’s the hair that’s so mesmerizing. I’m pretty sure that if I could have her hair I would be as amazing as she is. Oops, now I also need to give up envy.

I can’t help being fascinated by this latest iteration, even though, as she herself says, the devil never has any new ideas, of self-empowered self-acceptance. If Jesus’ love is new every morning, so are the legion ways to talk about the self. They roll off the tongue, they express exactly what so many of us want—to be happy, loved, healthy, to escape from gnawing doubt, insecurity, and the darkness that hovers at the margins.

Indeed, I think they could all be wrapped up in the new word I’m making up right now, Self-Peace. I will be ok and happy by my own power. If God and other people want to help me, that’ll be great. However, I will not be held back by circumstances or God or anyone from getting to the place where I am really happy in this life right now.

The proliferation of all these words—self-care, self-love, self-marriage, self-acceptance, self-mercy or whatever that one was—all point in that direction. Me. I will be ok.

The trouble is, when you add ‘self’ onto the beginnings of all these words, you rob them of their beauty and their true power. You also sabotage your own efforts. You may get part of the way there in this life, but you will not make it into a happy eternity, and that’s what really matters.

But even in a temporal, this world sense, when you take the ‘self’ part off each of these words, they are immediately transformed from something paltry and grasping into something glorious and grand. Care, love, marriage, acceptance, forgiveness, mercy—these are the bedrock of human civilization. They bind people together.

Because by their very nature they require actual people. You have to be there, otherwise what are we even talking about. You need both care from other people, and to care for other people. Taking care of yourself and others, and others doing the same for you, is foundational for human existence. You are only living because someone cared for you when you were an infant. You will only keep on living in old age because someone will come along and care for you. And so on with love, forgiveness, mercy. You have to be there, otherwise this is madness.

At the same time, if it is only you there, it is also madness. It cannot be you, yourself, caring for yourself, alone. You, loving yourself, marrying yourself, forgiving yourself—fulfilling for yourself all the things you need to survive, materially and psychologically and especially spiritually in this life. You need other people. But more than that, you need God.

It is Ash Wednesday. Even if you are not going to go to church to have some ash smeared on your forehead, it is a good day to pause and accept that you are forty days out from Easter—not counting Sundays. That was the time God, facing down that long weekend from Thursday evening to Sunday morning, did something extraordinary and strange. He grappled definitively with the putrid independence of the human ‘self.’ He took our ‘self-acceptance’ and coped cosmically with the ugliness and horror of it. He wrenched away the ‘self’ part and took it into himself and, in exchange, gave to those who want it, his own self.

Present tense. You can still look at the cross, at the ashes of yourself, and give yourself to him and he will give you himself. It’s a terrible exchange—good for you, amazing of him.

Because what do you get? You get to be known, loved, cared for, caught up in the marriage of the church to the Lamb. God himself knows you and makes himself known. All the deficiencies of your ‘self’ you can put into his hands.

So what if you don’t live up to your potential? Really. So what if you don’t realize any of your dreams? It’s an important question. Will you have died as nothing? Does God not care for and love the one who walked back and forth fetching water every day? The one who never learned to read and will never start a social media company? Does God not love you when you fail? When you don’t even have any dreams? What do you think he was saying when he hung there, dying? That the life of a hidden infant, rejected by humanity, is truly nothing? That the weak, the downcast, the uninspired, the old person lying in a hospital bed unable to eat without help—that they are all nothing?

He gave his very life for you when you were in the ash heap. If you think you can get by on your own you are wrong. Wash all the ash off and you are still made of dust.

I know it’s only Wednesday, but for the sake of yourself, go to church.