Having grown up in the context in which I did, I always saw it as a spiritual question. Jesus asked it of his disciples, after telling them they'd have to die to themselves and follow him. In order to gain real life, they'd have to lose it for his sake and the sake of his message. It sounds almost like martyrdom, and in some ways it is. Sometimes it might be literal death. But there are other ways to die to oneself, without it being literal. I could get into the different ways that could happen (and CS Lewis said it very well in this quote), but I really don't want to go that route. That's not my point.
My point is what comes after. "What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?" When you think about it in the "martyr" sense, the way I'd learned it, it also becomes very spiritual. What good is it to get all the wealth, fame, and power you can on earth, but once you die, when none of that matters, when you give it all up, you end up burning for eternity in hell? In my childhood, I would think of the villains of the world. The Hitlers and Judas Iscariots. The Democrats and Yankee fans (I grew up in the 80's. Reagan was a rockstar while Carter had just wrecked the economy, and the Mets were on fire in '86 while the Yankees didn't win a World Series that entire decade. There was a lot of loss for Democrats and Yankee fans back then,)
But growing up, I always heard it as a warning to me that, even the non-villains of the world can be caught up in the things of the world and forget the things of God. We could have the same fate as those Yankee fans. And yes that is also true, but it is also not my point. My point is something we never learned in Sunday School about how to be a good Christian. My point is something you don't necessarily have to be a Christian to appreciate. My point is that we find people doing this every day. Gaining the world and losing their souls.
Sometimes I think I do it. It's why I sometimes believe that sitting at a desk and counting profits for a faceless corporation somehow dehumanizes you. It's also why characters like Scrooge are so compelling. At least to me.
Maybe I've hit a bit of a crisis in my life. Lately I feel like in the process of trying to make a buck, I've been losing my soul. I've been losing the parts of myself that make me a person. I see it all the time. People, in order to get ahead, will smile to your face and stab you in the back. They will pretend to cooperate with you, but the second you're not there, they'll throw you under the bus. In order to gain a bigger piece of the world, they will become a little less human.
I find myself struggling with it too, and I don't know what the answer is. Pretty soon, if left unchecked, we'll all become Ebenezer Scrooges, counting our money, and kicking the people who are down, just to get a little farther ahead in our lives.
And I have no answer to the cause of this feeling in me. I don't know if it's the nature of my work, the place I work, or just my attitude towards it. What is causing this restlessness in my soul? This feeling that it's been shrinking? The dissatisfaction with my current state? The feeling that my hard work does nothing for me? I don't now. I just don't know. I feel like I'm losing my soul in an attempt at just a piece of what might be a better life, and I'm not even getting that.
I'm trying to gain the world, and losing myself in the process.
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