I’ve learned it’s never worth it to gain the world and lose yourself. There is nothing more valuable than the you which God has made. Treasure it as God treasures you.
Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?
Luke 9:23-25, New Revised Standard Version
I confess that I have never before focused on that particular rendering of that very familiar passage from the Gospel of Luke in the New Revised Standard translation of the Bible. I am much more familiar with Mark 8:36, which says, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit [or lose] their soul?”
It’s the same essential message: the stuff of this world, from material possessions to power and privilege, will ultimately drag you down if in the process you have surrendered the core of your being, the essence of God in you.
Still, the phrase “lose yourself” carries a special resonance. Many of us who are LGBTQ+ know what it is like to forfeit ourselves in order to gain acceptance and access to things we might not otherwise have. What we end up experiencing is that whatever we gain of this world by denying who we are and not living in God’s love for us is not worth it. Being our authentic selves in the radical embrace of God’s love is priceless. And it comes with a promise from Jesus Christ himself: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
The title of Beyoncé’s hit song, “You Won’t Break My Soul,” came to mind as I was reading Luke 9 this morning. She sings of finding “a new foundation,” “takin’ my new salvation” and building “my own foundation.” This is what it’s like to free yourself to live life on the terms of your Creator, and not on the terms of folks who do not have to live their lives in your skin.