100% Dead Two-Times Over

...unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies...

John 12:24

To be a Christian, to be one of Jesus' followers, means that what is true of him must also be true for all of his disciples, namely, that each one of us must also die to our selves. And since there is no such thing as a partial death, so even as he fully died, so we too must die, totally, to our selves.

There are two parts to this vocation of death. The first part in relation to God, and the second part is in relation to God's work of love and justice in the midst of an unloving and unjust world. These are each parts of the same paradox. That in order to be effective in either, you have to be fully dead to your self in both.