There Is A Time To Die And A Time To Be Born (1)

All across North Africa, up north through Palestine, and east out across Syria and into Persia hundreds of thousands of Christians lived singly or by twos and threes, or in tiny, tiny groups in places where no one else wanted to live starting in the third and fourth centuries. These people, men and women, had experienced the risen Christ - I AM - directly. Their decision to leave society in order to further seek the face of God had come with the realization that their neighbours' lives were driven by socially taught self-centredness...the wants and desires common in culture. Those who left knew that coming more deeply face-to-face with God would mean that they would have to step out of culture in order to cast off their egos. Recognizing the destructive nature of their respective societies, their entry into these wastelands was not done so that they could get something, but in order to more fully relinquish their false selves. Those who would save their lives must lose them. Nor did they go there in order to intellectually analyze how best to do this. This was not an aesthetic, speculative exercise, as was common among the philosophers of their day. Instead, they realized that it was by using physical means to set aside their ego they would come to learn to practically strip away the masks that they had so carefully constructed throughout their lives and which had served to insulate them from God. In this self denial they would come to crucify their false selves and liberate their true selves, which is none other than their deepest, unmasked selves, which are the selves that are created, and known, and loved by God.