Take up your cross and follow me...

[Tellyontellyon]

Jesus said take up your cross and follow me.. To me this means that Jesus is saying that we must be willing to suffer and descend into Hades (in a sense), face isolation and abandonment.
That sounds to me like a good thing.. In a Jungian sense, an encounter with the Shadow in both it's personal and collective dimension. We have to face our evil!

But there is also the idea that we are saved from that... that Jesus did it for us... So that seems like a contradiction.

But is there a way both can be true? Do we have to face that descent in order to repent and truly appreciate how much Jesus has done for us?

 

[Unqualified]

We have to be willing to suffer, but it’s not mandatory. It means whatever it takes for you to be a Christian and follow the Lord. To answer the call and be faithful. Corral your fleshly desires; learn from him, the Bible; love him exceedingly; make Him your life. And overcome all the obstacles to do so.

 

[Neogaia777]

Jesus said take up your cross and follow me.. To me this means that Jesus is saying that we must be willing to suffer and descend into Hades (in a sense), face isolation and abandonment.
That sounds to me like a good thing.. In a Jungian sense, an encounter with the Shadow in both it's personal and collective dimension. We have to face our evil!

But there is also the idea that we are saved from that... that Jesus did it for us... So that seems like a contradiction.

But is there a way both can be true? Do we have to face that descent in order to repent and truly appreciate how much Jesus has done for us?

We sometimes have to get to a point when we realize how lost/miserable we are without God or Jesus Christ, aka come face to face with our own shadow, or evil, etc, but in Christianity at least, we are not left there with no help or way out of it once we have faced it, but we can be re-born, or born again, etc, and start a whole new kind of life, or a whole new kind of existence as a whole new different kind of being after that, etc, instead of just being left there with no help, like in so very many of the other religions, etc.

God Bless.