A Share in Suffering
It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a chuchman (a so called priestly type!), a righteous person or an unrighteous one, a sick person or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings. But those of God in the world-watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes human and a Christian. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?
from A Testament to Freedom 510
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