Send Someone to Fail With Me

If one were able to shut off honesty and simply agree with the majority, life could be much easier. Especially in theologically oriented settings this could be true. This is not to say that ones who find themselves in agreement with the majority are have opted out for an easier path or are being dishonest. Clearly there are many wonderful people of faith who have authentically arrived at various positions with varying popularity in Christendom. At no point should we disparage a person's authentic faith just becuase it apears to follow path of the common majority.
There is a position outside the theological party lines that I often wish I could honestly assimilate out of or just forget altogether:
To value the self-giving love found at the center of Christianity and the cross is not a choice that one would make out of convenience or for personal gain of any sort. It is a choice that puts one at the most desperate mercy of God on two levels.

First; to honestly follow Christ's example of the self-giving love of the cross brings one to despair because on some level everyone knows that through this self giving love of Christ when actualized in our lives will get a person crucified in all kinds of ways and that their only hope is to become utterly dependant upon God to resurrect them at a point which is beyond their reality.

Second; Perhaps more personally challenging yet, is that to value this self giving love of Christ will bring a person to be intimately aware of their own perpetual failure. By any measure, this is a lonely place to be.

Blessed are those who can be among the fellowship of others who also strive for and together ultimately fail at becoming this vessel of self-giving love found at the cross. Far worse are those who are alone and abandoned in their quest of the cross and do not receive the blessing and support of God’s graceful community in this quest. Either way, God on the cross is there in flesh abandoned and suffering with them in the only authentic and pure self-giving love the world would ever know. Imagine how alone that felt. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For twenty years, I have shuddered with tears each time I heard these words read on Good Friday. My Lord, either assimilate me to an authentic and easier path of faith or give me the strength to join you alone at this cross. I fail perpetually, and even if I one day I must continue alone and abandoned as you were at the cross, let me not rest among comforts and fellowships of cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves. Let me find my only solace in the grace that allows one to continue walking alone toward your gift of the cross. I can honestly see no other path worth taking, but Lord I need help in carrying this load, I can not continue to fail alone.