Radically Happy

Lost Self Café v2: Telogos (Christ as Telos)

Published by

Dr. Ernie

on

Sequel to The Lost Self Café v1: How Christianity Lost Christ’s “Soul”

Write the sequel skit where four historical figures who both embody and understand “telogos” exegete Luke 9:23 in the context of verses 18-25.

ChatGPT Prompt

The same café. No menu. No prices. No mirrors.

On the wall, chalked once more:

“If any want to come after me…”
— Luke 9:23

At the corner table sit four witnesses—each already past the question of survival.

No one orders. They are waiting.

The Question Reappears

(Luke 9:18–20)

Ignatius (smiling, as if this part is obvious)
“Before the cross is named, the question is asked.
‘Who do you say that I am?’”
(Luke 9:20)

Polycarp
“And Peter answers correctly—
but not yet truthfully enough.”

Etty (quiet)
“To name Christ rightly is easy.
To let him become the end of your inner world is not.”

Romero
“Confession without consequence is still a misunderstanding.”

Messiah, Immediately Rewritten

(Luke 9:21–22)

Polycarp
“He forbids them to repeat the title.”

Ignatius
“Because the word Messiah still meant victory for us.”

Romero
“So he tells them what the word will now cost him—
rejection, suffering, death.”
(Luke 9:22)

Etty
“And only then does he turn to the rest of us.”

The Sentence That Changes Everything

(Luke 9:23)

Silence. Then the words appear again, sharper this time:

“If any want to come after me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.”
— Luke 9:23

Ignatius
“This is not instruction.
It is reorientation.”

Polycarp
“Note the order:

  • Not believe something
  • Not become better
  • But come after me”

Romero
“Which means:
Where I go becomes more important than whether you survive.”

Etty
“And deny yourself does not mean self-hatred.
It means refusing to let the self remain the end.”

Cross Daily — The Offense

Polycarp
“The cross was not a metaphor to them.”

Ignatius (almost laughing)
“No one spiritualized it yet.”

Romero
“‘Daily’ means the loss is not postponed to heroics.
It happens in small obediences that erase safety.”

Etty
“Daily means you wake up and choose
Christ over coherence.
Christ over control.
Christ over self-preservation.”

Luke 9:24–25 — The Telos Revealed

The chalk shifts:

“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will save it.”
— Luke 9:24

Ignatius
“This is where most readings fail.”

Polycarp
“They think the contrast is:

  • life now vs life later
    But it is actually:
  • self as telos vs Christ as telos”

Romero
“What you lose is not biology.
It is the ψυχή (psychē)—
the self organized around itself.”

Etty
“And what you gain is not compensation.
It is alignment.”

“For My Sake” — The Key Phrase

Romero
“He does not say:

  • for truth
  • for justice
  • for meaning
  • for salvation”

Ignatius
“He says: for my sake.”

Polycarp
“Which means even the cross is not the telos.”

Etty
“Christ is.”

Each Witness Speaks Once

Ignatius
“I longed to be ground like wheat—
not to die well,
but to reach him.”

Polycarp
“Eighty-six years I served him.
How could I trade him for breath?”

Etty
“I did not survive,
but I refused to let hatred reorganize my soul.”

Romero
“They killed me at the altar,
but I had already handed myself over.”

Final Exegesis (Put Plainly)

Polycarp (summarizing)

Ignatius
“Discipleship fails wherever Christ becomes useful.”

Closing Line

On the wall, one final sentence appears:

Christ does not offer a better life. He offers himself. And that rearranges everything.

No one leaves.

They already followed.

Appendix I: The Thinkers

A. Oscar Romero (1917–1980)

Archbishop, martyr, pastor under fire

  • Óscar Romero served as Archbishop of San Salvador during a period of extreme state violence.
  • Initially cautious and institutionally minded, he underwent a decisive conversion as he witnessed the suffering of the poor and the murder of priests.
  • Romero came to understand discipleship as obedience to Christ over institutional safety or political neutrality.
  • His preaching increasingly aligned with Luke 9:23: following Christ meant accepting the loss of protection, reputation, and eventually life.
  • Assassinated while celebrating the Eucharist, Romero embodied Christ as telos, not justice-as-ideal or martyrdom-as-goal.

Telogos marker:

  • Christ was not the means to social reform; Christ was the one to whom Romero remained faithful even when reform failed.

B. Etty Hillesum (1914–1943)

Witness of inner surrender amid annihilation

  • Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish woman, left behind diaries and letters written during the Nazi occupation.
  • Without formal Christian conversion, her life displays a profound Christ-shaped telos through radical inner surrender.
  • She refused to let hatred, fear, or survival reorganize her inner life.
  • Hillesum’s “self-denial” was not asceticism but refusal to let the threatened self become ultimate.
  • She chose to accompany her people to Auschwitz, where she was killed.

Telogos marker:

  • God—not survival, not meaning, not resistance—became the orienting center of her inner world.

C. Polycarp of Smyrna (c. 69–155)

Apostolic continuity without abstraction

  • Polycarp of Smyrna was a disciple of the Apostle John.
  • When ordered to curse Christ and save his life, he famously replied:

“Eighty-six years I have served him, and he has done me no wrong.”

  • Polycarp’s refusal was not heroic defiance but relational fidelity.
  • His life exemplifies Luke 9:24: losing the ψυχή organized around survival in order to remain with Christ.

Telogos marker:

  • Christ was not the guarantor of a future reward; Christ was the one already served.

D. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–108)

Desire reordered toward Christ

  • Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr, wrote letters while being transported to Rome for execution.
  • He rejected attempts to rescue him, insisting that nothing—not even well-meaning piety—should separate him from Christ.
  • Ignatius understood discipleship as desire re-formed, not merely obedience imposed.
  • His imagery of becoming “God’s wheat” reflects psychē reoriented away from self-preservation toward Christ himself.

Telogos marker:

  • The cross was not an instrument to achieve holiness; it was the consequence of loving Christ more than life.

E. Shared Theological Throughline

Across all four figures:

  • Christ is not instrumentalized
  • Loss is not reframed as hidden reward
  • Obedience precedes outcome
  • The self is displaced as telos

Together, they enact the logic of Luke 9:18–25:

Christ is confessed → Messiah is redefined → the self is displaced → the cross becomes daily → life is found by losing the self for him.

F. Diagnostic Summary

You could say of each:

  • They did not use Christ to save their lives.
  • They did not sacrifice themselves to become meaningful.
  • They followed Christ, and everything else was allowed to fall away.

That is telogos embodied.

Appendix II: The Selves in Luke 9

(A Map of the Selves Jesus Names, Exposes, and Reorders)

A. Why “Selves” Matter in Luke 9

Luke 9:18–25 is often flattened into a generic call to sacrifice.
In fact, it is a carefully layered anthropology.

Jesus does not speak of one self, but of competing centers of orientation—different ways the human person can be organized.

Luke names, implies, and contrasts these selves through:

  • confession
  • secrecy
  • suffering
  • denial
  • loss
  • and saving

B. The Confessing Self

(Luke 9:18–20)

“But who do you say that I am?”
— Luke 9:20

Description

  • The self capable of recognition and speech
  • The cognitive–relational self that can name Jesus rightly

Strength

  • This self can confess Christ (Messiah)

Limit

  • Right confession does not yet imply right orientation
  • This self can still imagine Christ as useful

Risk

  • Orthodoxy without displacement

C. The Protected Self

(Luke 9:21–22)

“He sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone.”
— Luke 9:21

Description

  • The self invested in status, timing, and narrative control
  • The self that benefits from the wrong Messiah

Jesus’ Action

  • He silences proclamation to prevent premature instrumentalization

Insight

  • Some truths cannot be spoken safely until the self is ready to lose power

Risk

  • A Christ proclaimed before the cross becomes a tool for the protected self

D. The Messianic Self (Rejected by Jesus)

(Luke 9:22)

“The Son of Man must undergo great suffering…”
— Luke 9:22

Description

  • The imagined self that would follow a victorious, confirming Christ
  • The self that wants meaning without loss

Jesus’ Redefinition

  • Messiahship includes:
  • rejection
  • suffering
  • death
  • resurrection

Effect

  • This self is exposed as incompatible with Jesus’ path

E. The Self-to-Be-Denied

(Luke 9:23)

“Let them deny themselves…”
— Luke 9:23

Greek Note

  • “Deny” (ἀπαρνησάσθω) implies disowning authority, not self-hatred

Description

  • The self-as-telos
  • The self that assumes:
  • its survival is ultimate
  • its coherence is non-negotiable
  • its desires are authoritative

Crucial Insight

  • Jesus does not say destroy the self
  • He says refuse to let it rule

F. The Cross-Bearing Self

(Luke 9:23)

“Take up their cross daily…”

Description

  • The self that lives in ongoing contradiction
  • Not heroic, not exceptional, not deferred

Key Features

  • Daily loss of:
  • control
  • reputation
  • safety
  • narrative coherence

Theological Weight

  • This is not suffering in general
  • It is obedience that collides with self-preservation

G. The Losing Self (ψυχή)

(Luke 9:24)

“Whoever wants to save their life (ψυχή) will lose it…”
— Luke 9:24

ψυχή (psychē)

  • Not mere biology
  • The living, affective, relational self
  • The inner world organized around:
  • desire
  • fear
  • value
  • attachment

What Is Lost

  • The self structured around itself as end

Common Misreading

  • Life now vs life later
  • Physical death vs survival

Luke’s Meaning

  • Self-preservation as organizing principle collapses

H. The Found Self

(Luke 9:24–25)

“…whoever loses their life for my sake will save it.”

Description

  • Not the old self rewarded
  • A reconstituted self oriented around Christ

Key Phrase

  • “For my sake”

This excludes:

  • virtue as telos
  • justice as telos
  • meaning as telos
  • heaven as telos

Christ himself becomes the center.

I. The World-Gaining Self (Rejected)

(Luke 9:25)

“What does it profit them if they gain the whole world…?”
— Luke 9:25

Description

  • The maximized self
  • The optimized self
  • The successful self

Jesus’ Verdict

  • Total external gain with internal loss is failure

Implication

  • Telos cannot be external accumulation or internal coherence

J. The Telogos Self (Implied, Not Named)

Definition

  • The self whose:
  • desires
  • fears
  • identity
  • meaning

are reorganized around Christ as telos

This Self

  • Can lose without resentment
  • Can obey without calculation
  • Can suffer without self-justification

This Self

  • Is not preserved
  • Is not optimized
  • Is found

K. Summary: The Movement of Selves

Luke 9 traces a progression:

  • Confessing self
  • Protected self
  • Self-to-be-denied
  • Cross-bearing self
  • Losing ψυχή
  • Found self in Christ

All governed by one decisive shift:

From self as end to Christ as end

L. Final Line

Luke 9 does not ask whether you believe in Jesus.

It asks which self you are willing to lose
so that Christ may become the one you live toward.

Appendix III: Affective Selfhood

Reconcile with The Cost Function of Discipleship by interpreting relational self as our neural representation of the affective world

ChatGPT Prompt

A. Why Introduce Affective Selfhood?

The reading of ψυχή in Luke 9:23–25 risks abstraction unless we name where the self actually lives and operates.

The proposal here is modest but decisive:

The relational self Jesus calls us to lose is the neural–affective representation by which we experience, value, and inhabit the world.

This does not reduce the self to the brain.
It identifies the embodied locus where desire, fear, meaning, and attachment are organized.

B. The Affective World (What It Is)

The affective world is not emotion in the narrow sense.

It is the felt significance structure of reality:

  • what matters
  • what threatens
  • what promises life
  • what feels unthinkable to lose

In contemporary terms, it aligns with:

  • predictive processing models of cognition
  • embodied cognition
  • affective neuroscience

But Luke names it long before modern science: ψυχή.

C. ψυχή as Affective-Relational Self

1. What ψυχή Is Not

  • Not mere biological life (βίος)
  • Not an immaterial “soul-substance”
  • Not private interiority detached from action

2. What ψυχή Is

The living self-in-relation

The integrated pattern of:

  • desire
  • fear
  • attachment
  • value
  • expectation

In modern language:

  • ψυχή ≈ the embodied affective model of reality

This is the self that:

  • instinctively avoids loss
  • reflexively protects coherence
  • experiences obedience as danger or safety

D. Neural Representation (Without Reductionism)

To say the self is neural is not to say it is nothing but neurons.

It is to say:

  • the self is embodied
  • affect is patterned
  • desire is trained
  • attachment is plastic

The brain does not merely think propositions; it:

  • predicts outcomes
  • assigns salience
  • encodes threat and promise

This makes discipleship formational, not merely cognitive.

E. Luke 9 as Affective Reorganization

Seen through this lens, Luke 9:23 names a direct assault on the affective self:

  • “Deny yourself”
    • Refuse to let the existing affective model remain authoritative.
  • “Take up your cross daily”
    • Accept repeated affective disconfirmation: obedience feels like loss.
  • “Follow me”
    • Re-center perception, value, and desire around Christ.

The cross is where the old affective map says:

“This leads to death.”

And Jesus says:

“This leads to me.”

F. Why This Explains the Cost

This framework explains why discipleship:

  • feels threatening
  • resists abstraction
  • cannot be optimized
  • demands time

The affective self is:

  • slow to change
  • deeply conditioned
  • survival-oriented

Thus:

  • loss precedes understanding
  • obedience precedes emotional alignment
  • Christ precedes coherence

G. Telogos and Affective Reorientation

If Christ is telos, then:

  • affective recalibration is unavoidable
  • reward-based motivation fails
  • self-preservation must be displaced

The found self is not:

  • the old affective model rewarded
  • nor the same self with better beliefs

It is:

  • a re-patterned affective world
  • where Christ—not survival, not success, not self—defines what feels real and worthwhile

H. Why Resurrection Does Not Undo the Cost

Resurrection does not reintroduce reward logic.

It confirms:

  • that the affective reorganization was not in vain
  • that Christ remains telos beyond death

But disciples follow before resurrection makes sense.

That is the point.

I. Summary Statement

Affective selfhood names the embodied, relational, neural world in which “losing the self” actually happens—where Christ confronts and retrains what feels worth saving.

Luke 9 is not metaphorical psychology.

It is the re-education of desire around Christ.

J. Closing Line

The question is not whether Christ is true.

The question is whether your affective world can survive having him as its end.

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