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The second text today at church was Matthew 16:21-28. It contains the famous
line "For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world,
and forfeit his life?" (ASV)

Except the guy giving the homily said that the word given as "life" is
really "psyche" in the original Greek, which he preferred to translate as
"true self."

Well, okay. However, he followed it up with a reading of an earlier verse in
the same chapter, also famous: Christ's injunction that "If any man would
come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross." (ASV)

The guy did not like the phrase "deny himself," which struck him as having
abusive overtones. He felt this was an instruction to deny not ourselves,
but anything around us that is not lifegiving, such as consumerism.

Well...nice idea, but a pretty big interpretive stretch, it seemed to me. So
my question (after this long preamble) is: what is the original Greek phrase
for "deny himself" in Matthew 16:24? Is there any justification for reading
it as "deny aspects of our culture that are not lifegiving"?

In general, the guy's homily tended to identify the voice of God with the
voice of the true self, and hence obedience to God with obedience to the
promptings of the self. I find this soppy and craven. But is it also as
great a distortion of the text as I suspect it to be?











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