buried with Him in His death. We are expected
to show forth His death till He comes, and we do this by dying daily. In
one sense, the life of the Christian is a life of dying. Being buried
with Christ in His death is symbolized in the act of baptism, especially
when it is administered by immersion and accompanied with such a
Scripture verse as, "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into
death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the
Father, we too might walk in newness of life."[9] In other words we have
to expect the pain of our relationships and accept the responsibility of
them for the sake of the glory in them that may be revealed later. We
are to accept the unacceptable in ourselves and in others, because on
the cross Christ accepted the unacceptable in all men. This is what
produced the Cross. And so He died, bearing the sin of man while He
perfectly fulfilled His own teaching; that is, He was perfectly obedient
to the full meaning of love. We too have to die daily to our desire for
peace at any price, to our desire to work out convenient and comfortable
compromises, and to our desire to be God and to have things run our own
way. Thus, we come to realize the meaning of His words, "Whoever loses
his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it."[10]

The Christian fellowship, therefore, is the fellowship of men and
women who accept dying as a part of living, and who are not surprised
by the presence in human relations of selfishness, betrayals,
misrepresentations, hostility, and all other violations of the ideal.
When we meet these things, we should not run away, or pretend that such
conditions do not exist. Instead, we should face these hostile and
negative human responses with courage. Because we are participating in
the life of our Lord, we may move through these experiences, knowing
that nothing can really separate us from the love of God which seeks to
make itself known in and through our relations with one another. We may
trust that if we accept the pain that we have in our relations with one
another and are obedient to the spirit of the love that seeks to reunite
man with man, we may emerge on the farther side of the painful
experience with relationships that are richer, deeper, and stronger than
they were before.

An excellent illustration of this principle is to be found in Tennessee
Williams' play, _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_, the point of which many people
miss because of wh