The biggest thing I learned from losing? Winning's better.
Almost all the early Christian Fathers were opposed to the death penalty, even though it was of course standard practice across the ancient world.
Jesus himself, as the gospel story goes on to its dramatic conclusion, lives out the same message of the Sermon on the Mount: he is the light of the world, he is the salt of the earth, he loves his enemies and gives his life for them, he is lifted up on a hill so that the world can see.
While some who downplay Christ's divinity have imagined Jesus as a great social worker 'being kind to old ladies, small dogs and little children,' orthodox Christianity has not wanted Jesus to have a political message.
Whatever life after death is, being with Christ which is far better, being in Paradise like the thief, etc, the many rooms where we go immediately. . . that is the temporary place. The ultimate life after life after death is the resurrection in God's new world.
Learning to live as a Christian is learning to live as a renewed human being, anticipating the eventual new creation in and with a world which is still longing and groaning for that final redemption.
We can glimpse it in the book of Acts: the method of the kingdom will match the message of the kingdom. The kingdom…goes out into the world vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always – as Paul puts it in one of his letters – bearing in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed.
Human beings are what I think of as "biomythic" animals: we're controlled largely by the stories we tell. When we get the story wrong, we get out of harmony with the rest of the natural order.
Beings are owners of their actions, heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions as their refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior.
I wear a lot of wigs as Jacques Mesrine. He'd wear multiple wigs and take them off one at a time to rob three banks in one hour.
The place you are looking for is the place from which you are looking.