Self sacrifice

Self-sacrifice extends from mild self-abnegation to the ultimate sacrifice of one’s own life. 

One of the central threads of Christianity is self-sacrifice.  In Islam martyrdom is rewarded with a direct entry to Paradise.

Christ is said to have been the Son of God who gave his own life for the sins of humanity in order that we may have eternal life. 

In Christianity self-denial has become a virtue and an end in itself modelled on Christ’s  self-sacrifice.  In many other faiths also, self-denial is a central theme.

There is another interpretation of the life and death of Christ, an interpretation other than the metaphysical one that for so many of us riles our intuitive sense of truth^[1].  In this interpretation the Divine^[2] has no gender and no conscious interest in us; Jesus was a great leader and philosopher who had no more divinity than any of us; self-denial is a means to a collective temporal end; and pleasure with conscience is not sinful.

To advance as individuals and societies we need to exercise conscious will to overcome and harness the animal within^[3].  We need to deny ourselves, to counter our instinctive urges, or in metaphysical terms, to atone for “original sin” - our default natures - if we are to achieve a higher and better plane of existence in the temporal world, and perhaps incidentally in any realm hereafter^[4].  Self-denial or not "sinning"^[5] is necessary, but not all the time, and not as an end in itself.