Jesus: What Does "Take Up Your Cross" Mean?

Why does Jesus say, "take up your cross"? What does that mean? Is it about self-denial? Is Jesus recommending a personal and individual plan of asceticism and penitential behaviors? What does "self" and "personality" mean to Jesus and his disciples?
#jesus #bible #christianity #christian

[@JamesWatrous-m9m]

Good presentation as usual Bill. You use the term Kingdom of Sky Vault. Pilch or Malina haven't used that term in the books of theirs that I've read. (I haven't read all their books. I've read more Pilch than Malina.). How did you decide to start using that term?

[@BibleAlivePresentations]

Thank you, James!! I appreciate you watching and your kind words and thoughtful questions.
I use the expressions "sky-vault/s" and "kingdom of sky-vault" (Israelite Theocracy) PRECISELY to make viewers and listeners stop and inquire. It's like the effect that happens when driving over a rumble strip along the highway at night. John Pilch and the other Context Group explain in several publications that "heaven," while a perfectly fine word for prayers, liturgies, theologies, and catechisms, it doesn't belong in our English Bibles. "Heaven" meaning an eternalized relationship between God and those God saves, the eternal destiny of creation, is fine! But that's not what the Hebrew šāmayim, Aramaic šĕmayin, or Greek ouranois really refer to.
While they do refer to the "sky," these words also don't translate to the skies we know of and understand through weather science, modern astronomy, astrophysics, and scientific cosmologies... etc. Therefore "sky" (as seen through our post-Enlightenment Western consensus reality) is not really the right translation either.
These terms translated to the VAULTED skies as understood by ancient circum-Mediterranean peoples, specifically Israelites. They were understood to be composed of either polished metallic mirror or crystal, and by the first-century CE had long been understood to encompass the spherical yet stationary Earth in a series of encompassing spheres. Watch the video linked below.
ruclips.net/video/6i7SR81uJOI/видео.html
So I use "sky-vault/s" because it more accurately conveys what is being communicated. Even if the exact expression wasn't used by John Pilch and Bruce Malina, it is consistent with what they present in various works (see their SOCIAL SCIENCE COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF REVELATION, for example). Wherever there is an English misrendering into "heaven/s," one can replace this with "sky-vault/s."
If Jesus did anything, he proclaimed Israelite Theocracy. For Israelites like Jesus, the politically correct expression for Israelite Theocracy ("kingdom of God") was "the kingdom of sky-vault." This is explained by both Malina and Pilch by using the expression "kingdom of heaven" to avoid confusion among their readers. I am just forcing some consistency there and better translating this with all due respect to my teachers.
The pieces are all there in Malina and Pilch. I just put their work together consistently in this regard.