Ernie: About monks I cannot say; nuns, of course, regard Jesus as their husband and
their vows are a spiritual version of a wedding ceremony. About love per se, Evangeline once brought up the subject when we were discussing bad choices in life partners, specifically my sister's choice of an utter loser as her live-in boyfriend, a character who had no talents of any kind, who was a leech, who had a rather vapid personality (to call it a personality at all), and not very bright to cap it all off. The relationship lasted until nearly his death from COPD after 30 years. Those years, looked at objectively, were years my sister utterly threw away. Everyone concerned could see the obvious with total clarity, my niece, my siblings, the neighbors, etc but not my sister, she continued to make excuses for him year after year. That is, we may rhapsodize about love but an objective analysis of the phenomenon might do us some real good. This includes love of Jesus. To repeat, there may well be very good reasons for emotional feelings at the time of a religious conversion and at times of crisis -and let's add deeply felt thanksgiving for a special blessing of some kind. To use sexual metaphor, you love the woman who one day will become your wife, with extreme passion. How long can that last? I can vouch that 2 or 3 years after marriage is a distinct possibility. But beyond that? For that matter, for a lot of people if the honeymoon lasts as much as a year that is a miracle. Eventually the passionate "in heat" phase of a relationship -while memory of that time may never fade out- comes to an end and a new kind of love arises based on shared values and interests, on mutual respect, and so forth. Seems to me this is inevitable. Now think about Jesus in the context of Christian faith. For a while, after first becoming a believer, a "passionate phase," a sort of bonding, makes perfectly good sense. But how long can this really continue? My experience was that it became increasingly strained to try and revisit those early feelings. Yet in the context of Baptist faith among Baptists I knew in those years, this was supposed to continue forever, the passion was never supposed to fade. What I came to realize that it was time for a different kind of commitment to Jesus than emotion-centeredness. The more there were pressures to persist in the "passion phase" the more I felt I was lying to myself about it all. Yet there was no theology of a transition to something different, just more and more insistence that the emotion part should forever persist or, at worst, be renewed as before, every so often. Not possible. And I felt that something was wrong about Baptist theology. That was the Baptist part of the equation; for Pentecostals the situation is even worse as I see it. Ross Douthat, in his 2010 book, said something similar about himself. Besides, what about all the questions you are able to ask as you grow older? Questions that, in conscience, you feel you must ask and that there must be good answers. In Douthat's case, from his late teens to mid 20s, this was his pattern also. In my case, from late teens to early 20s. Then a major change took place and a lot of seeking and exploring and eventually a rediscovery of Christian faith that I could never see before -by that time well into my late 30s and early 40s. Anyway, this is my experience and no amount of talking can make me perceive what I have, in fact, perceived, but now supposedly "must" perceive in a different way. Which is hardly, in rough outline, all that unique; many other people have gone through a similar transformation in their lives. And for good reason. Not to go through this kind of transformation is what raises questions. How is it possible to remain a "true believer" Evangelical? This uses the phrase "true believer" in Hoffer's sense. In a political context such a person would be an ideologue. Less kindly, a fanatic. For which there are plenty of religious analogues. Never thought of Jesus as a general, not remotely, nor a guru, instead as a true friend, an ideal to live up to, and a special presence in my life. Simple as that. He was also an historical person whom I have tried to learn as much about as possible given the sketchy nature of our sources, a life that, when analyzed in its context, is endlessly fascinating with mysteries still to be solved. Billy ________________________________ From: Centroids <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 2:53 PM To: Billy Rojas Cc: Centroids Discussions Subject: Re: Redemption Re: [RC] 2016 2017 2018 2019... & Hi Billy, > The feeling I have, and this goes back a long way, is that Jesus-centeredness > to the extent that we get something like 'Jesus intoxication.' is of a piece > with Bakhti Yoga Ah, I can see where you’re coming from. I didn’t mean this in (just) the “Jesus is my boyfriend” sense. I meant the “Jesus is my guru and my general” sense. I was surprised to discover that monks think spiritual marriage to Jesus is like a honeymoon. Rather than mortgages and housecleaning and raising kids... E -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
