This one is going to rabbit trail a bit...I'm stuck on this thought of a faceless love. What is tripping me up is the thought that once you've put a face to love it is no longer love but just a form of affection. I say I love my wife, but is it true love or is it that we wear rings that say that we love each othere and we also said it in front of a bunch of friends? That being said, do I truly love her? I know everything about her, but now I have a face on that love! Where is the mystery? Of course I love Cynthia, but is it simply an earthly love? If there were no identity to this love, would this love be even more? I wonder this about my love for Christ also.
When I think about Jesus, I have a face on him. He is attractive, white, and quite honestly a bit effeminate. I picture the jesus in the picture at your grandma's house. I wonder if by putting this face on him if my love is skewed in any way? There is no mystery. With this face put on Jesus, now I have a saviour that I can understand. It's the thought of iconification in which once we have a face on someone or something, we make them into whatever we imagine them to be.
This makes me sad because I wonder if since Ive been living with this icon of jesus in my head, have I ever truly loved "Jesus"? I've had plenty of girlfriends of whom I told that I love, but today I never talk to or about any of them - they are only a memory. If I stopped following the Jesus I know today, would I still love him ten years from now? Would I miss him, or would he be like my girlfriends and become one of those we don't speak of?
Maybe Jesus and I need to go to marriage counselling and reconnect so that the mystery will come back. Maybe it is simply that I need to find the mystic Jesus that nobody really "knows", much like the Orthodox church. I don't want to become one of those guys who simply worships christ because it is cool, but instead is worshipping because God is with us. I wonder if Jesus' humanity is what is killing the church because now that there is a face on him, we can control him. "if our god is for us, than who can be against us"? Now Jesus works for us instead of us working for him.
thoughts?
2 comments:
My reaction:
It's like trying to describe to a spouse or family member why you love them. It's not easy to put into words. Or coming home from a great concert or movie and not being able to put into words why it was so great. I remember a decade ago driving home after watching 7 Years in Tibet and not being able to talk.
There has to be some mystery. I don't think that means we stop talking about it, but when it comes to understanding and having a relationship with the triune God, we have to accept that it is unexplainable and that the deeper we dig causes us to have even more unexplainable issues. How deep and beautiful are the unfathomable mysteries of God!
It's no wonder that some of the most brilliant theologians of the past 100 years started writing about mystery and prayer in their later years (Von Balthasar, Von Rad, or even Heidegger, who is definitely not a theologian, but a philosopher who got spiritual).
Maybe the more we know Christ, the more faceless he becomes. Like Moses only being allowed to see the backend of God. Like God becomes more transcendent, but also more beautiful over time.
Too much rambling. I'm done...
"All right ramblers lets get rambling" -From Dusk Till Dawn
Anyway, i like what both of you are saying. It seems like we have lost the Christian Mystic in the theologian realm, although on a more simplistic level i think it is trying to be recovered in the post modern context. I was reading an article by Yancey and thought his last paragraph was powerful and belongs right here in these thoughts about faceless love.
"Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. Prayer offers no ironclad guarantees, just the certain promise that we need not live that mystery alone"
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