Joyce, Jesus and noughties Gospel music

A brilliant comment on my last entry compels me to respond:

"As far as living life in all its fullness goes, I'm leaving you some Joyce on Jesus: "He was a bachelor, and never lived with a woman. Surely living with a woman is one of the most difficult things a man has to do, and he never did it."

At first I just thought you'd think it was funny. I love how, even though he's (at most) half-serious, it tells you v little about Jesus but loads about Joyce's relationship with his own long-term partner: the implicit tolerance, sense of duty, and ultimately the love that makes you stick it out. That kind of intimacy is so crucial to being human, it seems like a life without it would have such a hole in it. Ah, I get the 'marriage is an analogy of Jesus and his Church' thing, but I bet Jesus never had to pick the Church's suspenders off the floor for the nth time in a row, and bite his lip to keep from saying anything, as if he did, it would deliberately flirt with St. Peter to try and piss him off. "

I couldn't fit what I had to say in a reply and so I post!

The analogies in play here are Jesus to humankind and how his marriage to the church (that is all Christians, not a pile of bricks) is actually an insufficient relationship experience.

The point is the necessity of intimacy for a fulfilled life.

When I make plans for my future, which I mostly do for fun given how often they seem to change, I keep one element open. Nothing I dream of requires or denies a partner and kids. This is so I don't get disappointed - but that is not sad like one friend thought I meant! Equal to growing old alone, if I makes plans that have me traveling the world on some crazy-cool lives-changing mission and then someone comes along and messes them up, I don't want to begrudge the brilliant low key local community life God may have planned for us. Whatever happens though, one thing I don't think is that I will need human intimacy to be complete.

Yet my reader is not wrong that we crave intimacy. Indeed, I think she may be spot on in identifying it as the crux of humanity.

Jesus is not just Becca's analogy, He is also God's analogy. God used Jesus to show us what humanity is supposed to look like. Does that mean God says we are all to be alone then? Not at all. A single ancient Jewish bloke in his early 30's (not least one that is so perfect!) isn't a very relatable character for many folk at all. The key is to pick up on the theme that the analogy is promoting (like my prophetic underwear - the theme is not that life is pants!). The theme of Jesus's life was His intimacy with God - sharing the same vision (of peace, love and joy) and staying in constant touch (through prayer that is). That is what we are supposed to get from the example.

Which makes sense because, as rightly observed, people crave intimacy. But maybe they got that from a desire to be closer to God that comes from when we hung out together in the garden? As also quite rightly observed, a lot of us do find this in human relationships... but people can totally let us down (which isn't a fulfilling feeling at all) and even if not, that description of compromise and tolerance of an other's flaws doesn't sound perfect to me. All the different relationships available to us are, in my mind, analogies to help understand God better. The marriage one demonstrates an intensity of love and an exclusive intimacy that we can't get elsewhere. Sex, well, that's a whole other post but I think it is a powerful example of that in action (literally), which is why we need to be careful how we use it. Don't get me started on the dangers of cultural sexulisation though...!

As for this notion of the church leaving it's suspenders on the floor - dirty laundry all over the shop. The appropriateness of that analogy saddens me: how right you are that we take the piss all the time out of our perfect "husband"; we aren't Jesus's fulfillment and all too readily we will flirt with St. Peter. When he walked the earth too Jesus didn't get the intimacy that he needed from his followers - Judas betraying him, Peter denied him, Thomas doubted him and absolutely no-one understood him. By the end of his life Jesus was entirely alone and then, on the cross, even God left him. At that point there was no fullness of life. Not because he wasn't married though, but because the intimacy he had with God that gave him wholeness was gone. Totally alone, the moment before he died, crying out that he had been forsaken by God.

Becca, you're not wrong that Jesus didn't have fullness of life... but it was not 'cause he wasn't married. He showed us it was possible, told us to believe in it, then experienced the absence of it at an intensity no man ever has. Totally void and alone, the pain of the crucifixion was far harsher even than the accumulation of his friends rejection, public taunts, hatred, injustice, scorn, whip lashings, sleep deprivation, cross dragging, thorn wearing, nail piercing, tendons tearing, nerves stabbing, giddy bloody and drawn-out suspension process. Jesus, on the inside, was dead to life in the holistic experience sense and it was because he didn't have intimacy.

For me this is both the how and the why I now want to live life in all it's fullness. I can because what Jesus did on the cross actually changes everything for ever, enabling freedom even when it seems impossible (I didn't mean to get this preachy already and that is yet another topic... but if anyone wants to know then ask, do do ask); I want to because, well, it would be both foolish and wrong to knock that back, given how much it costs and how freely it was given. Jesus suffered for the hope of future joy and right here right now is the future! The time for mourning is passed (he rose from the dead don'tcha know!) because death is dead, life is alive and he took the shackles off our feet so we could dance!

I appreciate that the bible telling you to always be joyful may not be relevant to everyone (though if the bible is relevant to you then harken at that) but an unrestricted life should be. The world is analogising it all the time - this freedom is in the smell of spring and the colour of a kitchen. The universe points out the true way to life and all I know that that it pointed me to Jesus. If you got a better way tell me, if you got a worse way look for a better one.

Freedom from death in every sense and perfect intimacy - is there anyone that doesn't want it this good? Perhaps you're stumped by "too good to be true"? I say it again: life only makes sense if it is alive and death surviving is an oxymoron. Truth is a part of this wonderful life and lies are what destroy so, actually, since the better something is the more "alive" it is, we can thus imply without contradiction the truer it is! Thus the most brilliant things are also the most true. ERGO: eternal (in both the time and quality sense) life right here right now just IS!

"Everything for ever, nothing never."