A "square peg" person....

I just changed my bio on mybloglog. In it I had said that I was a "liberal" follower of Jesus. Well I am not sure I fit that category, though much of my intellectual thinking is resourced by theologically liberal thinkers. But where on earth do I fit? I don't think I fit any of the categories? I hear more and more about a new category named "progressive Christians". May be that's me? But no one seems to come up with exactly the slant I have or the priorities I have. Here is one thing I feel is an important recognition.

It's in the "doing" that the truth is known....
Because we come from western background and Greek philosophical thinking we tend to try to analyse, intellectualise and dogmatise truth. We think it must be able to be written, dissected and defined in language. But what if there are important aspects of truth that are "known" in different ways?

When I was courting my wife, she asked me once "Do you love me?" We were sitting in a bus stop. I replied, "Define 'love' and I will answer you." Well she attempted to and I debunked every definition she came up with until she was nearly in tears and "we" nearly never happened. How do you "know" love?

In the Bible it is stated that Adam "knew" Eve, and we all know that that did not mean he had an intellectual dissertation about her. He made love to her... its a different way of "knowing". In the New Testament this experiential style of knowing is referred to when Jesus talked about "this is eternal life, that you 'know' me..." and in the Greek there are a couple of passages in John and again in Ephesians that correctly translated should be "truthing it in love". They tend to be translated into English weakly as something like "telling the truth in love" ... which really is a different thing. They point to a different way of "knowing" than western analytical thinking.

A story is told about a great dancer who performed a dance on stage. A reporter came up to her afterward and asked her what the dance meant. She replied, "If I could explain what it meant in words I would not have bothered dancing it!" Again a different way of "knowing".

I find myself getting frustrated with the various Christian writers from whatever part of the theological spectrum. I find myself reading books and saying to myself, "Yes that sounds great and scholarly, but that's not where its at!" I have bookshelves of books that one day I will throw out, because they now seem irrelevant to me. I believe important truths about life, about Jesus and the sacred are discovered and "known" in the "doing". In John's gospel the writer has Jesus say,
"They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me;and those who love me will be loved by my father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."
And a little later;
"Those who love me will keep my word, and my father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."

John's concept of "believe" involves "doing," sharing the love of God. Some how in the "doing" the reality of the sacred presence is known. I guess that rings bells for me in my experience. It is when I have decided to step out and love as Jesus loved, that there has come into my life a sense that I am part of an eternal flow of life, that I am in fact a co-creator with the divine or that the partnership with or participation in Jesus has become real, and meaningful.

This sort of "knowing" has become a big part of my experience and while I enjoy reading theologians, philosophy and analyses this alternative style of "knowing" leaves that discussion and study for dead. It is real, relevant and empowers. The "faith" becomes not dogma, nor mental assent nor mystical believing but an internal force and passion... John's Jesus talks about "a spring which will provide him with living water, and give him eternal life."? That is the experience in this type of knowing!

I am a square peg in a round hole, and cannot find a place to fit because there do not seem to be many writers whether "liberal", "conservative" , "pentecostal", "evangelical", "progressive christian" or whatever other label, who seem to give due recognition to this type of "knowing". Yet in my experience it is so real and in line with what I read of Jesus. Words, study and even worship are weak, easy, off the hook alternatives to the reality. But the reality of attempting a loving lifestyle brings a "deep, real and lasting high sense of connection" that defies description. I guess "incarnational"- as in attempting to make real the truth in life, is the label I would put on me.

I kind of suspect many will read this and say, "Duh! What's he on about?" - Perhaps I should not have bothered attempting to write about it.... "If I could explain it in words I would not bother living it". After all the ultimate divine communication was not a book, philosophy or dissertation, but a life lived - Jesus of Nazareth.