Reflections on Jesus (Warning very RADICAL)

First entry

I cannot sleep. I wish I could but I have to write. Ce que j’ai lu est très bouleversant pour me taire. What I read is far to revolutionary for me to keep tacit. Sin continues in the Christian life – is that not what we know – in spite of our walk with Christ.

But then in First John Chapter three it says :

“ Everyone who has this hope in Christ Keeps himself pure as Christ is pure.” Alright, so whoever hopes that when “Christ appears we shall see him in him as he really is (1 John 3: 2)” does not fall into lust (the antithesis of pure). But we do, I do, at least all the time. It goes one to say “ Whoever sins is guilty of breaking Gods Law, because sin is breaking of the law.” That’s obvious but what disturbs is what he mentions three times in 1 John 3:5-9 “ So everyone who lives in union with Chrsit does not continue to sin; but whoever continues to sin has seen him or known him. Let no one deceive you my children! Whoever does what is right is righteous, just as Christ is righteous. Whoever continues to sin belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinner from the very beginning. The Son of God appeared for this very reason, to destroy what the Devil has done. Whoever is a child of God does not continue to Sin, for God’s very is in him, and because God is his Father, he cannot continue to sin. This the clear difference between God’s Children and the Devil’s Children. (6-9)”

Let us suppose we are Bible Literalists and we interpret the Bible literally here. What a tormented existence it must then be for us, continuing to sin and undermining our belief that we are children of God and in union of Christ! Instead, we are spawn of the Devil, how vile! Ceasing to sin is then the trait of the true Christian while those who continue to sin are surely not part of His Body, but are those who defile their own Body. Christ’s body, it implies here, was kept free from sinful acts. What did he do with his body that we fail to do? How did he make use of his members (all of them) in a way that pleased the Lord? Did he never orgasm and if he did, how did he ‘do it’ in a way that is good?

Perhaps I am not interpreting this passage correctly and I need someone of you to give me a nuanced approach that accounts for unintentional, yet repeated sin, in the life of a Christian. I am at a loss for words here, so I will no longer comment on this passage.

Ironically, the version of the Bible I read this is called “The Good News New Testament and Psalms” that is dated to 1986 – the name is “Obed Ngh Stefanus Omushesha, Ongwediva” The name Ongwediva – place of the leopard – is the in local of my father’s birthplace and I have this Bible via him, in fact I am Christian, Roman Catholic, because of him. However, I fail to the glad tidings in what I have just described in First James.

I know I continue to sin. Like yesterday, I went on to a porn site after about three to fourth months of not doing so. And I left site feeling empty. You might think that I got off and then realized how void it all was. But no, I could not even get myself going here! There was arousal, yes, as I watched two kissing, touching, caressing, but there was noting to keep me going. At this point you may think I am probably desensitized and I probably needed a higher dose of erotica, like a drug addict, but as they did much more than kissing and caressing, the more I was repulsed.

Indeed, I think sin is my desperate act of filling in the void. I want to be loved, so I look for it on the net, only to find that there is no love there. In addition, my regard of pornography as a comodification of the body and part and parcel of the exploitation of human beings, whether or not they concede to it, may have played a part in numbing my response to it. But I believe there is more to that. I have contemplated hooking up with people, but when I carry my thoughts to completion I find emptiness. Perhaps I am able to always correctly calculate the pleasure and pain summation that apparently an agent does before embarking on an action. According to one of Plato’s early dialogues(Protagoras), the incorrect calculation just before doing a bad thing is what leads people to do bad things. It’s that we think that its right, permissible, pleasurable, when in fact our position to make the right calculation is compromised by the allure of the “instant pleasure” we would get from the action. Perhaps.

Sex is then a void. I guess, it seems so empty for me. But I don’t want it to be that way! Here I want to speak about the Lord as the Lover I have, not as a brother, since that is one way I heard our relationship with God described, at a youth group I was (run by American Baptist Missionaries) this Friday, but as a Lover. I want to speak about it, but I but I do not know how to. All I can say is that there have been ecstatic moments in the past, where I believe the Spirit was moving in me, but they have not been such moments in a while. I hope the Lord visits me again in this way, after Lent, after the breaking of my fast. Mt fast of abstinence that has shown me the abyss where easy, quick, fast, sexual satisfaction is supposed to be.

Second Entry.

Reading the Bible does bring me to question my assumptions and ideas about Jesus. He is a handsome man with long brown hair, blue or brown eyes. Es muy guapo tiene el pelo largo y un poco rizado. A de mas tiene barba y los ojos marones, verdes o azules. Es muy muy guapo el Jesús de la imagen de mis pensamientos. The prophet Isaiah wrote about the Lord’s servant, the one whose suffering was because of our sins and here he describes the servant differently to what I assumed :

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Isaiah 53:2

What does he mean by “desire him” is it much like a man of my kind desires another?

In the Bulgarian version of the Bible it says “He had not image of the Lord or attractiveness so that we look at him or beauty that we desire him.” Isaiah 53:2

The author moves from majesty or divine beauty, a quality that inspires awe and then to desire for Jesus as a man. I venture to say this desire encompasses sexual desire for Jesus as a man, after all the book “Song of Songs” is full of desire between man and woman and is apparently a metaphor for the relationship between God and his people.

So if Jesus is the servant spoken of by Isaiah, as he is thought of being in Christian teaching, then we must efface the image a handsome Jesus from our minds. However, why would we follow someone that is so ugly! Isaiah writes about a lack of attractiveness that the servant had, which runs counter to the charismatic Jesus that convinced his disciples to follow him in perhaps just one glance followed by ‘come follow me!’.

However, the Isaiah prophecy is not one to one with the Jesus of the Gospel. Isaiah implies that the servant will have offspring saying “ Yes it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his a guilt offering, he will see his offspring prolong his days and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” Who are those “offspring” of the servant? Are they flesh and blood children or is this a metaphor for the followers of Christ who in a sense his children, by virtue of the fact that Jesus the one he calls Father are one. I doubt this a prophecy that confirms the veracity of the “Da Vinci Code” unless Isaiah had a stake in the success of that book…hahaha.

In spite of the description of Jesus as ugly, there is nothing more that I desire than to be with Him. As in be in His arms and look at His hand gently resting on my knee as I sit in between his two legs. His brown hair and facial hair – beard connected to moustache – all of it is there. I imagine it. Lying with Jesus. But then again, “thou shall not lie with another man for this is a abomination and God hates this”…Leviticus 18:22 (22:18?). When I am with Him can He really give me all of that? Can He be with me – in union with me? Will he have His flesh body and will I have mine, in other words, will I be cast out in the outer darkness where there will gnashing of teeth? I want his flesh in mine. I desire it so. It is has been in me several times already, I have taken the body of Christ into my mouth and oh if I were take him in then in heaven, would it be as I have imagined?