What disappoints me is that you seem to attempt to alter a testimony, and show a willingness to “read into” an honest man’s attempt to comprehend the human sexual drive and align it with his perception of God’s will.
Your article and suggestions also put the love and devotion of this woman, whom I know no better than you do, personally, in question. That is called defamation of character where I come from.
I understand your desire to uncover the fraudulent attitudes that we have about our bodies and our divine essence and I applaud your tenacity.
I would caution you from over-zealousness, though.
To steel yourself from something in that era was to put a wall between you and it.
He sees her hurt feelings at him distancing himself, perhaps emotionally and physically, as if she would be angry with him. (More likely, he is angry with himself, and she is confused.)
His statement that he is not worthy of her shows his pious views of human sensuality toward all of its members of the body of Christ.
I suspect this would have created much hardship between him and his wife, had he not been killed. Because he would have still had the mixed idea of wanting and denying his own person hood and would have continued to project his attitudes about sexuality into their personal and public lives.
I am sure this created a lot of distress for men and women, not only in that era, but throughout time.
He obviously had accepted the belief that sexuality was sinful.
What little bit of his “heart” that I did see, your article is the first I have heard of him, he is struggling with the age-old challenge portrayed in such classics as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame where the priest has sexual feelings for the young woman and finds fault with her.
Could it not be that the connection we seek in what we perceive as sexuality is not instead a call of the soul to remember our true unity as a people, part of the body of Christ; which is all creation?
Fables and media throughout time have flaunted the lustful character of the body and ignored the spiritual longing of the spirit. And then, they have pitted them at odds to each other.
We have made the body the idol and recipient of our devotion, attention, and adoration, and lost connection with the truth of our unitedness as a Son of God before a benevolent and adoring Father.
It has created no end of problems for humanity in all it phases of life and death. Even in death the spiritual things I study suggest that we continue to spin our wheels toward a goal that is never met. And, in fact, is impossible to meet, because all knowledge is in our true heritage, and not to be found in experiential “learning”.
Let us continue to unravel this ball of yarn we have created for ourselves but let’s do it without shaming or defaming others.
We got this, Jonathan! Onward and upward! :) ❤
