Let’s face it. Most of us are scared of Love, real love that is! Not the sentimental version that sloshes its way around most of our waking hours, but burning love, the real deal. The Love that sees us naked, warts and all and still embraces us with an altogether different kind of acceptance, the very acceptance of Source itself, the One who thought us up in the first place.
Yes, even in its manifested human form we run scared of its all-seeing glance in our direction, swearing as we run for cover in the assurances of ego. Let’s be frank. Most of us at some stage in our earthly sojourn have been terrified of the one they call the Christ. Even His followers are really terrified of Him, believing the sin narrative that Christianity has overlaid Him with. We’re never quite sure if He’ll lay a guilt trip on us in the heady environs of the next life, one that goes something like this:
‘Never forget that I died for you, you undeserving sinner saved by grace!’
No, in our more honest moments we are still wary of the Nazarene, believing religion’s spin on His life, death and claimed resurrection. Such an underlying fear is revealed in our day-to-day avoidance of Love, those times that we prefer the security of insecurity to the Presence of Spirit Breath bubbling up within.
As for those who don’t give religion a second thought! Well, they’ve clearly had enough of the Jesus of Christianity. They’ve observed the Nazarene’s supposed reflection, the Christian believer, from a safe distance and decided, ‘Thanks but no thanks!’ The person of the Christian Christ terrifies the free running ego. It spells entrapment and a suffocating confinement, a control that they can do without. It’s weird how multitudes quickly proclaim the Nazarene to be a ‘good’ Man before hiding him away in a religious cupboard that they vow to never visit. Yet apart from the religious caricature, there is something that scares folk stiff about the Galilean prophet. Maybe, we suspect that He was onto something regarding our inner life, something that asks us to travel through inner angst into a New World, a World of reunion and contentment. ‘But He, asks too much,’ declare our wounded egos, those defenders against further rejection and pain.
Yes, this Man certainly rocks our inner and outer worlds. No wonder we run to hide in the Edenic bushes of our misperceived shame. Yet, we run from Love, a Love that has never rejected us nor called us sinners. Hasn’t ego done a great job in keeping us far from Divine Love, shepherding us into the sheep folds of zealous religion, or the hedonistic cities of quick fix pleasure.
Time perhaps to revisit the Nazarene, on the neutral hillsides of our weaker moments. One Touch is all it takes.