I'm beginning to see parallels between coming to love and understand another culture and coming to love and understand a member of the opposite sex.
There's a permanent alienness to them both, no matter how deeply you come to know them. You can study them diligently, serve them faithfully, but they will always be Other. Becoming one with them is a beautiful ideal -- but one that will never be perfectly realized. All the limitations of speech and thought are manifest in such a relationship. No matter how you study the language of the other, there will always be nuances lost, offense given.
And there will always be a certain ambivalence, no matter how strongly you love the other. It's the differences of thought and feeling that attract us to the other, and at the same time these differences irritate and repel us.
And so there's an eschatological longing bound up in both of these relationships. . . for a Spouse that will care for and understand us perfectly, and for a time when every tribe, tongue and nation will stand united in love.
Posted by Discoshaman at septembre 21, 2003 08:43 PM | TrackBack
And in both cases (as Ephesians points out) the oneness IS there, not merely as an ideal but as a reality, but our sinfulness and the fallen state of our world hamper our experience of it. For now. :-)
Posted by: pentamom at septembre 22, 2003 02:30 AMExactly! The now-but-not-yet of the Christian life. :)
Posted by: Discoshaman at septembre 22, 2003 02:52 AM