Posted on 08/11/2010 1:52:46 PM PDT by xzins
...Consider this statement of her desires in A.D. 1373: "I wanted to have every kind of pain, bodily and spiritual, which I should have if I died, every fear and temptation from devils, and every other kind of pain except the departure of the spirit." Reading a line like this, I can't help think that if Julian were a member of my church, I would encourage her to see a counselor.
"For contemporary readers," Frykholm notes, "Julian's declaration that at a young age she 'desired a bodily sickness' coupled with her depictions of Christ bleeding on the cross are off-putting and impenetrable." Why does this woman whose counsel sounds gentle and wise seem so obsessed with suffering? Yet this is the same woman whose expansive vision of God's mercy we find so appealing.
....end....
Contemplating a crucifix that began to drip blood onto what she thought would be her deathbed, Julian saw and later wrote about a vision of God that was revolutionary to the church authorities of her day—indeed, to many church leaders in our own time. ...Moved by the all-encompassing love of the Christ she saw, Julian asked about the hell and purgatory she had heard about from her priest. Christ showed her nothing. But this did not make her a universalist. It scared her to death. ...The teachings of the church were like a ceilinged room, Julian concluded, while her vision of God was—like God—as broad and vast as the sky. She could no more leave the church than a person can live without a home, exposed to the elements. But her visions—her knowledge of the sky, so to speak—could help her better understand life inside the church. The wide-open air left room for mystery even while the church offered her a home.
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
Well, for that matter, how does anyone know there's a God? Many people apparently don't.
Beyond that, my own criterion is whether what she writes is consonant with my own knowledge and experience of God (not to say identical, but harmonious), and it is.
I guess that’s what all of us like, agreement with our own beliefs.
But does that make it valid?
Amazingly, we have a sort of religious debate here without any rancor, and you and xzins have both made excellent points. Fasting does raise the question on whether self-induced suffering is something to be sought after. But fasting, as you mentioned, is a type of self-denial rather than an active means to induce pain. I am not able to recollect any instance in the scriptures where the righteous actually inflict physical pain upon themselves, but many instances where, for a righteous cause, they endure pain inflicted by others. Jesus certainly allowed the nails to be driven into his hands, as he could have easily called upon a legion of angels at any moment to overcome his tormentors, but I don’t see this as self-inflicted suffering even though it was self-permitted. Also, the suffering on the cross had an underlying purpose, as it was a means to bring salvation to a world of sinners. In a similar, if infinitely lesser example, someone undergoing a painful recovery after an operation to donate a kidney to a loved one is enduring a self-permitted type of suffering, but the suffering is for an underlying purpose, and is not done simply for the sake of the suffering.
"Jesus certainly allowed the nails to be driven into his hands, as he could have easily called upon a legion of angels at any moment to overcome his tormentors, but I don’t see this as self-inflicted suffering even though it was self-permitted. "
Not to ridicule. Just to point out what you just said. Remember not only was he the victim like the Lamb of the Old Testament but the High Priest offering the victim. So he is offering the pain and suffering as a God can with the resources of a Deity. Which is through the people who did it to him. It's more complex than it seems.
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