Heavy duty computer problems so nothing yesterday and I'm only hoping that this one (dated yesterday) goes out.
Jesus is under no illusions but that this understanding of desire (desiring what is best for others-not merely ourselves) is in fact an extremely difficult thing to grasp, and those who find it are few, and they find it with difficulty. Yet it constitutes the narrow way that is the way to life while the wide way, in which we mostly live, is the way to destruction. Life within the skandalon is the way of mutually assured death (Matthew 7:13-14). All this demonstrates that there is a specific content to the notion of skandalon, and one which goes back to Jesus himself. It might be defined by saying that all humans are locked into a reciprocity, what (Renee) Girard refers to as an interdividual psychology, which is rooted in a desire which is fatally headed toward death, our own and that of those we victimize. It is exactly at this level of our constitution in death-related desire that Jesus' ethical teaching seeks to set us free by teaching a new but no less reciprocal form of desire, which will enable us to fulfill the law and the prophets from the heart.
Just look around, how often do we desire the welfare of all. Admit it. We desire the well-being of our own and then we consider the all. In the meantime, we do whatever is necessary to secure ourselves - even when it means we turn against the other in order to have the world as we want it. We are free to do that. That is what makes for a prosperous life. And yet, we are also free to desire the well-being of those others who we do not count as our own - the ones who are different from us. And yes, to desire the well-being of the other is part of that journey that is called a skandalon because it is not the way things are done in and about the 'real' world. That could mean that Jesus really didn't live in the 'real' world. He lived in another dimension. But that would be baloney. His life is a skandalon because he lived in the 'real' world in a way that did not reflect the way that comes so easily to us all. And yet it is a way that he shows us is available to all of us - it is a human way to live. We do not have to settle for the desire that separates and alienates and destroys. We can live within the domain of our true humanity that Jesus unwraps for us.
Connection: A good exercise might be to go through the day simply watching the world go by. As we do that consider how things would go if the desire of the moment changed we participated in a world in which the well-being of the other was vitally important. Imagine.
O God of life, we desire so much and hold onto our desire so tightly we rarely have the energy or time to consider the life within you Reign that is available to us all - even now. Hold us and nurture us. Amen.
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