What is Your Madness?

[Alex Tang]

We do not have to be mad to live in this world but it helps. Passion
is a powerful motivator and sustainer of our lives. Without passion,
we live lives of grayness and drudgery. With passion, we experience
lives of energy and power. To some, those who live their lives with
passion may seem slightly mad.

Is it madness or passion that lead Benjamin Franklin to fly his kite
in a thunderstorm to study lightning and electricity, Edmund Hillary
to climb Mount Everest, an Augustinian monk to nail his theses in
opposition to the Mother Church on a wooden door, and a middle aged
man to give up his cosy comfortable job to become a penniless
missionary to the poor? Madness maybe. However there is a rationale to
this madness and that rationale is passion.

We cannot follow Christ and become His disciples without passion.
Jesus Christ is a deeply passionate man. That is why to his own family
he seemed slightly mad. As His disciples, we too need to be
passionate. Christian spirituality is not just understanding a set of
propositions that made up our doctrines or following the lines of a
creed. Pure cognitive understanding without emotions is a facade of a
building or a white washed tomb. There is no life within. True
Christian spirituality is living out the propositions or the creed in
our daily lives. It is alive and passionate. It is counter-cultural.
It is revolutionary. True Christian spirituality is a gentle madness,
the good kind. And this madness makes us what we are.

Shalom,

Alex