The Mystical Kiss: The Galli Report

Also: The Law of Unintended Consequences | Some Empathy for Angry Radicals | Fake News Is Not New | Videos to Bide Our Time | [View online]( [Give Now]( Advertisement [The Galli Report]( [Home]( [Podcast]( [Subscribe]( Friday, January 25, 2019 The Mystical Kiss The passionate, sometimes-graphic biblical poem called The Song of Solomon or The Song of Songs is on the surface about romantic love. That’s how it’s often preached about—as an apology for the goodness of sex. Like most of Scripture, however, it has layers of meaning, and one of those layers that early and medieval Christians noted concerned Christ’s love for us. Take, for example, [Bernard of Clairvaux’s series of sermons on this book](. In Sermon 3, for example, he explains verse 1:2, “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth,” by saying Those to whom it is given to utter these words sincerely are comparatively few, but any one who has received this mystical kiss from the mouth of Christ at least once, seeks again that intimate experience, and eagerly looks for its frequent renewal. At any rate, Natalia Kohn in CT picks up this line of interpretation with her own twist in “[Why Song of Solomon Is Key to the Great Commission]( When I first read Song of Solomon and began entering the world of intimacy with Jesus, I was shocked by the idea that he delights in me. The pursuer and wooer attributes of Jesus sounded very strange to my workaholic ears. The Law of Unintended Consequences This article is not so much a criticism of the #MeToo movement (which on the whole has been salutary from the perspective of Christian ethics) as it is of any movement that moves too swiftly to ponder unintended consequences, which are sometimes detrimental to the very group it’s trying to help. In this case, “[#MeToo is making life more difficult for women on Wall Street](.” This will eventually get sorted out, I assume, but in the meantime … Some Empathy for Angry Radicals It’s easy to become impatient with angry radicals as they rant about this, that, and the other social injustice and who make it clear that if you are not “woke” to their cause, you are a less human species. But the first-person account of one man’s journey in and out of radical anarchism (“[Sad Radicals](”) helped me see a human dimension to those who join radical communities. Author Conor Barnes concludes, Young adults often become radicals after they realize the immensity of the cruelty and malevolence in the world. They reject a society that tolerates such suffering. They sanctify justice as their telos. But without truth to orient justice, seekers of justice will crash and crash again into reality, and will craft increasingly nightmarish and paranoid ideological analyses, burning out activists, destroying lives through jail or abuse, and leaving the world an uglier, more painful place. To paraphrase Alice Dreger, there is no justice without wisdom, and no wisdom without surrender to uncertainty in the pursuit of truth. This article paints anarchism with one brush, but to be fair, there is a version of this politics called [Christian anarchism](, with intellectual leaders like the late Jacques Ellul. I’m not a big fan myself, but (in contrast to our image of anarchists) they eschew anger and all violence as they try to live Christ’s teaching as literally as possible. But like other anarchists, they remain deeply, deeply pessimistic about the possibility of social change and the value of governments and large organizations. Fake News Is Not New Speaking of Jacques Ellul: I’m rereading his 1962 book Propaganda, which 57 years later is as relevant as ever. One of his points is that “[Fake News Works Because We Yearn to Conform](.” He didn’t use the term “fake news,” and his argument is more complex, but it was interesting to read this article in the Pacific Standard that reiterates Ellul and helps us today understand a troubling phenomenon that, apparently, is not that new. (For an audio presentation of Ellul’s idea about this topic, check out one of our most popular [Quick to Listen podcast]( episodes). Videos to Bide Our Time As we mourn the emptiness of our lives between the high, holy days of the National College Football Championship and the Super Bowl, we can watch sports videos, like the latest of John Crist, [imagining if soccer and golf announcers switched roles](. Or (forgive me if this is a repeat, but I do like it) this one on [if football coaches were really honest](. Grace and peace, [Mark Galli] [Mark Galli] [Mark Galli](mailto:GalliReport@christianitytoday.com) Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today Advertisement More from Christianity Today [Self-Control, the Leader’s Make-or-Break Virtue]( [CT Pastors]( [Self-Control, the Leader’s Make-or-Break Virtue]( Is it possible to build willpower like a muscle? 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