The previous post on my spiritual journey was about philosophy and thinking deeper about God. I became a serious evangelical at this period of my life, I returned to my roots and filled my life with reading C.S. Lewis and listening to evangelical teachers. At this point in my life my obsessive compulsive disorder hit me full swing, I was working at nights and my disorder kept me from working effectively. At this point I could only produce so much and I knew I was practically useless at work. I was driving with a friend one weekend and had an accident, I totaled my car and took a week vacation just to sort things out with insurance and figure out what I was going to do at this point. It just happened to be Holy Week. I was totally devastated by the car wreck, and pretty much stuck at home. They were showing the TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth directed by Franco Zeffirelli the whole week, an hour each night for the whole week. I watched segments, and I found myself drawn to the series. It was not that the show was religious, it was that Jesus was so alien to me. I had spent so much time reading the Bible and learning Theology but the Jesus I watched was a stranger. There is a scene in the series where Jesus was eating a fruit (a pomegranate or something else) and reclining while teaching His parables, this was so strange and refreshing to me. I could let down my guard and just relax, like He did. I was drawn to the character of Jesus, He was mesmerizing! I found myself in this story I was watching and I was a pharisee, I was one of His enemies! Something changed deep inside me in this week, I saw the deficiency in my faith and I was determined to change it at all costs. I resolved to "unlearn" the theology I learned from books, I resolved to only read the Gospels for as long as it took to get a better picture of Jesus. I had learned so much from philosophy and Lewis but here was something greater than all that, I would not rest until I was part of this!
So this is probably the last chapter of my spiritual journey, everything else that followed were just footnotes to these events in my life. I slowly overcame my obsessive compulsive
disorder to the point that I could function normally and actually do a good job. I encountered other writers: Frederick Buechner, G.K. Chesterton, Brennan Manning. The next few years after this period were the best in my life, I did not have much but I had friends who loved me and I was free to be myself. I still live from the steam generated by those days.
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