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, as Batman says "makes us what we are."
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