In the midst of preparing for the first term for the school year 2006-2007, i came across this book that fascinated me. w. paul jones, in an approach to understand diverging points in theology, points to the different "theological worlds" that preoccupy us as human beings. different worlds would offer different answers to the basic question of religion. it would do well for us to search from within that which drives us - that which we pine for, and to seek out what others seek too. in this way, we begin to converge into this common search for "self-identity, belonging, legitimacy, meaning."
"How one knows one’s lived meaning as true is at heart an autobiographical process. In each person is an impulsing logic which shapes and converges the raw ingredients of one’s autobiography, energizing them into individualized quest. It is this impulsing logic that renders the classical ingredients of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience into a “recipe,” without which they are useless for understanding one’s approach to meaning… The way this event functions as impulse is best identified as “obsessio.” An obsession is whatever functions deeply and pervasively in one’s life as a defining quandary, a conundrum, a boggling of the mind, a hemorrhaging of the soul, a wound that bewilders healing, a mystification that renders one’s living cryptic…an obsession is that which so gets its teeth into a person that it establishes one’s life as plot. It is a memory, which, as resident image, becomes so congealed as Question that all else in one’s experience is sifted in terms of its promise as Answer. The etymology of the word says it well: obsessio means “to be besieged.”
W. Paul Jones, Theological Worlds: Understanding the Alternative Rhythms of Christian Belief
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