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Originally Posted by Guest 1
I will respond when I get my registration: 77150 (this was a compromise suggested by the moderator).
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Okay, but please don't get hung up on defending literalness. In the first place you don't know for sure it's literal. In the second, you don't seem to be able to define the literal meaning. So I would say in this case one man's literal might be the same as another's figurative. Since we can't define for sure the literal meaning, the debate becomes semantic.
The question should be, what lessons can we gather from the verse. I think in order to do that, we can only go with what we know. Pushing the limits of mysticism was one of Lee's tendencies, and LRCers are enamored with the wow factor involved. But, really, what does that do for us?
The Bible tells us our union with Christ is something like the union of husband and wife. We can get into all into the mystical, "intrinsic" meanings of that till the cows come home and not gain a thing. Or we can take a step back and go with what we actually know about marriage. Which is that it is a union of two persons with different natures and roles. It's about love, intimacy, cooperation, and getting to know each other. It's not about what is the nature of "one flesh." I doubt if too many couples waste a whole lot of time trying to figure out what it really means at a microscopic level. Couples know instinctively what "one" means without having to have it mean one of them is becoming the other.
The lessons we learn about our relationship with Christ should come from what we know, not from mystical speculations. Those won't get you through your day and they won't make you a better Christian.