Our operative God image is often a subtle combination of our mom and our dad and/or any other significant authority figures. Once we begin an inner life of prayer and in-depth study of sacred texts, we slowly begin to grow, and from then on it only gets better. Grace does its work and creates a unique “work of art” (Ephesians 2:10).
Most early “God talk”—without self-knowledge and inner journey—is largely a sincere pretense, even to the person who consciously believes the language. The miracle of grace and true prayer is that they invade the unconscious mind and heart (where our real truth lies)—and thus really change us! It invades them so much that the love of God and the love of self invariably proceed forward together. On the practical level, they are experienced as the same thing!
~Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality
How can we look at the Biblical text in a manner that will convert us or change us? I am going to define the Bible in a new way for some of you. The Bible is an honest conversation with humanity about where power really is. All spiritual texts, including the Bible, are books whose primary focus lies outside of themselves, in the Holy Mystery. The Bible is to illuminate your human experience through struggling with it. It is not a substitute for human experience. It is an invitation into the struggle itself—you are supposed to be bothered by some of the texts. Human beings come to consciousness by struggle, and most especially struggle with God and sacred texts. We largely remain unconscious if we avoid all conflicts, dilemmas, paradoxes, inconsistencies, or contradictions.
The Bible is a book filled with conflicts and paradoxes and historical inaccuracies. It is filled with contradictions and it is precisely in learning to struggle with these seeming paradoxes that we grow up—not by avoiding them with a glib one-sentence answer that a 16-year-old can memorize.
~Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Teaching on Wondrous Encounters (CD)
Leonard Cohen’s song, “Anthem,” states in the refrain: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” That is a much more poetic way of naming what we unfortunately called “original sin”—a poor choice of words because the word sin implies fault and culpability, and that is precisely not the point! Original sin was trying to warn us that the flaw at the heart of all reality is nothing we did personally, but that there is simply “a crack in everything” and so we should not be surprised when it shows itself in us or in everything else. It keeps us patient, humble, and less judgmental.
The deep intuitions of most church doctrines are invariably profound and correct, but they are still expressed in mechanical and literal language that everybody either adores, stumbles over, denies, or fights. Hold on for a while until you get to the real meaning, which is far more than the literal meaning! That allows you to creatively critique things—without becoming oppositional, hateful, arrogant, and bitter yourself. Some call this “appreciative inquiry” and it has an entirely different tone that does not invite or create “an equal and opposite reaction.” The opposite of contemplation is not action; it is reaction. Much of the “inconsistent ethic of life,” in my opinion, is based on ideological reactions and groupthink, not humble discernment of how darkness hides and “how the light gets in.”
~Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Spiral of Violence: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (CD)
