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Richard's Daily Meditations

Celtic Knotwork, from xnvx.com  

SEVEN UNDERLYING THEMES OF
RICHARD ROHR'S TEACHINGS

Fourth Theme:
Everything belongs and no one needs to be scapegoated or excluded. Evil and illusion only need to be named and exposed truthfully, and they die in exposure to the light (ECUMENICAL).

We now know from cultural studies and historical experience that groups define themselves and even hold themselves together largely negatively—by who they are not, what they are against, and what they do not do. We need a problem or an enemy to gather our energies. We usually define ourselves through various “purity codes” to separate ourselves from the “impure” and unworthy. Pure worship (“what we are for,” or in support of, and what we love) is much harder to sustain. Thus most reformations and revolutions need someone else to be wrong much more than they need any discovery of a higher level of consciousness themselves. This is an absolutely core problem.

Thus Jesus never affirmed opposition or contrariness, because he knew that it was merely a same-level or lower-level response to the problem (even when empowered by some new and good ideas). The new group was infected by the same hubris and oppositional energy, and would soon engender the same kind of “reformation.” Thus the endless progressive-conservative pendulum continues to swing and yet we do not move forward spiritually.

“Emerging Christianity” is trying not to make this mistake, and hopes to be an inclusive notion of religion that is not against this or that. Evil and sin do need to be named and exposed (not directly fought!), however, and this is the prophetic role of religion. Without prophecy, religion is uncritical of itself and ends up being largely self-serving. Jesus' starting point was never sin, but human suffering.

~ Richard Rohr, June 2012