"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). Wow! If Jesus said this, he was surely not expecting the religion of niceness, of pretty words and feel-good experiences that we have become. He knew that Big Truth always divides before it can unite a few at a deeper level. I think most of the thousands of sermons I've heard in my life have been about “being nice” in one way or another. That's how domesticated the gospel has become--as if Jesus were a Divine Miss Manners, and the Church existed to maintain proper social order and class. Yet many are entirely content at the level, and Church has not usually been a passionate search for God. The word nice isn't found anywhere in the Bible, to my knowledge.
There's nothing more dangerous to true religious thinking than conventional thinking, easy conformity, being like everybody else in our social group. There's no depth or power at that level. Mass consciousness is never going to be ready for anything that asks them to “die” or that does not make them feel secure and superior. So we have settled largely for civil religion and cultural Christianity. It's so much more comforting to be nice and “moral” at a small level--than to be faithful to Big Truth—which cuts us all open like a sword.
Adapted from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction
From Center For Action and Contemplation.
I admire Richard Rohr hugely - have for close to 20 years now. (I had the enormous privilege of hearing him speak at a conference over the New Year holiday this past winter.)
ReplyDeleteEllie, you were blessed to be able to hear him. Every now and then, I don't agree with him, but most times I do.
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