Radical Grace
July – September 2006

Awakened and Astonished — Part I

by Richard Rohr, OFM

The corruption of the best is the worst.
—Latin proverb

These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their hearts aren’t in it . . . so I am going to step in and shock them awake, astonish them, and stand them on their ears.
—Isaiah 29:14, Eugene Peterson translation

A recent study on altruism is supposed to have shown that people affiliated with religion are statistically no less nor more loving than people who call themselves unbelievers. In fact, they are often more egocentric, and only a very small percentage is genuinely or heroically altruistic. If true, this is surely disappointing and humiliating for religion, although I must say that it largely matches my own observations. Some of the most naturally generous people I have ever known have been secularized Jews. And they don’t even believe in an afterlife system of reward and punishment! We really have to look at this.

I have often thought that Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Scheler were at least partially right in what they called ressentiment. They felt that people could not just be morally pressured or legally commanded to love and not to hate, or they would end up in a double bind of simultaneous promotion and resistance. Hating, after all, gives real focus to our ego structure, and loving first feels like loss and surrender of structure. Nietzsche and Scheler felt that believers might love now and then, but like sullen children, they would often do it with an underlying resentment for being forced to do it! They would have one foot on the accelerator of life and another on the brake, trying to perform and yet deeply resisting being commanded at the same time. (I think that is exactly what Paul is trying to point out when he teaches the utter insufficiency of the “the Law” to liberate us (Romans, chapters 2– 7). Information is not the same as transformation. Compliance is not the same as conversion, yet they both become the common substitutes.

I believe there is a deep dilemma and contradiction at the heart of institutional Christianity. Maybe it is even a necessary one. All I know is that it can only be resolved—by authentic inner experience, “prayer,” mysticism, or dare I call it, “spirituality.” I am convinced that religion, in its common cultural and external forms, largely protects the ego, especially the group ego, instead of transforming it. If people do not go beyond first level metaphors, rituals, and comprehension, most religions seem to end up with a God who is often angry, petulant, needy, jealous, and who will love us only if we are “worthy” and belonging to the correct group. We end up with the impossible scenario of a God who is “small,” and often less loving than the best people we know! This supposedly divine love is quite measured and conditional, and yet ironically demands from us a perfect and unconditional love. Such a salvation system will never work, unless we allow an utterly new dimension of love “to astonish us and stand us on our ears,” as Isaiah says above. Unless God is able and allowed to love us unconditionally, we will never know how to do the same.

Most people I know would never torture another human being under any conditions. Yet people believe in a god who not only tortures, but tortures for all eternity. That is bitter vengeance by anyone’s definition. Why would anyone want to be alone with such a testy and temperamental god? Why would anyone go on the great mystical journey into divine intimacy with such an unsafe lover? Why would anyone trust such a god to know how to love those who really need it? I personally know many people who are much more generous and imaginative than this god is. We have ended up being ourselves more loving, or at least trying to be, than the god we profess to believe! Such a religion is in deep trouble—at its core.

Most people I know can eventually forgive and forget. But not our god! God does not forgive until he or she gets some appropriate penance, reparations, and repayment. (Actually reaffirmed in common sacramental practice). This is supposedly needed by one who has nothing better to do than keep accounts and do a self centered cost analysis on everything. Sort of like Santa Claus, “making a list and checking it twice, going to find out who’s naughty or nice.” The Lord of this beautiful and self renewing cosmos ends up looking instead like an anal retentive banker or a brooding maiden aunt. It just doesn’t match the cosmic evidence. And it particularly does not match the evidence for those who have prayed—or experienced divine forgiveness.

Most of my Jewish and Christian friends are very tolerant and accepting of different races, cultures, and religions. They are willing to see good wherever good is to be seen. But not our god. Our god only likes “born again” Americans, and preferably morally successful and “normal” people, who hopefully attend my denominational service on the proper day. (This is easily the quickest growing form of religion in most countries today!). Even stingy little Richard Rohr ends up being much more caring, patient, generous, and merciful than Yahweh Sabaoth! How did we get to such absurdity? Especially, after Jesus spends most of his ministry affirming those who are wounded, unworthy, not successful, normal, or properly affiliated?

Perhaps you say, “But religion has always taught me that God is love!” Yes, religion “says the right words,” but this god we hear about is never allowed to be loving in the way that we have experienced it from even our middle range friends and lovers. I have experienced immense patience, tolerance, and mercy from many of my friends. They put up with my failures and idiosyncrasies, and eventually know that some of my patterns will never even change. They often accept me as I am, and learn to love me as I am— which eventually almost indirectly changes me! Every good parent knows that unmerited love creates love-in-return. Grace creates gracious people. But not our god! God, and the history of religion, seem to prefer mandates, coercion, blame, and shame to achieve some kind of supposed transformation. This is quite helpful for social order and control of the immature. I really understand that, but it is quite clear to me in the later years of my life, that God does not love me if I change, but God loves me so that I can change. That is an entirely different agenda.

It often seems that religion’s most common concern is to find out what God does not like, where God is not present, and who God does approve for hating and excluding. Perhaps we are seeking to legitimate our own need to exclude and hate and dominate? Why else would we like a God who succeeds by punishing and always dominates? We have been told in recent years that God does not like homosexuals, God is not present in mosques and synagogues, and God is not bothered at all by the direct and collateral damage of our necessary wars. Abortion killing is the only killing that is inherently bad because the fetus is “innocent life.” This “morality” will only work if we can dare to think of ourselves as innocent! If legal protection and moral response depends on us being innocent or worthy, “then who can be saved?” What makes the Good News good news is precisely that God loves and defends unworthy and non-innocent life! Otherwise, you and I have little hope. And we can easily justify capital punishment, torture, euthanasia, and even pre-emptive wars against the unworthy ones—which is exactly what we have done. We have become the small god we worshiped.

I think my central disappointment with much religion is that it is so stingy in its attitudes, and actually seems to prefer a stingy god. It loves tribalism and group think. It likes to convert others more than change itself. Religions are notorious for excluding, expelling, and excommunicating. It is almost their job description. We actually fear and condemn anything that appears to be a call to mercy beyond our boundary markers. Any universalism (“catholicity”) or inclusivity is deemed dangerous. It feels like abdication of sacred ground, for some reason. We always come up with our fear of others, our fear of contamination, our fear of losing some supposed great truth that we are protecting and living. What fragile people religion has often created.

Read Part II of “Awakened and Astonished,” by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, published in the October/November/December edition of Radical Grace. The article was first published in its entirety as “My Problem With Religion” in the March/April 2006 edition of The Pastoral Review, © The Tablet Publishing Company Limited ISSN1748-362X, London, England.

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan of the New Mexico province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM.

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