Richard Rohr explains the necessity of moving beyond a relationship with God that is based on morality and law:
Religion is ultimately not a moral matter; it’s a mystical matter. While most of us begin focused on moral proficiency and perfection, we can’t spend our whole lives this way. Paul calls this first-half-of-life approach “the law”; I call it the performance principle. We think, “I’m good because I obey this commandment, because I do this kind of work, or because I belong to this group.” That’s the calculus the ego understands. The human psyche, all organizations, and governments need this kind of common-sense structure at some level. But that game has to fall apart, or it will kill us. Paul says the law leads to death (see Romans 7:5; Galatians 3:10). Yet many Christians are still trapped inside the law, believing that by doing the right things, they’re going to somehow attain worthiness or acceptance from God. The ways in which we’ve defined ourselves as successful, moral, right, good, on top of it, number one … have to fail us! [1]
Pastor Juanita Campbell Rasmus describes how having a rules-based approach to religion left her feeling hollow and out of touch with God’s love:
As a child, rules kept me safe from judgment and harm, safe from breaking any of God’s do-not-cross-this-line rules. I thought the rules worked: I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t steal, I didn’t gamble, I didn’t … and so on, my little checklist of righteousness went. And yet I was aware that my life had a certain quality of hollowness to it….
Understanding began to come to me one day while I was lying on the sofa in the living room…. The room was filled with the warm midday sun. As I lay there, the Lord said, You have built a life filled with rules. Your rules have boxed you in, and they have boxed me out.
I didn’t get it. Wasn’t the God-life all about following rules? Isn’t Christianity rooted in Thou shalt not? Had I gotten what it meant to be a Christian totally wrong? If it wasn’t about the rules, then what had I wasted my time and life doing all these years? And if I had gotten this all wrong, what else had I gotten wrong about God? Even more, what would it take to get it right?…
Rules alone had left me hollow inside, but the sense that the Spirit was freeing me to be in relationship was so life-giving that all I could call it was joy. Something about this new awareness began to fill some of the emptiness that I had been feeling…. I have found that relationship with God and my practice of abiding with God, being joined with God, are what make me solid inside and out…. Perhaps the word love best describes what seemed to be flowing into me; yes, a deep knowing that I was loved.
From Andrew Lang, a guy who shows up occasionally in my email box.
| Hey CO few, A couple days after Heather and I got back from our mini-moon (mini-honeymoon), I stumbled upon the beautiful poem below from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.In a very personal way, it speaks to what I’m feeling as I try to hold the big emotions of our wedding and re-enter my workplace with its spreadsheets, meetings, and silly little emails.But in a more expansive way, it reminds me of the ongoing challenge of living in the both/and of what it means to be an informed human in a globalized world right now:Of witnessing the joys of my kids running around while knowing Palestinian children are being intentionally starved to death in Gaza; of enjoying dinner with friends while knowing many folks five blocks away can’t afford even a portion of the meal we’re enjoying; of having hope for the future while not yet seeing how we might possibly get there.Or, to borrow a phrase from the poem, being absolutely “devastated and stunned with joy” at the same time…and maintaining a tender connection with each. As you read, I invite you to feel for how it connects with your story and how you’re experiencing the tension of the both/and in your own life and communities. For When People Ask I want a word that means okay and not okay, more than that: a word that means devastated and stunned with joy. I want the word that says I feel it all all at once. The heart is not like a songbird singing only one note at a time, more like a Tuvan throat singer able to sing both a drone and simultaneously two or three harmonics high above it—a sound, the Tuvans say, that gives the impression of wind swirling among rocks. The heart understands swirl, how the churning of opposite feelings weaves through us like an insistent breeze leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves, blesses us with paradox so we might walk more openly into this world so rife with devastation, this world so ripe with joy. |
