Reading Update

I am currently reading Job and the Mystery of Suffering by Richard Rohr. I wanted to pass on some snapshots from the reading…

“Religious education has for years given people answers to questions they’re not asking. The people accept answers quickly and easily. And the answers go about an inch deep. And the people, all too often, spout the answers for the rest of their lives.” “…such knowledge can pass away as quickly as it came, because we never thirsted for it. Until we make space inside, what comes is not an answer but an excuse – an excuse not to face the question, an excuse to stop searching, to avoid the journey.”

“The mystery of why there are thorns on the rose eventually becomes a question of who God is”

“Is Jesus your ‘personal lord and savior’? This phrase has become very popular, even though it’s very recent, and very individualistic. I get letters every week from people telling me they have made Jesus their lord and savior. I’m glad they have, but it’s going to take most of us all our lives to know what that means.”

“The church is filled with people who are living on hearsay.”

“Don’t let anyone tell you that theology and belief have not evolved.”

“God created a definition of good that seems to include evil.”

“The New Testament metaphor of Gehenna, the garbage dump of Jerusalem, ‘where the worm never dies and the fire never goes out,’ (Isa. 66:24) didn’t help us much either. For some self-loathing reason we tend to take negative metaphors literally and dismiss positive metaphors – such as, ‘your names are written in heaven’ (Luke 10:20) – as innocuous poetry.”

“But faith does not mean having answers; it means being willing to live without answers. Cultural faith and civil religion tend to define faith poorly and narrowly as having certitudes and being able to hold religious formulas. Such common religion is often an excuse for not having faith. Strange isn’t it? Faith is having the security to be insecure, the security to live in another identity than our own and to find our value and significance in that larger union.” (Gal. 2:20)

“It seems the real revolution, which we still have trouble accepting, is the Gospel, which tells us to work for justice for others but not to demand, expect, or even need it for ourselves. That is extraordinary freedom.”

“We must never think we are building up God by putting humanity down.”

“We begin here.”

...Rohr continues to illuminate perspective