Richard Rohr, OFM

One of the few generalizations we can make in the field of universal spirituality is this: No one else is your problem. You are always the locus of conversion and transformation. It is always about you first of all—always. You can even use that as a good litmus test for authentic spirituality. Is it keeping you listening for God? Is it keeping your own feet to the fire? Then it is probably healthy teaching. Is it leading you to suspicion, paranoia, accusation, and blaming? Then it is from the “Accuser,” which is a quite significant New Testament name for Satan (Revelation 12:10).

God makes grace out of our grit, salvation out of our sin. We are saved, ironically, not by doing it right as much as by the suffering of having done it wrong. We come to God not through our perfection (thank God!) as much as through our imperfection. Finally, all must be forgiven and reconciled. Life does not have to be fixed, controlled, or even understood for us to be happy. That is good news! In fact, what else would it be? The gospel is a new “logic” that “The Fool on the Hill,” as in the Lennon and McCartney song, brought to the world.

How can I know, work through the anger, and still be a life-giving presence? Naïveté is different from second naïveté. The former is a kind of virtuous ignorance; the latter is a spirit of informed openness, often gained after disillusionment. In fact, between the two there is all the difference in the world. However, normally, we are so sure that people will not be able to work through to true enlightenment that we avoid telling them the whole truth, or they avoid wanting the whole truth. It is much, much easier not to know.

When we know we’re not really transforming culture, we’re not really changing the world, we’re not really having a great deal of influence at the higher levels, we move to the level of micromanagement. We find some little tiny world where we can be in control and right, where we can be pure and clean. We might as well be saying, “I can’t clean up the world, so at least I’m going to clean up my living room,” or “I cannot really change and influence people, so I am going to demand total conformity from the pulpit.” Many of us act out some version of this. I empty all my wastebaskets.

The gospel is not about winners over losers; the gospel really is about win/win—but very few get the message! I have to admit, ashamedly, that some people in the business and education worlds are better at this than some people in the church. They are beginning to understand that life cannot simply continue to be posited in terms of winners and losers. There has to be a way that we both can advance together. Mothers tend to have a head start in understanding this as a result of negotiating and compromising with their own children—whom they want to love equally and fully.