We don’t come to God (or truth or love)
by insisting on some ideal worldly order or so-called perfection, but in fact
we come “to knowledge of salvation by the experience of forgiveness” (Luke 1:77)—forgiveness of reality itself,
of others, of ourselves—for being so ordinary, imperfect, and often
disappointing. Many also have to forgive God for not being what they wanted or
expected. One reason why I am so attracted to Jesus and then to Francis is that
they found God in disorder, in imperfection, in the ordinary, and in the real
world—not in any idealized concepts. They were more into losing than winning.
But the ego does not like that, so we rearranged much of Christianity to fit
our egoic pattern of achievement and climbing.
Isn’t it strange that Christians
worship a God figure, Jesus, who appears to be clearly losing by every
criterion imaginable? And then we spend so much time trying to “win,” succeed,
and perform. We even call Jesus’ “losing” the very redemption of the world—yet
we run from it. I think Christians have yet to learn the pattern of redemption.
It is evil undone much more than evil ever perfectly avoided. It is disorder
reconfigured in our hearts and minds—much more than demanding any
perfect order to our universe.
Much of the Christian religion has largely become
“holding on” instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding
on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).
Richard Rohr
