A Fresh Perspective

Recently in a webcast, Richard Rohr offered a simple rule of thumb for discerning, evaluating, and judging the redemptive value of biblical texts. The first question to ask of any biblical text, he said, is not, “How does this text help me, save me, guide me?” Those are questions that leave the ego in charge. The first question to ask is: What does this text say about God? How is God imaged in the text? How does the text portray God? Father Rohr says: If the God depicted and imaged in the text is operating at a level lesser than the best person you know, then you know that the text is not presenting an authentic revelation of God. If the God portrayed in that text is not as just or loving or compassionate or understanding or gracious or forgiving or kind or fair as the best person you know, then you know it can’t be a reliable portrait of God. When we read accounts of God ordering Israel to put an entire civilization under the ban—to kill men, women, children, animals, and d

  The story goes that General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, was scheduled to deliver a message at a major convention to chart the future of the organization for the next 50 years. As the time approached, he became ill and could not attend in person; but he wired the message he wanted delivered. The people waited on the edge of their seats for the telegram.   When it arrived, the one chosen to deliver the message walked up to the platform, opened the telegram, and a confused, puzzled look came over him. There was just one word on the telegram. It was the word “others.”     In Philippians 2, Paul exhorts the church to focus on others. He says in 2:3–4: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Clearly the focus is on “others.” To commend this way of life—this other–centeredness—Paul draws upon an early Christian hymn that

The author of John’s Gospel develops a sharp contrast between Mary’s free, most likely spontaneous expression of magnanimous love and Judas’ calculating complaint in John 12:1-6. Mary breaks open an expensive bottle of perfume, pours it lavishly on Jesus’ feet and then wipes his feet with her hair. John observes that the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Judas, we are told, complained, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” The writer comments: “He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.” Scholars have argued that John’s portrait of Judas is biased and not historically accurate, that the author surely had an ax to grind. Maybe so. But that matters little to the one reading this story for spiritual guidance. What is significant is the kind of spirituality and religion Judas and Mary represent.

In John 12, Jesus interprets Mary’s extravagant gesture of pouring perfume on his feet as preparation for his death (John 12: 7–8). Both Mary and Jesus seem to be aware that Jesus’ death is looming just over the horizon. Both are aware of how his head-on clash with the powers will end. Mary’s extraordinary expression of love is offered in light of Jesus’ impending death. Henri Nouwen writes about a time when he was hit by a car and ended up in the hospital. He didn’t have any external injuries to speak of, but after he was carefully examined, the doctor told him, “You might not live long. There is serious internal bleeding. We will try to operate but we may not succeed.” Suddenly everything changed. Death was right there in the room with him. He was confused and in shock, and yet in the midst of his confusion and shock, he felt “at rest” and experienced an “embrace of God” where he felt safe, that God was going to bring him home. Nouwen says that he was so much at peace that

On display in St. Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin hangs an ancient door with a rough hewn, rectangular opening hacked out in the center to commemorate a significant event. In 1492, two prominent Irish families, the Ormands and Kildares were in the midst of a bitter feud. Besieged by Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, Sir James Butler, Earl of Ormand, and his followers took refuge in the chapter house of St. Patrick’s cathedral, bolting themselves in. As the siege wore on, Fitzgerald, the Earl of Kildare came to the amazing conclusion that the feuding was foolish. Here were two families, worshiping the same God, in the same church, living in the same country, trying to kill each other. So he called out to Sir James and, as the inscription in St. Patrick’s says today, “undertoake on his honour that he should receive no villanie.”  Afraid, as the inscription reads, of “some further treachery,” Ormond did not respond. So Kildare seized his spear, cut a hole in the door, and t

In Corinthians 5:14–21 Paul presents a totally nonviolent God who has acted in Christ to reconcile the world. God acts in Christ to bears the violence of the world without returning the violence. Paul says in verse 19 that “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” Jesus, as God’s mediator and agent of reconciliation, bears the hate and animosity of the world, absorbing it—exposing it, yes, but also absorbing it through an act of preemptive forgiveness—refusing to retaliate and return the violence. Our world knows about preemptive military strikes, but very little, if anything at all, about preemptive forgiveness.  In verse 21 Paul declares that God made him “who knew no sin” (who was blameless of any of the charges brought against him by the religious and political powers) “to be sin,” that is, to become and bear the sin of the world—the hate, bigotry, cruelty, vicious

The late Henri Nouwen is one of the most celebrated spiritual writers of the modern era. He taught at Yale and Harvard and wrote over 40 books, but for the last ten years of his life he lived with physically and mentally challenged people at the L’Arche Daybreak community in Toronto , Canada . In their little community, there were six people with disabilities and three other assistants besides Nouwen. None of the assistants were particularly trained to work with people who were mentally and physically challenged, but they received much help from doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and behavioral management people in their city. Writing of that community Nouwen says, “We all have our gifts, our struggles, our strengths and weaknesses. We eat together, play together, pray together, go out together. We all have our own preferences with regard to work, food, and movies, and we all have problems in getting along with someone in the house, whether handicapped or not. We laugh a lo

In his letter to the church at Philippi , it is fairly obvious that Paul is concerned about some influences that were steering the church away from the teaching he had imparted and the example he had modeled. It seems that there were two different kinds of pressures being exerted upon the church. One influence pressed for legalistic obedience to rules (3:2), while the other invited a casting off of all restraints (3:18–19). These two influences are still around and they tempt us in very subtle ways. One calls us to take part in an economy of meritocracy, of tit-for-tat. Its appeal is to the calculating mind where there are clear winners and losers.  The other influence entices us with appeals to freedom to shed boundaries that we think we do not need. Here the message is: Just let yourself go, don’t worry about the consequences, live for the moment. There is certainly something to be said for living in the moment, but living in self-indulgence without regard for boundaries is not