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Richard Rohr in his book "Dying: We need it for life" talks
a lot about our need to die. He says that all the great religions of the
world talk a lot about death, so there must be an essential lesson to be
learned through death. The problem has been that we might know something has
to die, but throughout much of religious history our emphasis has been on
killing the wrong thing and therefore not learning the real lesson.
Historically we moved from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice to various
modes of seeming self-sacrifice, usually involving the body self.
God was not considered friendly. God was distant and scary. God was
not someone with whom you fell in love or with whom you could imagine sharing
intimacy. Instead, God was viewed as an angry deity who must be placated with
some sort of blood sacrifice. Jesus presented a much different image of God,
but it seems very hard for people to let go of their punitive ideas of God.
Sadly, the history of violence and the history of religion are almost
the same history. When religion remains at the immature level, it tends to
create very violent people who ensconce themselves on the side of the good
and the worthy and the pure and the saved. They project all their evil
somewhere else and attack it over there. At this level, they export the
natural death instinct onto others, as though it is someone else who has to
die.
The truth is it’s you who has to die, or rather, who you think you
are, the False Self. Authentic religion is always about you. It’s saying you
change first.
Grace and Peace to you
Rev. Harry Currie
780.422.2937
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