The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on how the cross symbolizes the human tendency to blame and sacrifice others for our own issues.
Richard Rohr's quote emphasizes the concept that the cross serves as a powerful symbol, exposing humanity's recurring behavior of scapegoating—an act of projecting blame onto others for our own shortcomings. By highlighting this 'scene of our crime,' it invites a deeper self-reflection on our role in perpetuating cycles of sacrifice and blame, ultimately encouraging us to confront our flaws rather than deflecting them onto others.
In practice
In a sermon about accountability, one might use this quote to illustrate the dangers of scapegoating.
My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.
The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.
I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.
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).
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.
We are the makers of our own lives. There is no such thing as fate. Our lives are the result of our previous actions, our karma, and it naturally flows that, having been ourselves the makers of our karma, we must also be able to unmake it.
Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.
Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.
I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.
Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.
God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance.
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