Either you allow Holy Scriptures to change you, or you will normally try to use it to change--and clobber--other people. It is the height of idolatry to use the supposed Word of God so that my small self can be in control and be right. But I am afraid this has been more the norm than the exception in the use of the Bible.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal transformation through spirituality rather than using scripture to impose beliefs on others.
Richard Rohr's quote expresses a critical view on how individuals often misinterpret holy scriptures as tools for asserting personal control over others instead of seeking genuine inner change. He argues that true spirituality involves allowing the teachings to transform oneself rather than weaponizing them for judgment, highlighting a common tendency to use religious texts for self-serving purposes.
In practice
During a discussion on personal faith and integrity, you can quote this to illustrate the importance of self-reflection.
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.
If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights,then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights.
Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.
Commanded by God dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible to remember their past, Jews historically obeyed not by recording events but by ritually re-enacting them: by understanding the present through the lens of the past.
I think, in the United States, we talk about race as a black and white issue... We're generally talking about it as if it's a binary equation whereas, in fact, there's more than two races and, in fact, those races blend together. There are a lot of different ways that people identify.
Each of us is a unique strand in the intricate web of life and here to make a contribution.
The Universal Declaration... as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations...it not only crystallizes the political thought of our times on these matters, but it has also influenced the thinking of legislators all over the world.
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