The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.
Richard RohrRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The struggle between faith and the acceptance of uncertainty reveals deeper complexities in both science and religion.
This quote highlights the tension between scientific inquiry, which embraces uncertainty and speculation through hypotheses, and the desires of religious individuals for definitive answers and absolute truths. Richard Rohr points out the irony that, while many consider themselves people of faith, the concept of faith itself has evolved to represent a discomfort with ambiguity, contradicting its original meaning, which often involves trusting in the unknown and the yet-to-be-discovered.
Themes
FaithUncertaintyScienceReligionHypothesisTruth
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about the relationship between faith and science, this quote could provide a thought-provoking perspective.
More from Richard Rohr
All quotes →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.
Richard RohrRead
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 RohrRead
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
Richard RohrRead
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.
Richard RohrRead
Church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus. We invariably prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust and resolves every question even when it is not entirely true over the mercy and grace of God.
Richard RohrRead
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