Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.
Interpretation
True spiritual growth requires genuine curiosity and transformation, not just identification with a religious label.
In this quote, Richard Rohr expresses his disappointment with people who maintain a superficial religious identity without engaging in true spiritual exploration and transformation. He suggests that labeling oneself as part of a particular faith does not equate to a high moral or spiritual standing; rather, genuine curiosity and the desire for deeper understanding are essential for authentic spiritual development.
In practice
During a sermon, you might share this quote to discuss the importance of personal spiritual growth.
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.
A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.
Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.
When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world
If the propositions of this Discourse are tenable, the "state of progressive collapse" is precisely that state in which alone we are warranted in considering All Things.
To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace
Thus to share in the sufferings of Christ is, at the same time, to suffer for the kingdom of God. In the eyes of the just God, before his judgment. Those who share in the sufferings of Christ become worthy of this kingdom.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.