Namgok Lee 울트라 휴머니즘 - A Hunger for Wholeness

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Namgok Lee

더워지기 전에 산책 나왔다.

요즘 '울트라 휴머니즘'을 천천히 음미하듯 읽고 있다.

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빅뱅이전, 빅뱅과 우주의 역사, 인간의 신비를  깊이 느끼며 읽고 있다.

물리학이나 복잡한 철학적 사유가 어렵지만, 크게 방해받지는 않는다.

이 신비 앞에 어떤 상상도 가능하다.

그러나 그 상상은 이미 도달한 과학의 성과 너머로 작동해야 의미가 있다.

이 책을 보면서, 공자와 석가를 비롯한 동양 정신과 서양 정신의 회통을 많이 느낀다.

읽다가 내 나름으로 주를 다는 경우도 있다.

'과학은 정신의 문을 열고, 정신은 사랑의 길을 닦는다'

이 책 뒷 표지에 나오는 글이다.

이런 인식과 의지의 보편화가 절실하다.

홍익인간, 재세이화라는 위대한 정신이 탄생한 이 땅의 지금 정신을 생각할 때, 아득한 안타까움이 느껴질 때도 있다.

대우주의 신비 앞에 어떤 상상, 믿음도 가능하겠지만, 미신과 욕망의 늪에서는 벗어나야 그 신비 앞에 바로 설 수 있지 않을까?

‘울트라휴머니즘’ 126페이지의 글을 일부 발췌 소개한다.

매력이 넘치는 글이다.

• ⌈그리스도를 믿는 신앙은 우리가 인간과 우주의 운명을 예측할 수 있는 새로운 기초, 즉 새로운 수준의 의식으로 사는 것이다.
• 죽음이 더 이상 우리를 지배하지 못한다고 믿는 것은 ‘우주에 속해 있는 자기’라는 새로운 감각으로 의미 있는 삶을 사는 것이다.
• 부활 의식은 우주적인 해방에 근거를 두고 있다. 우리는 ‘새로운 지구를 위해 새로운 사람이 되라’는 새로운 자유로 초대 받았다. 
• 새로운 지구에서 그리스도는 ‘개성화와 신성화’라는 ‘진화의 중심’으로서, 매력적인 사랑의 힘으로서 ‘물질의 중심’을 통해 빛난다.⌋

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Namgok Lee

수녀이자 신학자인 일리아 델리오가 저자이고, 맹영성이 번역하고, '여해와 함께 대화출판사'가 출판한 '울트라휴머니즘'을 일단 한번 읽었다,

조금 지나서 한번 더 읽어볼 생각이다.

동서양의 위대한 사상들의 '회통'을 느끼면서 읽었다.

특히 '홍익인간'을  '홍익만유'로 읽으면, 아마도 '울트라휴머니즘'이라는 말에 가장 근접할 것 같다.

그리고 과학과 종교, 물질과 정신, 지기실현(구원)과 세계진화(변혁)를 상즉하는 하나로 보는 면에서는 '재세이화'의 현대적 전개라는 생각이 들었다.

이책의 마지막 구절을 적어본다.

"현대인은 과학과 기술에 모든 돈을 쏟아부었지만, 우리가 추구하는 통합과 행복과 평화를 찾을 수 없었다.  왜냐하면 의식적이고 사랑스러운 하느님과의 일치는 과학적인 사실이라는 외적 우주가  아니라 의식이라는 내적 우주에서 형성되기 때문이다. 오직 이 내적 통합에  의해서만, 급진적인 방식으로 급진적인 행동을 통한 변화가 일어날 수 있다.

• 과학은 정신의 문을 열고, 
• 정신은 사랑의 길을 닦아야 한다"

떼이야르 드 샤르댕과 40년 전에 만났을 때도, 나에게 가장 크게 다가왔던 매력이 우주진화의 대여정에서 인간의식이 차지하는 비중과 역할에 대한 비전이었다.

 그 비전을 뒷받침하는  진행으로 인류역사를 대관할 수 있도록 하는데 영감을 받았었다.

외적 우주와 내적 우주로 이야기하고 있지만, 그것은 대립하는 것이 아니라 하나의 우주가 나아가는 '불일불이'의 세계로 다가온다.

인류 존속의 위기를 맞으면서 '생명'이 가장 큰 화두로 되고 있다.

생명의 길은 '사랑'이다.

사람과 사람이 서로 사랑하는 것을 빼고서 동물과 식물을 사랑한다는 것은 무언가 뒤틀려 있는 것이다.

자연에 대한 사랑과 사람에 대한 사랑은 하나로 이어져야 진실하다.

자연과의 모순이 심각하지 않던 시대의 위대한 선구자들이 한결같이 이야기한 것은 

사람과 사람 간의 사랑이었다.

여기서 한 걸음 더 나아가는 것이 자연(동물ㆍ식물)에 대한 사랑이다.

우주진화의 과정에서 최고봉인 인간의 의식이 어떻게 진화할지에 대한  비전이 전반적인 정치ㆍ경제ㆍ문화 ㆍ사회운동이나 행복을 추구하는 우리들의 삶에 밝은 빛으로 와 닿을 수 있으면 좋겠다.

한 차례 읽은 독후감을 남긴다.

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Namgok Lee

4tSpounsosSrfehd  · 

‘울트라휴머니즘’ 산책②

아인슈타인의 E=mc2(자승을 표현 못함 ㅎ) 

이 방정식은 물질이 에너지로, 에너지가 물질로 변환될 수 있다는 것을 보여주었다. 

‘눈에 보이지 않는’ 에너지 세계는 ‘구체적인’ 물질세계와 직접적이고 견고한 연관성을 갖고 있다. 뉴턴은 물질 우주가 비활성 물질로 이루어져 있다고 생각했지만, 이제 우리는 물질 우주가 근본적으로 에너지라는 것을 알게 되었다. 아인슈타인도 에너지의 한 형태로서 물질이 보여주는 신비(神祕)에 당황했다.

양자 물리학에는 문제가 있었다. 예를 들면, 둘로 쪼개진 입자는 쪼개진 반 쪽 입자 사이의 광대한 거리를 거의 순간적으로 뛰어 넘어 서로 소통할 수 있다. 아인슈타인과 그의 동료들은 이것을 ‘얽힘(entanglement)’이라고 불렀다. 어떻게 그렇 수 있을까?

결국 이것은 텅 비어 보이는 광활한 우주 공간이, 사실은 텅 비어 있는 것이 아니라 복잡한 여러 층의 에너지 장(場)인 경우에만 가능하다.  아인슈타인 방정식은 우주의 탄력적인 본성이 변화를 내포한다는 아주 놀라운 통찰을 이끌어 내었다. 아인슈타인 자신은 이 통찰이 편안하지 않았다.

(註; 나는 물리학을 잘 모르지만, 이 글에서 색즉시공(色卽是空) 공즉시색(空卽是色)의 물리학적 통찰을 느낀다. 아마도 직관과 과학의 만남은 편하지 않음을 통과할 것이다) 

과학자들은 빛이 이중적인 성질을 가지며, 어떤 경우에는 파동처럼 운동하고 다른 경우에는 광자처럼 운동한다고 결론지었다. 그렇다면 빛은 파동(광파)인가? 아니면 입자(광자)인가?

답은 관찰자에게 달려 있다.

(註; 조금 비약이 있기는 한 것 같지만, 혜능의 ‘바람인가? 깃발인가?’에 대한 ‘마음이다’라고 한 대답이 연상된다)

양자 물리학은 떼이야르의 통찰력을 심화시켰다. 의식적인 선택이 이루어질 때까지 모든 것이 잠재적인 상태로 존재한다면, 의식은 어떤 의미에서 물질의 ‘내면’ 또는 ‘깊이’이다. 하지만 우주에는 또 다른 유형의 에너지가 있다. 그 에너지는 물질에도 작용하는 끌어당기는 힘, 인력(引力)이다. 이 매력적인 힘을 떼이야르는 ‘사랑 에너지’라고 부른다. 따라서 떼이야르의 ‘내면성’과 ‘외면성’은 물질의 근본적인 구조를 기술하는 반면, 방사 에너지와 접선 에너지는 근본적인 힘을 기술한다.

방사 에너지는 물질의 ‘내면성’에 해당한다. 말하자면 의식 에너지이다. 따라서 물리적인 복잡성에 비례하여 증가한다. 

접선 에너지 또는 인력 에너지는 물질의 ‘외적’인 차원이다. 그것은 사랑으로 특징지어지는 매력적인 인력의 중심 에너지이다. 따라서 사랑과 의식은 지적인 우주 생명을 자기 성찰과 의식하는 삶으로 향하게 하는 상호 관련된 에너지, 아마도 두 형태로 나타나는 같은 에너지라고 할 수 있겠다.

사랑이 깊어질수록 의식은 높아지고, 의식의 각성이 일어날수록 사랑이라는 인력도 강해진다. 물론 사랑에 빠졌을 때 마음이 변화한다는 것을 깨닫기 위해 과학자가 될 필요는 없다. 

우리가 다른 사람을 알게되고 다른 사람에게 끌리면, 앎과 사랑은 서로 얽힌 두 실체의 공생(共生)하는 에너지가 된다.

(註; 과학적인 가설(假設)이다. 나는 이 대목을 읽으며 ‘인(仁)은 애인(愛人)이며, 애인(愛人)은 지인(知人)에서 비롯한다’는 공자(孔子)의 말이 떠오른다. 인(仁)은 생명력이며, 그것은 사랑이다.)

“과학으로 정신의 문을 열고, 정신은 사랑의 길을 닦는다.”

덧붙침;  문명 전환운동은 생명 살림 운동이고, 생명 살림 운동은 사랑 운동이다.

사람끼리(동종) 적대ㆍ증오ㆍ 배척하면서 자연(동식물)을 사랑하자는 것은 본말전도까지는 아니더라도 앞뒤가 맞지 않는다.

사람끼리의 화해ㆍ상생ㆍ사랑과 자연 사랑은 함께 가는 것이 리에 맞다.

10 comments

최영훈

넘 어려운 테마를 그렇게 비약 상고하듯 툭 연결짓고 쓱 결론

짓는 가벼운 행마에 탄복 또 탄

복!!!

 · Reply · 4 h

Namgok Lee

최영훈 엉터리일 가능성이 더 커요. ㅎㅎ

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울트라 휴머니즘 - 지구 공동체 의식을 갖는 인간으로  | 사이 너머 총서 6  

일리아 델리오 (지은이),맹영선 (옮긴이)여해와함께2021-06-15

원제 : A Hunger for Wholeness (2018년)

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목차

추천의 말

한국의 독자들에게

서론

1장 우주와 공간

중세영혼의 공간

근대성과 신의 죽음

마음먹기에 달린 문제

2장 팽창하는 우주

펼쳐지는 공간

단력 있는 우주

물질과 에너지

양자얽힘

3장 물질에 정신을 돌려줌

물질에 의식이 있는가?

의식이 모든 것의 근거인가?

떼이야르가 제안한 두가지 에너지

4장 영혼과 우주

종교와 진화

생명의 도약

오메가의 플라톤적 뿌리

버진 포인트

5장 예수, 새로운 인간

하느님과 자연

사이보그로서의 예수

한 인간으로서의 예수

양자 부활

진화는 생명으로의 부활

6장 디지털 인간

기술의 향상

기술과 생물학

사이버스페이스의 급증

종교와 트랜스휴머니즘

기술과 초월의 필요

앙리 베르그송과 근본적인 타자

7장 신비, 정신과 물질

눈에 보이지 않는 현실

뇌의 각성

자아를 넘어

정신과 감취진 질서

내면에 있는 외적 공간

8장 행성화

하느님의 창조적 활동

내적 우주의 우위

신비주의와 사상

정신권

울트라휴머니즘

호개인적인 미래

세계 종교와 수렴

결론

접기

책속에서

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첫문장

1915년 봄, 지그문트 프로이트(Sigmund Freud, 1856~1939)는 빈 대학에서 2년 동안 계속될 '정신분석 입문' 강의를 시작했따.

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저자 및 역자소개

일리아 델리오 (지은이) 

워싱턴 D.C.에 위치한 워싱턴 연합신학원 교회사 교수이며 영성 연구 책임자이다. 

저서로는 『사랑 가득한 마음 아씨시 클라라의 영성』, 『십자가에 못 박힌 사랑: 십자가에 못 박히신 그리스도에 대한 성 보나벤투라의 신비주의』, 『간추린 보나벤투라: 그의 삶, 사상, 저작 개괄』등이 있다.

최근작 : <울트라 휴머니즘>,<프란치스칸 기도> … 총 3종 (모두보기)

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맹영선 (옮긴이) 

식품화학과 환경신학을 공부한 뒤 지구와 우리 자신을 위해 실제 무엇을 어떻게 해야 하는지 계속 공부하고 있다. 

토마스 베리의 《지구의 꿈》, 《우주 이야기》, 《생태 영성》을 우리말로 옮겼다. 

포럼 지구와 사람의 ‘토마스 베리 강좌’에서 토마스 베리가 던진 우리 시대에 던진 질문에 어떻게 함께 대답할 것인지 함께 공부하고 있다.

최근작 : <지구별 생태사상가>,<암을 예방하는 식물성 식품>,<생태학적 시대의 식품과 건강> … 총 10종 (모두보기)

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인공지능과 기술의 발전으로 인간과 기계의 경계는 희미해지고 있다. 인간과 기계의 결합인 사이보그가 인간의 신체적, 물질적 한계를 넘도록 해 주는 것은 사실이지만, 그것이 진정한 생명과 의식의 초월이라고 할 수 있을까?

영성신학자인 일리아 델리오 수녀는 이러한 미래에 우려를 표하면서도, 낙관적인 전망을 내놓는다. 진화론과 그리스도교의 조화를 주장했던 떼이야르 드 샤르댕 신부의 우주론을 중심으로, 전 지구 공동체가 사랑으로 하나 되는 울트라 휴머니즘(ultrahumanism)이라는 비전을 제시한다. 델리오 수녀가 말하는 울트라 휴머니즘은 더 큰 의식의 통합을 통해 더욱 커진 사랑의 인식으로 살아가는, 정신권 수준에 이른 전 지구적 공동체 의식을 가리킨다. 

출처 : 여성신문(http://www.womennews.co.kr)

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A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence Paperback – April 3, 2018

by Ilia Delio OSF (Author)

4.4 out of 5 stars    31 ratings

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Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a keen observer of nature, posited two types of energy in the universe: tangential energy/energy of attraction and radial energy/energy of transcendence―in other words, love and consciousness, which correspond to the inner and outer dimensions of nature, respectively. Moreover, as theologian Ilia Delio points out, nature is never at rest; indeed, “Nature [is] on a continuous trajectory of transcendence.” “The Big Bang universe is a story of space but it is also a story of consciousness and love.” How are the inner universe and the outer universe related? “Is the inner universe the key to nature’s transcendence?” she asks. “Is science disclosing a new role for consciousness and thus a new role for spiritual transformation?” The author builds not only on the thought of Teilhard and others but also on the findings of quantum physics to deliver a thought-provoking, deeply insightful reflection on the relationship of God, humanity, and nature in an ever-evolving cosmos

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About the Author

lia Delio, OSF, is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC. She holds the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University, and is the author of seventeen books, several of which have won awards.

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Paulist Press (April 3, 2018)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 136 pages

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David E. Schutt

5.0 out of 5 stars Jolts

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2019

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When I began reading de Chardin I found myself somewhat uncomfortable. I found that I had to learn how to read him. But he real awakening was when I realized that he was filled with optimism. It became my inner escape from conditioned institutional pessimism of my past life. Not long after that I had what he refers to as a "jolt". He said that, "we have jolts in life and if they don't kill us, we will never be the same again" . Ten years ago my son, his wife, kids and I visited family in Australia that I had never met. During our first few days we met relative after relative. One day. Something inexplicable happened. A 28 year old cousin of my daughter in law's when introduced to me, kissed me. When we looked at each other, I said, " it seems as though we have known each other for a very long time. " we spent the rest of our visit exploring the ramifications of this. I felt "vested or cloaked with Sophia. So powerful her presence came to me in that kiss. We, "breathed the other in". We sat in a group of four one morning having coffee. I ask what their experience of all this was. They told me Love and a very powerful Energy. From that experience I extracted my theme, F < Energy x Love > 1~. Force (Sophia) gives us Energy x Love, giving us unity, equality and non duality exponentially to an infinite power. I have lived this inner presence of Sophia since then. I'm a contemplative, I journal and read spiritually every day as well as meditate using Centering Prayer. As a deacon I became a thorn in the side of clericalism. I am a radical, progressive, and paradoxical Catholic. Last May I was told by our Parish priest that I was not needed. "I understand completely", I told him. He opened the door and I walked out .. We have a small group who meet every Monday for Centering Prayer. If it were not for spiritual books like this one, and others like Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, and others, we would have little hope of connection with this new reality, from our corner of the world in Wasilla Alaska, Thank you so much. Finally I want to affirm a quote from an ancient sufi, Hafiz, " I remember well the day that God(dess) ran up and kisssed me!)

Dave

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Vicki

5.0 out of 5 stars mind blowing

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2020

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I’m still digesting this book. It’s really blowing my mind. Holy Cow! Bits of brain all over the place. What a surprise in such an unassuming looking little book and soothing title.

I feel excited and confused, filled with profound awe and deeply touched in my core at once. Feeling grateful that this one got slipped onto my reading list. The concepts feel both radical and transformative. I mean I never really considered the 2nd law of thermodynamics in relation to global consciousness before, nor the notion that we are One with our technology in the process of evolution and transcendence. Holy cow. I find I have to read and reread each paragraph, section, chapter. And I’m constantly calling my poor husband over with a ‘listen to this!’

In a world in which awe and wonder have been diminished by our ability to dissect and explain everything, this book is a religious experience. (and well the author asserts that the religious impulse is elemental to all evolution/becoming, even at the microscopic level of life itself)

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Lisa A Ushman

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenges my mind with new ideas or confirmation of them.

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2019

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Excellent books. Easy to read and well planned in its presentation.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

5.0 out of 5 stars Human consciousness is crossing a new threshold.

Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2019

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A masterpiece of creative integration of science and theology. Absolute must read for anyone seeking a deeper spirituality.

2 people found this helpful

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M R Nelson

5.0 out of 5 stars Evolving Conscious

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2019

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Well grounded with insight into creations connectivity, our oneness! A very good read with a host of references

2 people found this helpful

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Robert A. Dalgleish

5.0 out of 5 stars Reformers Take Note

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2019

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If our politicians and social reformed took the message of this book to heart our world would be headed in a much better direction.

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Gardener

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2018

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Accessible, profound.

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Agnes Caldwell

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and Thought Provoking

Reviewed in Canada on August 16, 2019

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Very interesting exploration of the human concept of the Creator of the Universe and how it has changed and continues to change. Very nice printing with a secure binding, exceptional in a small book these days. Small enough to carry around in a pocket, to be read and digested in small bites.

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lockthescot

5.0 out of 5 stars God loves us!

Reviewed in Canada on June 16, 2018

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Anyone seeking meaning to their life will find some answers here.

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36959931-a-hunger-for-wholeness

Feb 06, 2019Swood rated it really liked it

My friends Chuck Hoffman and Peg Carlson-Hoffman recommended I read this book. They are acquainted with the author, Ilia Delio.

It's a small book, packed with big ideas and she does a fine job of moving though them logically and persuasively. The conclusion she reaches is powerful and a guide for our times, our future -- that we are all connected, not just with each other, but with all things. And that if we come together we can take what it means to be human to the next level -- of consciousness? of transcendence? As explored by Teilhard de Chardin, explained by Bergson and others. She quotes dozens and dozens of thinkers -- again in nicely plotted support of her logic.

“If we want a different world, we must become different people.” .... “We must either unify or annihilate.”

I was nearly derailed early on, as I feel like she skips two crucial definitions; that of the terms “religion” and “love.” (Finally on pg 95, she offers up a definition of love, but I wish she'd done so much much sooner)

And I felt like she was speaking almost entirely from the Christian tradition/framework; although she did eventually invite other faiths into the discussion (Buddhism). As such, my own biases got in the way of the reading .... yet she did finally bring me around convincingly to her POV.

I feel like physicists, such as an Alan Lightman, might not allow her to make the leap from the revelations of “quantum physics” to consciousness -- but she actually does a pretty good job of building a case for that leap. Of course, all that stuff is beyond my grasp ... but its in my own nature to try.

A worthy and thought-provoking read. I will likely have to read it again. What she is arguing for, hoping for will need constant refreshing in this chaotic world in which we live. One might argue however, that we need to experience the level of chaos we're in now in order to see the path forward. (less)

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alfonso luis alfaro marroquin3 years ago
Wow! What a woman! What a wonderful concept




Wayne McMillan2 years ago (edited)
Ilia is brillant.



caballero3 years ago
The Steven Hawking of theology.

Richard Rohr Reorders the Universe | The New Yorker

Richard Rohr Reorders the Universe | The New Yorker


On Religion
Richard Rohr Reorders the Universe


By Eliza GriswoldFebruary 2, 2020






The seventy-six-year-old Franciscan friar Richard Rohr believes that Christianity isn’t the only path to salvation.Illustration by Ohni Lisle





Not long ago, on his way to the post office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Richard Rohr, a seventy-six-year-old Franciscan friar, had a spiritual experience. “This light is interminably long,” he told me one morning, in late August, as we stopped at a red light while retracing his route. Rohr hates wasting time, and he had been sitting at the light fuming when a divine message arrived. “I heard as close as I know to the voice of God,” he said. The voice suggested that he find happiness where he was, rather than searching for it elsewhere. “For two and a half minutes, I’m not in control at this stoplight,” he said. Being made to sit still required a surrender to a force greater than his ego; it was an opportunity to practice contemplation, a form of meditative prayer that has equivalents in almost every religion. In Christianity, the practice dates back to the first several centuries after Christ, though it was revitalized in the twentieth century by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Rohr told me, “Merton pulled back the veil.”

Rohr is slight, with a white beard and the starry eyes of a person who spends long periods in silence. Over the past four decades, he has gained a devoted following for his provocative vision of Christianity. He runs the Center for Action and Contemplation, a meditation hub and religious school that its residents refer to as Little Vatican City. The campus is made up of a cluster of adobe casitas strung out on a dusty road outside Albuquerque; small shrines to St. Francis and St. Clare dot the land between the runnels of an ancient aquifer, which still courses with water from a nearby river, feeding the garden. Rohr wakes around 5:45 a.m. each day and spends an hour praying wordlessly. “I’m trying to find my way to yes,” he told me, adding that he often wakes up in a state of no. “As in, ‘No, I do not want to be followed around by Eliza today,’ ” he said, smiling impishly. After that, he heads to the center and leads a morning session that includes a twenty-minute contemplation, a daily gospel reading, and the ringing of a Buddhist singing bowl. The center’s classes also include Hindu and yogic methods of integrating the body into prayer, along with teachings drawn from indigenous spiritual traditions that focus on the sacredness of the earth.



More conservative Christians tend to orient their theology around Jesus—his death and resurrection, which made salvation possible for those who believe. Rohr thinks that this focus is misplaced. The universe has existed for thirteen billion years; it couldn’t be, he argues, that God’s loving, salvific relationship with creation began only two thousand years ago, when the historical baby Jesus was placed in the musty hay of a manger, and that it only became widely knowable to humanity around six hundred years ago, when the printing press was invented and Bibles began being mass-produced. Instead, in his most recent book, “The Universal Christ,” which came out last year, Rohr argues that the spirit of Christ is not the same as the person of Jesus. Christ—essentially, God’s love for the world—has existed since the beginning of time, suffuses everything in creation, and has been present in all cultures and civilizations. Jesus is an incarnation of that spirit, and following him is our “best shortcut” to accessing it. But this spirit can also be found through the practices of other religions, like Buddhist meditation, or through communing with nature. Rohr has arrived at this conclusion through what he sees as an orthodox Franciscan reading of scripture. “This is not heresy, universalism, or a cheap version of Unitarianism,” he writes. “This is the Cosmic Christ, who always was, who became incarnate in time, and who is still being revealed.”

“All my big thoughts have coalesced into this,” he told me. “It’s my end-of-life book.” His message has been overwhelmingly well-received. A podcast version of Rohr’s book has been downloaded more than a million times. He has also attracted some high-profile followers. Rohr named his Jack Russell terrier Opie, as a nod to Oprah Winfrey, whom he considers a personal friend; he has appeared twice on her “SuperSoul Sunday” program and has been to dinner at her home in Montecito. “We really connect,” he told me. “She knows I’m not seeking fame or money.” He is also revered by Melinda Gates and is close to Bono. “He’ll just drop me a little love note,” Rohr said. “He’s a very loving person.” Both Gates and Bono have attended private retreats with Rohr. The friar, who has taken a vow of poverty and lives as a modern-day hermit, seems tickled by his occasional brushes with fame.

Many of Rohr’s followers are millennials, and he believes that his popularity signifies a deep spiritual hunger on the part of young people who no longer claim affiliation with traditional religion. These people, whom sociologists call the “nones,” have grown in number, from sixteen per cent to twenty-three per cent of American adults, between 2007 and 2014. “People aren’t simply skeptical anymore, or even openly hostile to the church,” he told me. “They just don’t see a relevance.” Rohr doesn’t believe that most nones are secular, as many assume; he thinks that they are questioning traditional labels but hoping to find a spiritual message that speaks to them. His reach is based, in part, on his willingness to be fearless in his critique of conservative Christianity, which he often talks about as a “toxic religion.” He attempts to strike a difficult balance: calling out the flaws in contemporary Christianity while affirming its core tenets. “People confuse Richard as a deconstructionist when they hear him talk about toxic religion,” Michael Poffenberger, the executive director of the Center for Action and Contemplation, told me, “It’s not an attack on religion; it’s an introduction to the sacredness of everything.”

Rohr lives in Little Vatican City, in a one-room cottage behind a garden of succulents. He asked me not to disclose the exact location. “You’d be amazed at the amount of people who just want to say they met with you,” he told me one afternoon, while sitting in the large, open space that serves as his living room, kitchen, and study. (During my time in New Mexico, one such devotee returned several times, having driven nearly a thousand miles to seek Rohr’s blessing, which the friar gave each time). Rohr spends most of his day in the hermitage, perched on a ladder-back barstool, where he does his writing. “It’s going to sound so woo-woo, but I just sit down and it comes,” he told me. His computer sits atop a bookshelf crammed with biographies of contemporary mystics, including Merton and Thomas Keating. On a shelf by the fireplace, he keeps a fragment of bone belonging to Thérèse of Lisieux, a nineteenth-century saint. He told me that, on a recent trip to France, while standing in the infirmary room where Thérèse died, he saw a butterfly and knew, by divine inspiration, that it was a gift from her. “I felt like I was levitating,” he said, adding, with a smile, “I was not.” The butterfly was trying to escape the room, and he managed to pry open the old window and free it.

Rohr grew up amid a more conventional Catholicism. He was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1943. He comes from a long line of wheat farmers who were hit first by the Dust Bowl and then by the Great Depression. “Daddy had to leave the farm and work on the railroad, painting cars,” Rohr told me. The Rohrs were devout, and Richard attended Catholic school for a dollar a month. “I don’t have any nun horror stories,” he told me. “My experience of the nuns was of happy people. I think that’s one reason I became religious.” He didn’t witness any instances of sexual abuse in his church community. “We didn’t know the word ‘pedophilia,’ ” he said. “But I guess it must have been happening.” The only teaching he remembers receiving about sex was “don’t do it.” “That wasn’t helpful at all,” he said.


At fourteen, Rohr read “The Perfect Joy of St. Francis,” a novel about the life of the saint, and decided to become a friar. He came of age during the progressive era of the Second Vatican Council, when Catholics were challenging the narrow conceptions of church doctrine and calling for a greater engagement with the world. As a novice, he worked in an Acoma Pueblo community, in New Mexico, conducting surveys for the Church on religious belief in the area. Though the community was largely Christian, people also followed traditional religious practices: mothers walked outside with their children just before dawn to greet the sun, a meditation ritual that dates back at least eight hundred years. “We thought we knew something about contemplation,” he told me. “But we were not the only ones.”


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Rohr was ordained in 1970, clad in hippie vestments. “In the seventies, Jesus was in,” he said. As a young priest, he led retreats for teen-agers; at one, a group of high-school jocks began speaking in tongues. People flocked to hear Rohr speak, and audio cassettes of his sermons travelled all over the country. His taped retreats were adapted into his first books, which made him a kind of Catholic celebrity. “I became a little demigod,” he told me, ruefully. He started a radical Christian community in Cincinnati, called New Jerusalem, but, by the mid-eighties, he began to feel that it wasn’t sufficiently focussed on global social action. He returned to New Mexico, where he started the Center for Action and Contemplation, in 1987, and the Living School, a two-year, low-residency religious-studies program, in 2014. In the center’s early days, the staff held weekly protests at a nuclear-weapons research facility and worked with a women’s coöperative in Mexico.

Rohr came to his thinking about the Universal Christ through early Franciscan teachings. In the thirteenth century, Francis rebelled against a Catholic Church that had become fixated on its own pomp and hierarchy; he renounced worldly goods, lived in a cave, and found God in nature, revealed to him in figures such as Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Fire, and Sister Water. “His was an entirely intuitive world view,” Rohr said. Later, Franciscan theologians gave heft to Francis’s holistic universe by tying it to scripture—for example, to a passage of Colossians that reads, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. . . . He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” This, they argued, was evidence that God is present in the natural world.

Rohr gave this presence a name. For him, the Cosmic Christ is the spirit that is embedded in—and makes up—everything in the universe, and Jesus is the embodied version of that spirit that we can fall in love with and relate to. (Their simultaneous distinctness and oneness can be difficult for an outsider to grasp; Rohr describes “The Universal Christ” as a sequel to “The Divine Dance,” his book about the mysteries of the Trinity.) He uses many of the same verses as the early Franciscans to support his claims. “Christ’s much larger, universe-spanning role was described quite clearly in—and always in the first chapters of—John’s Gospel, Colossians, Ephesians, Hebrews, and 1 John, and shortly thereafter in the writings of the early Eastern fathers,” he writes. He believes that, after the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, in 1054 A.D., the Eastern Church held onto a more expansive vision of Christ, but the Western Church increasingly focussed on Jesus the man. “We gradually limited the Divine Presence to the single body of Jesus, when perhaps it is as ubiquitous as light itself—and uncircumscribable by human boundaries.” The notion of Jesus as a god-king—wearing a golden crown and seated on a throne—was pushed by political rulers, who used it to justify their own power, but it limited our understanding of divinity. “It was like trying to see the universe with a too-small telescope,” Rohr writes.
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One of the benefits of Rohr’s work is its attempt at radical inclusivity. “Jesus without worship of Christ invariably becomes a time- and culture-bound religion, often ethnic or even implicitly racist, which excludes much of humanity from God’s embrace,” he writes. According to his teachings, you don’t have to follow Jesus or practice the tenets of any formal religion to come by salvation, you just have to “fall in love with the divine presence, under whatever name.” For young people who have become disillusioned with the conservative churches of their childhood—which preached Christianity’s supremacy over other religions and taught that nonbelievers would go to Hell—his message is especially welcome. Many progressive schools of Christianity teach that non-Christians can go to Heaven, but the idea of the Universal Christ allows Rohr to make a robust argument based on a version of orthodoxy, rather than on a vague sense of egalitarianism. His followers appreciate his scriptural rigor. “He’s not coming in and saying, ‘I saw a daisy, now everybody love each other,’ ” Tim Shriver, a longtime student of Rohr’s and the chairman of the Special Olympics, told me. “He’s trying to create a new ur-understanding of religion that isn’t bound by separation, superiority, and fighting.”

Rohr’s ideas have gotten him into trouble in the past. William Paul Young—a self-described fundamentalist Christian and the author of “The Shack,” a Christian novel that has sold over twenty million copies—told me that, though he is Rohr’s friend, he worries that the friar’s teachings will be misunderstood. Young people who are frustrated with their churches might misread Rohr’s work as advocating a vague spirituality that is entirely unconnected with the scriptural Christ. “The danger of universalism is that nothing matters, especially Jesus,” he said. “Some of Rohr’s followers can read it that way.” According to Rohr, during the early seventies, a group of local Catholics secretly recorded his sermons in an effort to have him excommunicated. They delivered the tapes to the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, then the Archbishop of Cincinnati, who reviewed them and determined that they were within the bounds of the Church’s teachings. (The current office of the Archdiocese had no knowledge of the incident.) Grumblings have persisted, but Rohr continues to preach what he believes. “I’m too old for them to bother me anymore,” Rohr told me.

Three years ago, Rohr was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. A year and a half ago, while alone in his home, he had a severe heart attack. He rang a friend, who ordered him to call 911 for an ambulance. Rohr refused; he didn’t want to die in the presence of strangers, so his friend raced over to rush him to the hospital. As they pulled out of his driveway, Rohr said goodbye to the little house where he’d lived for twenty years, the trees, the dumpster. “I was ready to go,” he told me. “But, anyway, here I am.” Rohr is undergoing chemotherapy, and the cancer is now in remission, though he has reconciled himself to his mortality. “What did we ever lose by dying?” he asked me. Rohr also has Grover’s disease, an autoimmune condition that makes his skin itch. “And it’s wrinkly,” he said. He noted that the apostle Paul speaks of the tent of the body being folded up, shrivelling and declining as it prepares to depart. “My belief is that the two universal paths are great love and great suffering,” he told me. For much of his life, Rohr has used suffering as a spiritual tool to help him learn to be humble. “I pray for one humiliation a day,” he told me. “It doesn’t have to be major.”

Rohr has an easier time talking about the end of his life than his students and followers do. In Albuquerque, his colleagues are quietly thinking about how his teachings can live on after he dies. Poffenberger, the executive director of the Center for Action and Contemplation, moved to New Mexico from Washington, D.C., in 2014, to help answer this question. “We mentally plan for two years,” he told me. Poffenberger came to Rohr’s work in 2009, after working as an activist and becoming disillusioned by the political system in Washington. He attended one of Rohr’s wilderness men’s retreats (it involved drum circles) and began to follow his teachings. Poffenberger has been attempting to apply the principles of movement ecology, the study of what makes social movements succeed, to Rohr’s wide-ranging ideas. “It’s not just about one’s own individual spiritual journey,” he said. “It’s how that’s tied to social transformation.” He is hoping, for example, to harness Rohr’s large following in support of youth climate strikes and the Reverend William Barber’s Poor People’s Campaign. Perhaps, Poffenberger thinks, as adherence to traditional religions dwindles, social action will become a more relevant form of spiritual practice.

On the morning before I left Albuquerque, I sat with the two men in Rohr’s office, which is crowded with statues of dancing Shivas and other gifts from admirers and friends. They began talking about Rohr’s penchant for icons, which hang on the walls of his hermitage and office. He has forty depictions of Jonah being consumed by a whale, including several funky renditions, and he identifies with the prophet. “I’ve been held safe and spit up on the right shore while preaching a message that no one wanted to hear,” he said. He is also a devotee of ancient Christian iconography, and of iconography from the Eastern Orthodox Church—both of which offer a glimpse into religious thinking that is not dominated by contemporary Western dogmas.


One of his favorite images is Andrei Rublev’s fourteenth-century depiction of the Holy Trinity, in which Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit form a balanced triangle, none more important than the other. “Until we get the Trinity right, our metaphysics is off,” he told me. “We pulled Jesus out of the Trinity, gave him a white beard and white skin.” Rohr has heard that, on the original, which is hanging at the State Tretyakov Gallery, in Moscow, there’s a residue of glue. (The gallery could not confirm this.) “I’m convinced it was a mirror,” Rohr said. In his book, he describes the Cosmic Christ as a kind of mirror, in which we can see the form of all of creation. “The Christ mirror fully knows and loves us from all eternity, and reflects that image back to us,” he writes. He believes that Rublev’s work evokes this metaphor, inviting the viewer to see herself not as fallen and cut off from God but as an integral part of the divine.




Eliza Griswold, a contributing writer covering religion, politics, and the environment, has been writing for The New Yorker since 2003. She won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America,” in 2019.

Alisa Childers I Blog

Alisa Childers I Blog

Here's Why Christians Should Avoid the Teachings of Richard Rohr 11/23/2020 135 Comments   Tracy grew up in the church, but when her identification as queer contradicted her Evangelical upbringing, she decided she no longer fit within that tradition. Through the teachings of Richard Rohr, she found a spiritual home with the practice of contemplative spirituality. Tracy’s experience mirrors that of many millennial ex-Evangelicals who have discovered a spiritual mentor and teacher in the Franciscan priest, author, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC), Richard Rohr.   The CAC website describes Rohr as “a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition.” Rohr’s teachings are gaining influence, especially among millennials who grew up in the Evangelical church. He is particularly influential in the progressive Christian movement and is referred to as a spiritual father, hero, and mentor by well-known progressive voices. He is endorsed by progressive leaders like Rob Bell, Jen Hatmaker, William Paul Young, Michael Gungor, and Brian McLaren, to name just a few. As Rohr gains popularity, it becomes increasingly more important for church leaders to be aware of his teachings and their widespread influence. In this article, I’ll take a look at Rohr’s view of the Bible, the cross, and the gospel.  ​Richard Rohr’s view of the Bible   Historically, Christians have believed that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative Word of God. Following Jesus’ own example, Christians have affirmed over the centuries that the Scriptures are internally coherent, without error, and infallible. However, Rohr holds a much different view of the Bible:  ​ The Jewish Scriptures, which are full of anecdotes of destiny, failure, sin and grace, offer almost no self-evident philosophical or theological conclusions that are always true. . . . We even have four, often conflicting versions of the life of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There is no one clear theology of God, Jesus, or history presented, despite our attempt to pretend there is.  Rohr interprets the Scriptures using what he calls the “Jesus Hermeneutic.” He writes:  …The text moves inexorably toward inclusivity, mercy, unconditional love, and forgiveness. I call it the “Jesus Hermeneutic.” Just interpret Scripture the way Jesus did! He ignores, denies, or openly opposes his own Scriptures whenever they are imperialistic, punitive, exclusionary, or tribal.  ​ Contrary to what Rohr teaches, Jesus never ignored, denied, or openly opposed the Old Testament Scriptures. In fact, as I argue in this paper, Richard Rohr’s “Jesus Hermeneutic” not only fails to offer any legitimate Scriptural support, but taken as a whole, the biblical data gives us an entirely opposite view of how Jesus handled the Scriptures. The truth is Jesus never once declared or implied that the Scriptures were anything but fully truthful and to be obeyed. Jesus affirmed the Old Testament to be the inspired, authoritative, historically reliable, inerrant, infallible, imperishable Word of God—and that it was all about himself.    ​Richard Rohr’s view of the cross   Historically, Christians have believed Jesus died on the cross for our sins, taking our deserved punishment upon himself. This is not only affirmed in Scripture, and taught by Jesus himself, but it goes back to the earliest creed in Christianity, which pre-dates the New Testament by about twenty years. However, according to Rohr, the idea of a God who would require the blood sacrifice of his son is “problem-oriented.” Of the atonement, Rohr writes:    I believe that Jesus’ death on the cross is a revelation of the infinite and participatory love of God, not some bloody payment required by God’s offended justice to rectify the problem of sin. Such a story line is way too small and problem-oriented.   According to Rohr, Jesus didn’t need to die on the cross. It’s your “false self” that needs to die, not someone else. He refers to substitutionary atonement as a “strange idea” that leads to a “transactional” theology. Contrary to Rohr, Scripture teaches substitutionary atonement, Jesus affirmed it, along with early Christians.    ​Richard Rohr’s view of the gospel Historically, the Christian gospel is the proclamation of the good news of salvation. This has been understood through the lens of God’s redemptive acts throughout history. It began with the creation of the universe and mankind. After sin was introduced into the world by the rebellion of Adam and Eve, God provided a means of redemption and reconciliation through the atoning work of Jesus on the cross. Those who accept this provision of salvation will be given eternal life with God. But for those who reject this gift of grace, the Bible describes their eternal punishment separated from God's love and goodness.    However, according to Rohr, the idea of a God who “doles out punishment” is unhealthy, cheap, and toxic. He does believe Jesus died, was buried, and was resurrected. However, he separates Jesus and Christ into two separate entities, with Jesus being nothing more than a “model and exemplar” of the human and divine united in one human body. And in Rohr’s view, Christ is a cosmic reality that is found “whenever the material and the divine co-exist—which is always and everywhere.” He implicitly denies the deity of Jesus. He writes: “We spent a great deal of time worshiping the messenger and trying to get other people to do the same. . . . [Jesus] did ask us several times to follow him, and never once to worship him.” This “Cosmic Christ” is a New Age idea that Rohr is promoting as “Christian.”    Rohr also believes all religions share the same core truth and are all paths to truth (perennialism). He openly affirms panentheism, a view of the nature of God that teaches God is in all, all is in God, but God also transcends the world. This carries troubling implications for his view of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. He said: "The Universe is the body of God….yes, it’s the second person of the Trinity in material form."  He denies original sin, the atonement, the exclusivity of Christianity, and he has an unorthodox understanding of heaven and hell, and the literal second coming of Christ. Rohr's views stand in stark contrast to the historic Christian view of the gospel.    Through his books and his highly popular teachings on the Enneagram, Richard Rohr is rapidly gaining influence in the Christian church. But church leaders would do well to be aware of what Rohr actually teaches about the Bible, the cross, and the gospel. Faithful Christians should avoid his teachings at all costs.  13 Shares 135 Comments Bill (cycleguy) Grandilink 11/24/2020 05:06:05 am Thanks so much Lisa for this concise "introduction" to Rohr. After dealing with some of the other names of people influenced by him (with a dismissed staff person) this article gives me the shivers to know of this man's influence. Instead of leading people to the True Savior, he is leading them to a false one which surely lead them astray and keep them lost. Your book is a phenomenal read and it is my recommendation for 2020 Book of the Year. (I was right about Rebecca's book in 2019). I have loaned my copy to someone and just now bought them their own copy. Thanks for your honesty in writing about your struggle. REPLY Stella Golden 2/11/2021 06:51:31 pm It such a shame Alisa that Western Christianity cannot appreciate the evolution taking place. We have lost so many many young people because WC cannot keep up with what is happening in our world. It has not always been that these are our beliefs and if you don’t believe them, then you are not a Christian! It would be nice if it were just that simple! Believe this and now you are a Christian. Nothing is that simple and in attending to control or confined the human spirit, we lose sight of who this God of creation truly is! And please don’t tell me that thus God is going to punish me for thinking this way! He is so much bigger than any way we try to explain Him and Thank God for that💜 REPLY Roy White 2/13/2021 09:06:12 pm Respectfully Stella, what about Jesus and the words from the inspired writers has changed? What do you mean "Western Christianity"? Is there an "Eastern Christianity"? Hermeneutics requires us to read interpret the Bible based upon what the authors were trying to say, not what the verses say to me. My lens, as is all sinners/persons, is pretty cloudy and tends to bend God's word to fit our the "times" we live in. That appears to be the Christianity you prefer. I'm glad to Alicia and a growing number of new Christian apologists are speaking the truth, even if it doesn't conform to current culture. Bless you and family as we all pursue the truth through Jesus Christ's eyes and not our own. Tim 5/21/2021 03:17:57 pm Stella...you're wrong. What Alisa pointed out is true. The thing about Alisa is by God's grace, she has wisdom and discernment. I sense you lack both wisdom and discernment which is why folks such as yourself fall for such fallacy from Richard Rohr. The reason Richard Rohr is so popular because he preaches a Jesus of his own imagination. If Richard stood on Jesus is the way the truth and he died for our sins (John 14:6 & John 2:2) which He is there is no way he would be this popular; or let along on Oprah. Any person filled with the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:24) knows Oprah in her current state is all about an "aha" moment. A guy like Richard Rohr is full of those deceptive "aha" moments. Stella...please examine yourself to see if you're of the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5) based on your fruits you're either someone who think you're a Christian, a new Believer or lack of wisdom of discernment. Because a growing Christian with wisdom and discernment will automatically discernment the falsehood of Richard Rohr. However, mouth professing Christians will never pick these things up. Again, Stella examine yourself to see if you're of the faith. Because Alisa is not the enemy hear she is the doing God's work by pointing out falsehood. Thanks Alisa for your article. Dennis Vacante 6/30/2021 09:39:24 pm Right on, Stella. What many "conservative" Christians forget is that the heart of the Gospel is love. Their notion of a God who punishes everyone who does not believe as they do leaves the Gospel as something less than good news. Dennis Vacante 7/7/2021 11:59:23 am Stella, I'm so glad that you appreciate Fr. Rohr's insights. Sometimes people tend to cling to traditions that are not reflective of the truth revealed in the Bible. It doesn't take a whole lot of reflection to see past traditions and church teachings evolve as God's continuous revelation enlightens the church. You are so right in stating that God is so much bigger than any way we try to explain him. Look at how, at one time, it was heresy to believe the planets revolved around the sun. Today we take that for granted. But there were many who were labeled heretical, such as Galileo, who was imprisoned because of that belief. We now can ponder the infinite wonder of God's creation through the Hubble telescope. How great is our God! Ken 2/13/2021 02:49:15 pm Oh My goodess! Such umbridge over standard Franciscan theology. Franciscan theology developed more or less in parallel with the atonement theology of Aquinas. but you show your ignorance of church history if you think that Rohr has invented this. Franciscan theology has been accepted as a parallel and legitimate understanding of the meaning of the Cross. Rohr and Franciscan's in general are in good standing with Roman Church authorities. Please don't let yourself be so intolerant of the diversity which God obviously loves very much. REPLY adam 2/15/2021 02:15:59 pm Spot on Ken! Amen Keith Williams 5/8/2021 01:19:31 am Stella and Ken, it was so refreshing to read your comments and to observe other Christians are realising the anthropomorphic characteristics we have conferred on God. We have, over centuries, accepted this reduction of an all encompassing and loving deity to a paranoid and narcissistic and oh so very human entity. Alisa, you are clinging to an iron age version of the divine which is far removed from divinity and an all encompassing and loving God, in the name of what you perceive as an accurate translation of ancient writings. Fundamental Christianity, like fundamental Islam, seeks to bind us to the faith, not because of what is in our hearts, but that we fear and dread the vengeance of a jealous God. This makes hypocrites of us all and extinguishes all hope of developing a loving and Christ like heart. It also reduces God to an entity at the mercy of his most negative emotions. Tim 5/21/2021 03:51:30 pm Ken..Richard Rohr is a fraud. He does not stand with God. Ken, what faith are you of? How can you still believe Richard Rohr is legit after reading the believes of Richard Rohr? Do you not know God is not the god of confusion? Richard Rohr is saying the word of God is not to be taken serious. How can you still think he's legit after reading his exact words? Ian Huntington 5/25/2021 05:04:07 pm I was raised an Evangelical fundamentalist believing the teachings to the point that after college, I attended a conservative evangelical seminary. It was during my second year in seminary studies that my belief in biblical inspiration changed. With that change, the whole evangelical house of cards collapsed, original sin, the illogical blood atonement, belief in Satan and the concept of hell, all, I clearly saw as feeble, fallible concoctions built on questionable interpretation and conjecture. The seminary expelled me as I am certain you would support. Father Rohr teaches love, Christian mysticism, inclusion and a sensible method of biblical interpretation that requires a more challenging faith than you rigid conservative, fundamentalists can even begin to fathom. I know the fundamentalist, evangelical mind and I am so thankful to God that I got out. The employee you let go, is much better off than you. REPLY Dennis Vacante 6/8/2021 09:45:23 pm Ian, I agree with everything you wrote. I think that dualistic thinking is what causes us to fall into the very thing that Jesus spoke most harshly against...and that is judging others! I find it interesting that in almost all of the accusations people have made against Fr. Rohr, very few, if any, were willing to pray for insight or pray for Fr. Rohr. All that they do is throw accusations and judgements against a man who is a dedicated Franciscan priest with years of studying sacred scripture and with additional insights in human psychology. When I listen to Fr. Rohr I find his teachings very challenging. His call is similar to that of Jesus. Open your heart. You may find it challenging but it will help you grow in your understanding and love of God and others. Perhaps that is why he is attacked. It is easier to attack him than to look into our own hearts and grow. Aurelia Lambrechtslink 11/24/2020 09:15:33 am Wowwww! THANK YOU for explaining what Richard Rohr believes and teaches. I've hears a couple of Christian friends mention his name - and they also have read Madame Guyon's old books on contemplative prayer. Do you know about her? REPLY Kim 3/5/2021 11:25:59 am This is actually a very simplified explanation of what Rohr Believes and I don't think it does it justice. I would recommend listening or reading a little more before dismissing entirely. REPLY Alejandro De Miranda 4/30/2021 09:52:00 am If you want to know what Richard Rohr believes, listen to him or read his books and decide for yourself instead of just accepting someone else's opinion. REPLY R.L. Solberglink 11/24/2020 09:22:22 am Thank for for this, Alisa, and all the work you do with Progressive Christianity. This article is a great resource I will use often! REPLY Noah 11/24/2020 09:24:37 am Very well thought out, pointed analysis. We need to keep calling these heresies out as they continue to come along and lead people away from the Lord. REPLY Earllink 1/17/2021 08:06:33 am I think with time you will look again at the principles of what he is saying. When you look deeply at the so called origin of sin for example, you will find it does not make sense. How do we go from being perfect to committing sin. Where did the sin come from? When you get to understand this more, it blows your mind and shows you who Jesus really is and also who you are. At that point you will no longer be a slave to sin but KNOW you ARE God's Child, you always were: you just didn't know it! Peace X REPLY Amelia 1/28/2021 03:42:08 pm Human beings were never "perfect" but created in the image of God, meaning that we were to reflect His character traits---love, kindness, humility, generosity, self control, patience, etc., We were always given the free will to choose. In the garden, Adam and Eve chose to listen the authority of another entity over that of the Lord. They listened to that creature's twisting of God's words, his lies of promises of forbidden knowledge, and turned their backs on God's authority. Nowhere in Scripture does it pronounce the first humans, or any humans for that matter, as perfect because that was never the plan. God created humans to be His family not robots that were programmed to do exactly what He wanted us to do. How lonely would that be? He wanted relationships with us, interaction, conversation. He knew we would mess up because He knows everything but like any good parent, He loves us, watches over us and cares for us. He never leaves us no matter what we may do, no matter how often we choose to sin. We sin every day but He blesses us abundantly every day because of His profound love! Jesus is the way, the truth and the life! Only through Him can we come to the Father! Amen Keith Williams 5/8/2021 01:45:43 am Early, I could not agree more. If God created Adam and Eve as perfect beings, how could they have fallen at the first hurdle? Perfect beings would always make perfect choices. How is it sinful for an entity, born with curiosity, to seek knowledge? And did not God know this in advance? Free will is never free if it is conditional, so that argument, to my mind, can never be applied. If the creation story is to be believed, then God created us with fault and commanded us to rectify the (his) fault. We take away from this story that there was no 'original sin' to forgive and the judgment of death on humanity was never justified. Peter Snyder 11/24/2020 09:34:11 am Thanks for the summary. While spiritually a disaster, the intellectual dishonesty of Rohr and others is also very frustrating, as is their desire to still be known as Christian. If they are so convinced that what they teach is true, they should just be honest and let it be known that they have a new religion that claims a false Christ. But Satan is too crafty to allow them to do this. Again, I appreciate your commitment to pointing out the dangers of such false prophets and their teachings and your commitment to the gospel. I have your book and can't believe I haven't read it yet. I will soon. Blessings in Jesus. REPLY Julie Anderson 4/29/2021 10:31:49 am I really have to laugh when someone disagrees with something, they throw in the word satan. If your religion is full of fear and judgement, and fights to keep our patriarchal society, then you might want to reevaluate. REPLY Ross Caruso 5/31/2021 09:15:45 am I will pray for you Julie. You are missing the point big time. I am so sorry to say that. I hope and pray the Holy Spirit shows you that yes Satan is very real and that is exactly why Jesus died on a cross so that we would not have to be in a state of hell. God the Father does not send us to hell, we do it to ourselves by not accepting His love. I have my own pride and rebellion, yes. I will continue to submit and obey our might Lord Jesus Christ. Disagreement is good and ok and even healthy, but when someone so clearly and cleverly twists the Gospels then there is a deep deep concern, and TRUE followers of Christ must speak out.... Keith Williams p 5/8/2021 02:08:40 am Amelia, how could God have conferred His character traits of love, kindness, humility, generosity, self control, patience, etc, as you describe them, and then abandon both 'self control ' and 'patience' at the first hurdle? This makes no sense and would relegate us to blindly obedient robots. Is this the sort of relationship God desires to have with us? You seem to think not, and then you contradict yourself. REPLY Tim 5/21/2021 03:59:02 pm @keith Williams....the moment you added Christianity next to islam, I knew your comments is coming from someone without a relationship with Christ (God). Your problem is you're equating God in the way you view humans. What is your faith, if you don't mind me asking? What is your purpose on this forum? Keith Williams 5/25/2021 10:47:24 am It is this narrow interpretation of Christianity that is 'equating God' in the way humans are viewed. God is humble, yet he commands man to worship only Him and to have no other gods. God is patient, yet he immediately punishes Adam and Eve for an action they were created to carry out. He then further illustrates this 'patience' by wiping away all but a tiny part of humanity because he is dissatisfied with his own creation. God is loving, yet his love is conditional on pain of death. Fundamentalists seem to be a deeply unhappy lot who cannot wait till 'the end of times,' when they can leave this beautiful planet for something better. There is always something better and, when you finally reach your heaven, you will wish for something better again. My faith and my purpose on this forum is my own affair and certainly not one I have to or wish to discuss with you. Ross V Caruso 5/31/2021 09:26:44 am I will pray for you Keith. I understand where you are coming from. Put simply God is all those things Patient, Kind, Loving and SO much more. He is our Father and creator. I would say ask for the Holy Spirit to help you to truly surrender and trust. That's where you will find His Love. Remember we are man and He is God. He can do whatever He wants because He is all Just and merciful. Sheryl Pellatirolink 11/24/2020 09:41:48 am Thank you again, Alisa, for a powerful post. You have been selected for a time such as this to bring awareness to the Progressive Christianity movement, among other false teachings. Thank you. I would love to send you my new Bible study on Revelation. If you would message me your address, I would LOVE to do that. Here's the link to it, but I would love to send you a complimentary copy. You've blessed me so much with your teaching, I would love to bless you.... https://www.amazon.com/Revelation-Message-Church-Sheryl-Pellatiro/dp/B08DBHD759/ref=sr_1_1?crid=52Q4PSLEZRQE&dchild=1&keywords=sheryl+pellatiro+revelation&qid=1606232440&sprefix=sheryl+pellatiro%2Caps%2C168&sr=8-1 REPLY Doug smith 11/24/2020 11:00:50 am Excellent. God is using Alisa to expose Progressive Christianity as not Christianity at all. It is in the same family as LDS or JW. It uses similar Christian words but redefines them . REPLY Ross V Caruso 5/31/2021 09:19:05 am Yes I fully agree. I realize apologetics is not for me. I get way toooo angry. Thank yiu Alisa for speaking the TRUTH about Christ and the sacrifice He had made for us through His Son Jesus Christ. God Bless Ian Huntington 7/7/2021 05:30:50 pm Doug Smith, “God is using Alisa to expose Progressive Christianity as not Christianity at all.” Really? Undoubtedly, you and your sympathizers believe that your particular biblical interpretation and theology is the only true one. Perhaps it was directly revealed by God to the early Christians and you are the fortunate heir of this narrowly known truth? How shamefully ignorant of real, honest Christian history! How self righteously arrogant! It is a good thing that God Is merciful to all of us, those of us who are progressive in belief as well as those who are blinded by their smug theological certainty. David Hernandez 11/24/2020 10:18:58 am Thank you for your email. Very timely. I feel like a giant wave is approaching the church. Thank God we will prevail in the power of the Holy Spirit. Marcia Montenegro's book on the Enneagram has 2 chapters devoted to RRohr. REPLY Tim Williams 7/8/2021 02:07:38 pm @Ian Huntington, Jesus said the way to the Father is narrow (Matthew 7:14). Yes, God is merciful, but we must repent of our sins, or we will experience the wrath of God. Ian, you mentioned you are a progressive believer? That is an oxymoron, to be honest. Do you even know what progressive means? Let me school you on the meaning of progressive. A Progressive is a person advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas. New? Is God not the same God yesterday, today, and forever? (Hebrews 13:8, Malachi 3:6). Now let us take a look at the meaning of liberal, shall we? A liberal is willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas or a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare. The form of Christianity you and many lost souls have concocted in our society is the “gay Christians,” or as Oprah once said, “free-thinking Christian.” This form of so-called believers is the kind of folks who will not experience persecution because of the "Christians" faith, unlike true Christians. Now is it possible for true Christians to be progressive at one time in life? Yes, but eventually, Christ will change (2 Corinthians 5:17) that individual's heart. True Christians grow, false so-called Christians do not; they progress as society changes because it is God’s way of showing these folks were never saved. So Ian Huntington checks to see if you are of the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). Genuine Christians are not progressive this is not in our DNA. Submit your life to Christ and ask for the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to you and ask for wisdom and discernment. The Holy Spirit will reveal what Alisa and the other true Christians on here have been trying to convey to you. No one is here to bash Mr. Rohr. We are simply warning people of the false teachings of this gentleman. The Bible said we are to warn as an expression of love. Mr. Rohr is not the type of person that is willing to call folks to repentance because it is not the way of our current society. You progressive folks should know this. By the way, the more progressive our society becomes, the closest we are heading towards the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37-39). Progressive as in men can be women, women can be men, truths are now hateful, hate is now truth, children are to be taught critical race theory, Darwinism something came from nothing or somehow God used evolution, social justice, my body, my choice except for the covid shots, homosexual marriage, one world order, open border, etc. These are some of the beliefs of the progressive crowd. True Christians know none of these beliefs glorifies God. Ian, I understand that there is probably nothing I or anyone on here could tell you to change your mind. All I would like to say is your progressive beliefs do not align with God. But it does align with the devil himself. Progressive believes is one of the causes of Christian prosecution in this country. Just keep that in mind because it is an oxymoron to call yourself a progressive Christian. I will pray for you. My fellow Christians, please pray for Ian Huntington and others alike. REPLY Ian Huntington 7/12/2021 10:03:46 am Tim Williams, thank you for asking people to pray for me and others like me. I appreciate that even though it is a backhanded way of putting my beliefs down. I was raised as a fundamentalist evangelical conservative. As a young man I attended an evangelical seminary after my University degree. I had intended to devote my life to God’s service and go into the ministry. Despite my fundamentalist seminary education it gradually became evident to me that the entire theological structure was based on the faulty supposition of scriptural inerrancy. This realization did not in anyway diminish my belief in God. I had developed a relationship with God that surpassed mere theology. I have an innate desire for truth about God which is not afraid of questions, doubts, uncertainty or ambiguity. I left evangelical Christianity at age 28. I am very glad to be done with it. I chose to become Episcopalian where I am free to study higher biblical criticism, Christian mysticism, Buddhism and to struggle with my own understanding of God, Christ, salvation. I base my belief on my understanding of scripture, my own spiritual experience and mystical understanding and on the historical Christian tradition, given an advanced degree in church history. My belief in God, Christ and salvation is not based on any absolute authority coming from outside myself. My beliefs come from God within me. I don’t claim to have all the answers, I don’t need them. I only know that God loves and blesses and that God is all in all. I am 70 years old and all I really know is that God isn’t finished with me yet. I am happy and I love God from my inside out. I am attracted to Father Rohr’s teaching. I am not certain I agree with everything but that isn’t important. Theology is not important to God or salvation but there is so much more to God’s kingdom. Rohr’s teachings are not fake, they are not heretical, they come from a mystical knowing which is God within. “Now we see through the glass darkly”. Again, thank you for your request to pray for me, I welcome God’s continuing attention, it a wonderful thing and stirs my soul. I pray that you will be delivered from the error of fundamentalist, evangelical understandings of reality. However, if that doesn’t happen in this lifetime, I wish you the joy of God’s presence. That is what really matters. 👍🏻 Sheree 11/24/2020 10:40:10 am Thank you for exposing yet another false teacher. I just read Another Gospel and am sharing it with a friend as well. I wondered where the "emergent" church had gone...oh, now they are "progressive!" Keep speaking truth! God bless! REPLY Chantelle 11/24/2020 01:47:50 pm I'm so thankful you are writing about this and shedding the truth and light. I got swept up in the enneagram and have since repented of my time spent in something that is rooted in the occult. I have some good friends that deconstructed their faith and turned to Richard Rohr. Thankful for you speaking and sharing God's truth! REPLY Jane Gruber 11/24/2020 03:02:49 pm Thank you for this information, Alisa! Very well written and as always, based on the Truth. I appreciate you sharing your studies with us. REPLY Steve Muse 11/24/2020 03:50:57 pm Thank you for writing this article. Rohr is one of many over the years that continue to bring the same message and so many Christians open the door letting the lion in to be devoured. The names are endless that the Church has embraced over the years to their detriment. REPLY John Noack 11/24/2020 09:54:37 pm It appears that Evangelicals, who like to claim that every propositional statement in the Bible is inerrant and that all of the actions and conduct in the Bible are infallible, have turned a blind eye to three biblical texts. Psalm 96:10 informs us, as it did the Reformers, who were using it to oppose the cosmic helio-centric view of Copernicus, that “the Earth is firmly stablished; it cannot be moved”. However, we now reject this statement on scientific grounds, as being false and we accept that the Earth both rotates daily around its axis and it revolves annually around the sun. Exodus 17:14 and Numbers 31:7 inform us that the Hebrews’ Deity decreed that all of the Amalekites and the Midianites, including mothers and children, must be slaughtered and these races annihilated. Only the young girls, whom the Hebrew males were allowed to keep for themselves, were spared from the slaughter. There was no Christian-inspired “loving your enemies” here. Since we now know that the Earth does in fact move annually around the sun and that racial genocide is now universally condemned, Evangelicals need to be much more honest and truthful about their claims that there are no erroneous or false statements and no fallible or immoral actions recorded in the Bible. So far as I have read, such essential honesty and truthfulness about the Bible has not emerged so far in any Evangelical Writings. No wonder the Millennials are deserting this ship, in their search for honesty and truthfulness. REPLY PJ Trimble 12/1/2020 09:47:16 pm I was thinking about this comment when I was purchasing small birds for my sacrificial blood offering at my church, which certainly SEEMS positioned in the center of my world. REPLY Keith Williams 6/30/2021 02:20:35 pm Small birds are no good PJ. In fact, the very use of them is an abomination upon the face of the earth. I recommend the well-tried and tested black and white Cockrell. I just happen to sell them for $3,000 dollars each. Buy two and the discounted price is $6,500. Wayne Ballinger 1/12/2021 10:02:40 pm The Evangelicals have created their own demise. I know my brokenness and their god is far too small for me. As the son of a Church of Christ pastor (retired) , I will introduce legislation throughout the U.S. in 2021 ELIMINATING the tax deduction (501 C3) for ALL churches based upon their 'Hate' speach (according to the culture). Let's see how many folks return the Sunday after they can't write off their tithe anymore! True 'Separation of Church and State' is coming rapidly and THEN we'll see how right, true, strong, your American god is !!!!! REPLY Rachel Shallenberger 2/12/2021 09:36:52 am Go for it. Tax exemption is not why we give or do anything. You're a "puny human" (to quote Hulk). God is your Creator. Do what you want. I hope you see the truth before it's too late, though! And He's not an "American" God, he's the God of the entire world. And the Psalm verse is totally taken out of context. Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.” The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity. And yes- those people groups had to be killed because they would cause the Israelites to fall away from God. (these things happened a lot.) It's not "error". Things were just different back then before Christ came and hung in our place. That's all. Keith Williams 5/8/2021 02:23:00 am John, you are a breath of well needed fresh air. This monumental denial of the unloving nature and savagery of many accounts in the Old Testament is mind boggling! Does the earth really go around the sun?!! No one tells me anything! REPLY Keith Williams 7/12/2021 01:48:42 am John Noack God's morality differs from ours and so, apparently, does his knowledge of scientific truth. This would have us believe there exists no 'absolute' morality but an arbitrary one that God turns to on a whim. The fallacies you cite will have no impact on the fixed credo of the 'true' Christian, nor will any other glaring inconsistency found in the 'true' scriptures. Sequential logic has no place in the mind of the 'true' believer. These obvious contradictions have undoubtedly a very good explanation. Just don't expect to hear it from Alisa. REPLY Heather M Davislink 11/25/2020 10:47:39 am I looked into Rohr's teachings, too. It's intensely disturbing that anyone would promote him as Christian. Almost like saying Carlos Castanada wrote from a Christian worldview... REPLY Mike 11/25/2020 03:45:45 pm You piqued my interest in the opening paragraphs and had me locked in by the end. I've only read some of Rohr's work and listened to several years of homilies but I will definitely seek out more. I hope you will as well in an effort to see past your narrow view of God and the scriptures. There is so much more there that you seem afraid to see. Embrace the work of Rohr, Rob Bell, Thomas Oord and everyone else you mark as dangerous. Their work is bringing people to faith and an understanding of Jesus. Your work however, I feel is doing quite the opposite. People that are singing your praises for your teachings are people who are looking for you to confirm what they already believe. You are not opening minds and hearts with this work...you're slamming doors in the faces of people who are seeking an understanding of who Jesus really was and is. REPLY Dean Love 12/4/2020 09:41:22 am Mike Your claim that those who praise Alisa because she confirms what they already believe, misses a crucial point. What they already believe is what the Scriptures actually teach about Jesus and what He in turn taught about Himself, eternal life and damnation, etc. Alisa simply confirms what the Scriptures teach, which if language means anything, is pretty clear. On the other hand, those who follow Rohr, do so I believe, because he confirms what they actually WANT to believe. They prefer to believe that God doesn't hold people eternally accountable for their sins and that Jesus was more of an example of how we should live, rather than the Saviour of all who believe and Judge of all who refuse. They prefer Rohr's new religion over the one founded on the teachings of Jesus and his apostles. For them, it's all about what they like, not what is real. REPLY Don 4/30/2021 09:29:25 pm Amen, brother! REPLY Keith Williams 6/30/2021 02:05:11 pm Well said Mike. I agree that the hell and damnation brigade should be relegated to mythological history. However, within the U.S. bible belt, I'm sure this type of literal thinking will linger on for a few more decades. REPLY Brian Shaw 11/26/2020 09:40:12 am Richard Rohr is a heretic! The 2nd century heretics taught that Jesus and Christ were different persons. Irenaeus taught this in Against Heresies, Book 3, Chapters 16-18. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103316.htm REPLY Stephanie Dennis 11/27/2020 11:03:06 am Thank you thank for revealing these false teachings that have been around since the beginning and have been condemned as heresy in the early church. The progressive “Christians” question over and over again why the church is losing young people and older people alike and it is not because we hold to the Truth of the Gospel but because of false teachers leading people astray. I am thankful for your voice and your new book. REPLY Brian Shaw 11/27/2020 06:16:48 pm Thank you! It is not my book, nor is it new - written in the 2nd century A.D. REPLY Wade 11/30/2020 12:37:47 pm I love Richard Rohr's teaching....wish I had known of him 40 years ago! REPLY PJ Trimble 12/1/2020 09:39:10 pm Amen to that ! I have long been aware that understanding science and the trajectory of humanity are not part of the fortress mentality (presented here as apologetics) that encourages us continue to condemn others. It's sad to see this "return to barbarism" advocated as Godly (Christian or Otherwise). Action and Contemplation might be a solution. REPLY Ian Huntington 7/14/2021 10:03:11 am Wade I too wish I had been introduced to the Christian understandings of Father Rohr as a young man instead of the narrow, judge-mental, sin preoccupied, blood sacrifice theory demanding, evangelical understanding. I loved God as a young man and wanted to serve him. I tried hard to accept my evangelical teachings but just couldn’t accept it’s glaring contradictions and theological deficiencies. As a young man in seminary I repeatedly begged God to change me into what I thought I should be. I would prostrate myself on the chapel floor after everyone else had safely left. One night, while lying on the floor in supplication, God spoke to me saying,”Get up, there is nothing to change! My love is sufficient for you! Go!” Had I known then, the teachings of Christ as taught by Father Rohr, I would still be in the church as a vocation, albeit, a different denomination. It would have saved me years of anguish, self doubt and being ostracized by my family and the church that had been my life. That night was 40 years ago, it was a moment of God’s saving grace in my life. Rohr’s understanding of the gospel is not easy but it has been like a long intake of fresh, clean air. REPLY WG 12/1/2020 10:35:05 am Alisa, thank you for this post and the defense of the faith in Christ alone. Some of these comments are heart breaking but not unexpected. Only the Holy Spirit can transform a heart and that is by hearing the Word of God, which many many false teachers are rejecting and twisting the Word of God. To the critics here, please Romans Ch 1-3. The entire world is under God's just condemnation and Jesus did provide the only way of salvation, he was our substitute. This is good news because it addresses the truth, the bad news of our sin. If your gospel doesn't also contain the bad news, if it only pleases you, then it is probably not the gospel that saves. Love you all in the Lord and keep seeking the Lord. REPLY Garry Turner 12/2/2020 06:52:28 am Thanks for all your work in this area, Alisa. It is much appreciated. REPLY CARMEN NAVARRO 12/14/2020 01:17:35 pm Hi Alisa, I enjoyed this blog, your YouTube channel, and your book, which I already read. Thanks for the great contexts and subjects. I am pretty sure I will have many questions for you soon.  😁 -- Shared via Shareaholic  REPLY stephen argent 12/15/2020 09:53:30 am thank you for this review of Richard Rohr and his teaching, After reading your response I am drawn towards his perspective even more. REPLY Lynn 4/25/2021 06:45:38 am Amen! REPLY Eva 4/28/2021 06:58:21 pm Same for me Stephen. REPLY Kathy Hoppe 12/21/2020 03:29:13 pm I respectfully disagree with your analysis which is not based on fact, theological education, or a personal conversation with Richard Rohr. Many of your own summations about Christian theology represent only a part of Christianity. My husband & I have personally met Richard. The first thing one discerns is the presence of the Holy Spirit. I think to critique a theologian one should be more educated and check one’s facts. REPLY adam 2/15/2021 02:29:05 pm Amen spot on! Seems like in a lot of the comments people don't understand Catholic history or the work of the Franciscans over the last 800 years. REPLY Apologies 4/13/2021 03:49:18 pm Have you met Alisa? I think to critique her one should be more educated, check one's facts, and have had a personal conversation with her. That seems to be the golden standard before someone is allowed to publish their own opinion. What are your rules for commenting on someone else's post by the way? Moreover, what about commenting on someone's comment? REPLY Dean Love 12/21/2020 04:45:28 pm Kathy; Alisa's "summation" of Christianity was narrowly focused on addressing the areas where some of Richard Rohr's teachings directly contradicted what Jesus said about Himself, eternal life, salvation, the OT scriptures, etc. In my opinion, she demonstrated a full knowledge of the facts related to those subjects and how Mr. Rohr's beliefs deviate from those facts. REPLY Agnieszka 1/9/2021 02:40:37 am I send you love and light so your false, narrow believes may crumble and you may open your heart and mind to the Truth. And thanks God for teachers like Richard Rohr and others who will help this sick institution that church became to fall apart. I hope all of you blindly following scriptures will one day wake up to the living reality of Christ Consciousness. REPLY Padraiclink 1/10/2021 10:54:46 am Hi Agnieszka The world is following the rainbow New Age which is antichrist and it has a new messiah too soon to make his debut. The New Age says everything is ok, God doesn't mind. It will only last a few years though and the real Jesus will return and all mankind will see Him and face judgement by Him, He wants to save everyone, He will return as the King of mercy but not all will be saved, 'one will be taken and one left', the ones who are taken perish because they won't be able to repent. I think this video is a preview of the return of Christ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0_ysUivxE Fr Adam Skwarczynski is interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dELrJYluNCs God bless, padraic REPLY Agnieszka 1/14/2021 08:51:44 am Hi Padraic, To be honest, I'm not that good in all the names, labels and distinctions, I don't know what New Age is, what old age is, I have never heard of new messiah either. I had to leave church to find God and so I am, on my path to Truth, Love, God. And here's what works for me as is logical and resonates with my innermost, highest truth and understanding - God doesn't mind because there is no EGO in God. For our different purposes we created God on our image and likeness, a person like us just more powerful, more potent...more vengeful... In our little minds we can not comprehend that maybe the reality is a bit more complex, more complicated... Whenever I see the word 'judgement ' in religious context I wonder - why I was given free will if I can not use it??? What would be God's plan and intention in that "gift" then??? (Please enlighten me). Return of Jesus - yes, He is returning, but again -maybe taking it literally as physical return of a person is not the right way to see it? What if the return of Jesus means the awakening of Christ Consciousness in each of us? I can go on and on but instead I will recommend beautiful and very wise book by Cynthia Bourgeault: The Wisdom Jesus (beware she's somehow connected to Richard Rohr!). Read if you want to understand Jesus on deeper level, if you want to understand His true teaching and the true sacrament of His life. Love and light Agnieszka Padraiclink 1/14/2021 04:43:41 pm New Age/old age? There is a widespread theory in Astrology that after the Age of Pisces (Fish) there is the New Age of Aquarius. And since early Christianity used the symbol of the Fish for Christianity they think that the Age of Christianity is basically over and it is time for a new messiah and new age. They believe every 2,000 years or so there is a new guru/Buddha/Krishna to teach the world new enlightenment. It is a very clever plan but bogus imo, the seeds of it were planted a very long time ago. There is a guru who claims to be the real messiah and the new Buddha/Krishna and the Muslim Mahdi, he claims to be the one man to unite all religions in himself. If God has an ego i don't think He would mind, if you ask me, God minds because God loves. He loves us, He loves goodness, He wants our salvation, it breaks His heart having to refuse salvation to a creature He loves but it is not His fault. In my opinion God created hell in order that those who reject Him can exist for eternity but they must be fairly punished for their unrepented sins. Good must suppress evil always. I think we are given free-will because God respects us so much and He hopes we will freely choose the path of real love which leads to eternal life with Him. Julie 1/9/2021 10:42:32 pm I am currently reading one of Rohr's books and am enjoying listening to another perspective. I grew up in conservative tradition and over the years have benefitted greatly from listening to others. Having our constructs challenged is a healthy thing. I am thankful I am not in the same box I started in and believe that is God's intent. I'm not sure why you have decided you have the corner on the truth and thus should instruct Christians to "avoid" the teachings of this man or others. REPLY Padraic Kellylink 1/10/2021 11:00:09 am Julie A liberal Christianity without Christ is being taught by these famous teachers. In this day and age everything goes, nothing is seen to be offensive to God if it involves love but that is not always true. God bless, padraic kelly REPLY Agnieszka 1/16/2021 07:24:10 am Dear Padraic, I know I should probably leave it as it is (as there is not even REPLY button under your last post to reply) but I just can't. First - thank you for clarifying what the New Age actually means, I have heard about the Age of Aquarius but haven't connected the dots... Second - what kind of free will would that be? "You have free will but if you don't do what I want you to do you will suffer eternally"??? I wouldn't call it respect, I wouldn't consider it loving. What such interpretation would make out of God? And I think deep down in your heart you sense it's somehow not right. Third - again, please read The Wisdom Jesus, I can't recommend it enough. Just yesterday I was reading in this book about the meaning of Jesus's passage through the realms of hell after His death on the cross (your "Good must suppress evil always" - yes, but not by means of eternal punishment but the power of love). True meaning of hell, of repentance, of sin...it's all there explained beautifully by someone much wiser than me (and in proper English, not mine) Fourth and last - let go of fear! Do not be affraid. Question, doubt, search, ask...you will not be condemned or punished forever for that. Listen to your heart and trust it, there are all the answers you need. Just don't be affraid. I God bless you REPLY James 1/17/2021 04:16:25 pm Very helpful analysis, based on Rohr’s own words and a robust inquiry using scripture, logic and history. Thanks for sharing, Alisa. I’m currently reading one of Rohr’s books and happened upon your post. I must confess I like to read diverse theological views (especially ones I’m unlikely to agree with) and I’m seeing a lot which could be interpreted as sailing close to the “Little Gods” prosperity message in Rohr’s work. It’s helpful to find a concise summary- thanks again. REPLY Marilyn Taplinlink 1/19/2021 03:01:05 pm Departing from God and following the ways of Satan is established in Genesis and revisited throughout every story in scripture. In the Garden there are only two powers available for man to serve. And today, as it has been since Eden, there are only two powers – God or Satan. This truth is restated in the story of Noah and those in the flood – the population of the earth divided into two groups. If Adam and Eve were placed in the story of Noah, they would not be in the Ark with righteous Noah. Adam and Eve would be in the water. Their sin was sexual for it was a sexually perverse generation in the water at that time and so it is today. Then the land was filled with violence as our land is today. REPLY Keith Williams 7/12/2021 02:31:37 am So, Marilyn, it is right to slaughter, not only the 'sinful' but children both born and unborn. Sex in almost any form, seems to be an anathema to God and should be punishable by death. I wonder why that is. He seems comfortable with murder and extreme violence. You have got to admire the way God uses water to humanely kill children and does not resort to the usual eternal roasting. Now, that is real love and compassion. REPLY Mark 1/22/2021 07:29:04 pm I was on the internet and found this article about a man whom I credit with bringing me back from a dark place into the Light of The World - Jesus Christ. His name is Father Richard Rohr, OFM and he is one of only a small handful of true Christian Mystics (along the lineage of Father Thomas Merton, OFM). From the age of 15, he has dedicated his life (63 years as a priest) to the Perennial Tradition and in service to Christ through his work with the poor, alcoholics and drug addicts, prisoners and the forgotten (Matthew 25:34-36) Father Richard is a peer of the theological giants like Eugene Peterson, so when I read your article, I was hoping for the best ! To your credit, you showed some chutzpah, but after consideration, I simply can’t believe your complete and utter lack of humility and basic knowledge about the nature of the trap of dualistic thinking that “Evangelicals” and radical far-right Catholics desperately adhere to. There is help available. In addition to founding the CAC, Richard is the author of several books about the possibility of reaching further - that maybe it is possible to evolve past our infant like understanding of Jesus the Christ towards The Universal Christ. You state: “He openly affirms panentheism, a view of the nature of God that teaches God is in all, all is in God, but God also transcends the world. This carries troubling implications for his view of the Trinity and the nature of Christ”, to which I’d affirm - Yes, my friends, God was here before His son Jesus and if you think that is “new agey”, you’re still in the toddler stage of spiritual development. Father Richard Rohr’s dedication to educate, inspire and help people to understand The Gospels have brought countless people like me closer to God with an open-hearted attitude. For those who have witnessed terrible things and became separated from God's love and goodness. – Father Rohr was (and is) the Way back to Christ. So how do we grow and serve Christ to become better people ? It’s definitely Not by instructing others how, when, where or through whom we are to receive God’s Grace. Your friend in Christ Mark REPLY Trevorlink 1/28/2021 06:06:57 am Mark, most telling is your insistence that Richard Rohr should educate us. You don't have to dig very deep to see that Rohr makes bold pronouncements that spring from his own ego (I am better than God) and then finds a way to twist Scripture to fit his views. Scripture is analogous to Scripture. It is not confusing at all, it is consistent when you dive into the Bible and see its common thread from Old to New Testament. People like Rohr sideline the conversation from grace, to buying into his own ego. It is a trap. Don't fall for it. Rohr like many others is a smiling angel of light... whose views cast you into the darkness. I urge you to search the scriptures and do your own homework. REPLY Ian Huntington 7/12/2021 10:33:42 am Trevor, I know that nothing I could write here would lead you to see differently. When one is convinced that he is right, he only accepts that which confirms his belief. I have no desire to spar with you in your faith journey. I only wish that the loving graciousness of God will help you to eventually see and accept that God works in mysterious ways beyond anyone’s theological understanding. What may seem like ego to you may actually God’s truth confronting our well intentioned misconceptions. Real truth comes from within. In any case, I wish you the Spaciousness and happiness of God. Jennifer 3/4/2021 08:45:47 pm Mark- The problem is your statement. “Richard Rohr was ( and is ) the Way back to Christ” Scripture says. John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. No man is the way. REPLY Ian Huntington 7/14/2021 09:11:15 am Jennifer, while I heartily agree with Mark’s overall statement, I do agree that the wording, “the way back to Christ”, could be better stated. Clearly, the teachings of Father Rohr have been and continue to be highly instrumental in Mark’s reconversion to Christ. I can say the same for myself. An understanding and conversion to the difficult teachings of Christ is the path to understanding God. That is what makes our beliefs Christian. Father Rohr is one in a long historic line of Christians (followers of the teachings of Christ) who do not accept original sin, God’s need to pay for sin with blood, and other beliefs central to an evangelical understanding of Christ, God and salvation. Christianity has never been united in belief, understanding or practice. Those who insist that their version of Christianity is the only true version approved by God have blinders on. I am not implying that you wear spiritual blinders, I don’t know you and I can only assume that you are a loving follower of Christ too. Yes, for us Christians, Christ is our example leading us to God. There are many teachers who are our examples leading us to Christ. Like Mark, I believe that the teachings of Father Rohr lead me to Christ. There have been people on this post and in my last 70 years of life who tell me I am not a Christian because I no longer believe the evangelical model of Christianity I was raised in and went to seminary to study and to promote. They claim that they say this out of love. It hurts, it’s clearly not out of love but rather like a horse with blinders who denies that anything not in their vision doesn’t exist. Keith Williams 7/12/2021 02:55:07 am Mark, your response to Alisa was both scholarly and compassionate. Father Rohr's writings point to a way in which we can evolve our understanding of what it means to be a Christian. I agree, Evangelicals need abandon the 'toddler' stage of their journey towards transcendence. The true God who resides in all of us is far greater than the limited, anthropomorphic God of the Old Testament. REPLY Trevorlink 1/28/2021 06:02:21 am I am encouraged to know that I am not the only one having to refute Rohr to the Christian mainstream. How he has wheedled his way in is a mystery since he clearly promotes a different gospel. Yes, he is a wolf among sheep and there are many loose these days like him, who would change the Word of God into a lie. It is good to speak up and say why these people are wrong. Most troubling to me, is that they routinely make bold statements as if true, then back that up with misquotes and proof texting from scripture. You need to know your Bible and understand your faith to fight back. REPLY Earl 2/7/2021 04:31:56 am Hi Trevor, I think you will find that throughout history, new ideas have always challenged the established order. It is through light that we are aware of darkness.If the writings of the bible were the writings of a todler, would you still believe them word for word when you became an adult? Shurely your experience and perspectives will change as you grow: what you saw and interpreted one way, you may see differently later. It has been 2000 years since most of the bible was written. The earth was "flat", the earth isn't the centre of the solar system. Do you really think that everything is to be seen exactly the way they were then? If so , I presume you are still walking everywhere or travelling by donkey! God has given you a mind to think, explore and challenge: that is why he gave us free will. wether you realise it or not, this is the greatest gift he has given you. Can we get off the donkey, and get into the car of our minds. We are made in his image. Create, go forth and live in the now! Peace X REPLY Victoria 3/6/2021 02:14:36 pm “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.” ‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭40:22-23‬ ‭ESV‬‬ Moira 4/5/2021 09:58:02 am But the writings of the Bible are not those of a toddler or toddlers. Things change, some for good and some not. But truth doesn't. What changes, at least for me, is a greater understanding of the scriptures as I age, as I change. Earl 4/9/2021 07:00:58 pm With all due respect Moira, there are many writings from thousands of years ago that we now understand more fully. With modern knowledge however, we are able to better understand what was happening at the time. That is why I use the toddler analogy. I hope we have moved forward greatly with the benefit of years of hindsight. We should and in many cases do see things clearer than in those times. I think if Jesus came today he would challenge us just as he challenged the Jews of his day. So maybe we are the “Pharasees” of today, holding on to doctrine and tradition and missing the essence and spirit of what the Bible is saying. I pray we will see ourselves in his truth. Peace X REPLY Sharon 2/6/2021 04:52:57 am It's interesting reading the above comments for and against Richard. We can only see the world through the glasses we wear. Sometimes when we take them off we actually see better or see a thing differently. Sometimes our glasses need changing. Rhor like the writers of the bible or any book gives his perspective. God is bigger than what or who we perceive him to be. What Rhor is asking us to do is open our God given minds. The bible has in many writings that do not speak to a loving God.if we continue to follow it slavishly we will continue to want to dominate each other and continue to cause much suffering. REPLY Tony 2/13/2021 11:29:34 pm Clearly Richard Rohr has never experienced the transformational reality of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. I pray that he does before it’s too late. In view of the Roman Catholic Church’s observance of both the Apostles Creed and the Athanasian Creed I find it extraordinary that they would tolerate his line of teaching. I would not want to be Richard Rohr when he one day stands before the Lord. REPLY Ian Huntington 6/7/2021 07:59:09 am Tony, in all humility I would tell you that if anyone has ever experienced the in dwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, it is Richard Rohr. Your statement otherwise would suggest that your view is small, limited and narrow in its experience and that’s OK if we are open to growth. I am certain you would vehemently disagree but we all, including myself, view God and our spiritual understanding from the limitations of our experiences. Faith and certainty are two very different things. Certainty may stem more from our individual ego (which requires certainty and security) than from our openness to God and can even block us from fully experiencing God. Richard Rohr’s teachings help us to be open to God through meditation were we experience God (the Holy Spirit if you choose to use that terminology) within us and without us in the world that needs our inspired action. I wish you God’s blessings in your life and your evolving understanding. REPLY Tim Williams 7/8/2021 02:10:13 pm @Ian Huntington, Jesus said the way to the Father is narrow (Matthew 7:14). Yes, God is merciful, but we must repent of our sins, or we will experience the wrath of God. Ian, you mentioned you are a progressive believer? That is an oxymoron, to be honest. Do you even know what progressive means? Let me school you on the meaning of progressive. A Progressive is a person advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas. New? Is God not the same God yesterday, today, and forever? (Hebrews 13:8, Malachi 3:6). Now let us take a look at the meaning of liberal, shall we? A liberal is willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas or a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare. The form of Christianity you and many lost souls have concocted in our society is the “gay Christians,” or as Oprah once said, “free-thinking Christian.” This form of so-called believers is the kind of folks who will not experience persecution because of the "Christians" faith, unlike true Christians. Now is it possible for true Christians to be progressive at one time in life? Yes, but eventually, Christ will change (2 Corinthians 5:17) that individual's heart. True Christians grow, false so-called Christians do not; they progress as society changes because it is God’s way of showing these folks were never saved. So Ian Huntington checks to see if you are of the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). Genuine Christians are not progressive this is not in our DNA. Submit your life to Christ and ask for the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to you and ask for wisdom and discernment. The Holy Spirit will reveal what Alisa and the other true Christians on here have been trying to convey to you. No one is here to bash Mr. Rohr. We are simply warning people of the false teachings of this gentleman. The Bible said we are to warn as an expression of love. Mr. Rohr is not the type of person that is willing to call folks to repentance because it is not the way of our current society. You progressive folks should know this. By the way, the more progressive our society becomes, the closest we are heading towards the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37-39). Progressive as in men can be women, women can be men, truths are now hateful, hate is now truth, children are to be taught critical race theory, Darwinism something came from nothing or somehow God used evolution, social justice, my body, my choice except for the covid shots, homosexual marriage, one world order, open border, etc. These are some of the beliefs of the progressive crowd. True Christians know none of these beliefs glorifies God. Ian, I understand that there is probably nothing I or anyone on here could tell you to change your mind. All I would like to say is your progressive beliefs do not align with God. But it does align with the devil himself. Progressive believes is one of the causes of Christian prosecution in this country. Just keep that in mind because it is an oxymoron to call yourself a progressive Christian. I will pray for you. My fellow Christians, please pray for Ian Huntington and others alike. Tim Williams 7/12/2021 12:10:28 pm @Ian, quoting you, "I left evangelical Christianity at age 28. I am very glad to be done with it. I chose to become Episcopalian where I am free to study higher biblical criticism, Christian mysticism, Buddhism and to struggle with my own understanding of God, Christ, salvation. @Ian, truth be told you were never a Christian (1 John 2:19). Christian mysticism? Now I don’t know much about this mysticism you have attached to your created view of Christianity. But I will quote someone who knows this subject. Shirley Berg said, “ I’ve always loved Ted Dekker, but now I’m starting to get uncomfortable. Sin is not really sin, just a misperception, so genuine, heartfelt repentance isn’t really needed, especially since God won’t be judging anyone, His wrath is nothing to fear, everyone gets saved in the end, etc., etc. I’ve read the whole Bible through more times than I can remember, and these things are not sound theology! And who needs the cross and atonement if we are just misperceiving?” Ian, is this what you believe? To believe that we must step away from reasoning. When we look at our world system, this thinking does not align because it doesn’t make sense. What makes you think it will make sense in God’s Heaven? As for mixing Buddhist beliefs with your created view of Christianity, let’s look at Buddhist beliefs. Karma, the actions or deeds of a person determines their position in the next life. Do good deeds outweigh, bad deeds (Islam), enlightenment, dharma, nirvana, and rebirth? You, as with many false converts, created a god of your image. You have created a buffet of what you choose to believe and what you won’t believe because it does not align with your preferred lifestyle. Ian, at 70 years old, you should be teaching me (a millennial) the truth. Ian, you are stuck in your old ways of thinking. Abandoning the truth at 28-years-old was a terrible decision on your end. Now you are in a limbo of thought. Ian, you should repent while you can and accept the truth (John 14:6). Your beliefs are that of convenience. True Christianity is not convenient to our fall nature (flesh). As Christians we accept this truth, and instead rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us, so we may live righteous lives. Unfortunately, Ian picking and taking from other religious beliefs will never lead to a relationship with Christ. It will cause you to seek emotional religion; this is what you have done. https://www.mikeduran.com/2017/11/27/the-dangers-of-christian-mysticism/ Tim Williams 7/12/2021 12:13:28 pm @Ian, Now I don’t know much about this mysticism you have attached to your created view of Christianity. But I will quote someone who knows this subject. Shirley Berg said, “ I’ve always loved Ted Dekker, but now I’m starting to get uncomfortable. Sin is not really sin, just a misperception, so genuine, heartfelt repentance isn’t really needed, especially since God won’t be judging anyone, His wrath is nothing to fear, everyone gets saved in the end, etc., etc. I’ve read the whole Bible through more times than I can remember, and these things are not sound theology! And who needs the cross and atonement if we are just misperceiving?” Ian, is this what you believe? To believe that we must step away from reasoning. When we look at our world system, this thinking does not align because it doesn’t make sense. What makes you think it will make sense in God’s Heaven? As for mixing Buddhist beliefs with your created view of Christianity, let’s look at Buddhist beliefs. Karma, the actions or deeds of a person determines their position in the next life. Do good deeds outweigh, bad deeds (Islam), enlightenment, dharma, nirvana, and rebirth? You, as with many false converts, created a god of your image. You have created a buffet of what you choose to believe and what you won’t believe because it does not align with your preferred lifestyle. Ian, at 70 years old, you should be teaching me (a millennial) the truth. Ian, you are stuck in your old ways of thinking. Abandoning the truth at 28-years-old was a terrible decision on your end. Now you are in a limbo of thought. Ian, you should repent while you can and accept the truth (John 14:6). Your beliefs are that of convenience. True Christianity is not convenient to our fall nature (flesh). As Christians we accept this truth, and instead rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us, so we may live righteous lives. Unfortunately, Ian picking and taking from other religious beliefs will never lead to a relationship with Christ. It will cause you to seek emotional religion; this is what you have done. https://www.mikeduran.com/2017/11/27/the-dangers-of-christian-mysticism/ Ian Huntington 7/14/2021 10:26:29 am Tim, thank you for your lengthy replies. I appreciate your sincerity. You represent the kind of Christian atmosphere I was raised in and have grown to thoroughly reject on an intellectual and spiritual basis. I used to loathe evangelicals for the way they treated me when I began to question the dogma. By the mercy of Christ, I no longer hate fundamentalists but, there is no way in hell I’m going to get sucked back into that hurtful rabbit hole again. The orthodox teachings of men like Father Rohr and many other men of God, show a much more loving path through Christ to God. There is no more trying to stuff myself into an type of Christianity that my soul, which I believe is God in me, fundamentally doesn’t believe in. Chelsi 2/15/2021 04:23:43 pm It's interesting that out of all the teachings of Rohr, this is what you take away from it. From what I've read by him, he more talks about the LOVE of God and how it lives inside all of us versus the need to follow a "structure". Do you truly think saying a few words such as, "Jesus come into my heart" is what gets you into heaven? I think it's more about our personal actions and how we treat others, which is what Rohr teaches most. REPLY Brian 3/18/2021 04:47:54 pm Jesus speaking - "On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’" Matthew 7:22-23 "God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it." Ephesians 2:8-9 REPLY Rhomz 3/5/2021 09:07:08 am A friend suggested R.Rohr to me so I googled and found this commentary and would like to thank you for being clear and concise. I was religious and spiritual as a kid (1960s)with 12 years of Nuns and Brothers. But what did I know? From your commentary R.Rohr is apparently everything really believe in now and wish I go back in time with his thinking. REPLY Mike 3/5/2021 01:29:15 pm Thank you for continuing to bring the important work of Rohr to people who might have missed it because of their narrow view. You are doing great things in helping people expand their world view and welcome people like Rohr into their lives. I recommend downloading his homilies; they're a great listen. REPLY Steven De Bernardi 3/21/2021 03:12:31 pm As a former Evangelical inner city pastor and chaplain I find the insights of Richard Rohr to be well centered in a biblical hermeneutic and Christology that is faithful to sound scholarship and yes...and appreciation for the Perennial Tradition. And I understand why it is difficult for those who hold to a inerrantist-infallible interpretive understanding of how to read the canonical texts to enter into the light that comes by leaving the cave of that particular point of view. Best regards from a Separatist of that Tribe. And please do better to Love God and Love your Neighbor. As for me and my house...Paz y Amor. REPLY Todd Graves 6/30/2021 10:01:45 am Thank you Steven and God bless. :) REPLY Jane 3/22/2021 09:35:00 am Surely ‘you will know them by their fruits’. If R. Rohr encourages people to be kind, just, fair, forgiving, peaceful, thoughtful, loving, prayerful, then this is helping God’s kingdom come. REPLY Ed 3/24/2021 09:38:20 am Richard Rohr is essentially an introductory teacher to Theosophy (of Mde Blavatsky) where ultimately you discover that god from them is in fact Lucifer if you keep probing deeper and deeper into that system. A front runner for the coming one world religion within a new world government. Truth and lies mixed together just as Eve was beguiled (seduced) with by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. REPLY Nancy Anders 3/28/2021 08:40:24 pm Is that so? You would boil down His years Franciscan training to theosophy? Pfft! REPLY Parker 3/24/2021 08:48:26 pm BUT WHAT ABOUT TRACY!? WHAT ABOUT HER AND HER HOMOSEXUALITY!? YOU STARTED YOUR THESIS WITH TRACY BUT NEVER GAVE US ANY CLOSURE! DID SHE RETURN TO THE LORD!? REPLY Nancy Anders 3/28/2021 08:37:18 pm Everyone who wants to dismiss Richard Rohr’s perspectives on the basis of this article just needs to explore him for themselves. Nothing to fear there. Creating fear of Rohr is the point here. He is no threat to a rich spiritual life unless that life is based on rigid self-righteousness ...and fear. REPLY Keith Williams 5/25/2021 11:10:51 am Well said Nancy. It would seem that 'rigid self- righteousness' is the default position of many on this forum. A religion based on fear is both primitive and indicative of a very human desire to control. It has nothing to do with a creator of the universe and much to do with little people who get off on shame and blame, using their own interpretation of a deity as a weapon. REPLY Andie 3/30/2021 08:03:15 am I wonder if it occurs to followers of Ms. Childers that it was people like them, locked in their own theology and certainty, with their boundaries and power threatened by expansion, who demanded the crucifixion of Jesus? Please do some reading before you throw Richard Rhor off the cliff and claim him dangerous. Read his words! Articles like this one are so damaging. What part of Jesus’s life encourages fearing and disparaging others and seeking enemies? People—stop seeking Ms. Childers ideas and start the much harder work of seeking the still, small voice of God in your own hearts. But be prepared....He just might expand your boundaries. REPLY Dean Love 3/30/2021 11:08:29 am Once one reads Richard Rohr's words and then reads the words of Jesus and His apostles, one immediately recognizes the difference. Rohr's words contradict the teachings of Jesus and His apostles so frequently that one is left wondering how he can still claim that what he teaches is Christianity, and how so many people can believe him. I suspect it's because what he teaches is what many want to hear and what they wish Christianity really was. If you want to know what Christianity really is, read the words of Jesus, Peter, Paul, John et al. REPLY Andie 4/15/2021 07:52:46 am I find it interesting that so many people claim to have the only truth in their theology and are so quick to dismiss others’ experience of God. Moira 4/5/2021 09:53:08 am What does this mean? I just can't get my mind around it. And in Rohr’s view, " Christ is a cosmic reality that is found “whenever the material and the divine co-exist—which is always and everywhere.” REPLY Suzanne 6/2/2021 12:46:27 pm God created us in His divine image & likeness out of love, which is what He is, Love. Our Christian mystics all agree that God dwells within us which Jesus also told us, saying “the Kingdom of God is within” & to seek out that “pearl of great price” within ourselves. He himself spent long nights in silent prayer & contemplation. When we pray like this we find ourselves voyaging deeper into our own soul, through the “mansions” that Teresa of Avila wrote about, until we are fully awakened to the vast, unspeakable & overwhelming sweetness of God’s love for us personally, as well as his infinite love for all beings. This knowledge is so much bigger than anything we can, as finite human beings, explain, that words are inadequate. Richard’s ability to convey this enormous love & mercy that God gifts us, is in itself a gift to an arid religious insistence on following the rules. Jesus himself rebelled against all those man made rules that the Jewish religion had established & I’m sure he sighs over how restrictive & exclusionary much of Christianity is. RR’s teaching about Christ is entirely aligned to Catholic teaching because we believe Christ was the first born of all creation. He is eternal, in the same way that God & the Holy Spirit are, as they are all one. The Son became human 2,000 years ago & lived & taught on this Earth for 33 years but he always was, is & always will he, as God & the Holy Spirit was, is & always will be. The Christ who existed before Jesus walked the Earth & who exists today & always will exist is the Cosmic Christ, who always was, who became incarnate in time, and who is still being revealed. This is the Cosmic Christ of RR’s teachings & Jesus is not separate. They are one & the same but for a time he became embodied. Christ Consciousness is the cultivation of the heart & mind of Christ, which simply means following the path of Jesus in loving, compassionate service to God & God’s creation, following the will of the father, learning humility & gratitude & discarding judgement & criticism. Judgement & criticism sickens our souls as all we are doing is arguing with God’s own handiwork. If I hadn’t read Richard Rohr I would have left the church, as I think so many others would have. The rigidity I was taught, the restrictive & punishing religion I grew up with, is nothing like the glorious love I know today. But of course prophets, mystics & the saints all experienced this opposition, as did the Son himself, who was killed for his rebellious ways. Go & read RR’s books for yourself & maybe read Teresa of Avila too. The wisdom n these books will crack you wide open. REPLY Tim 6/7/2021 09:56:02 am @Suzanne...if you think Richard Rohr teaching is aligned with the gospel, it clearly shows you lack wisdom and discernment. I suggest you examine yourself to see if you're of the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). To be honest your speech sound so elegant but there is a disconnection to the actual gospel. Let me ask you a question, Suzanne since you speak a lot about love. Suzanne, if you had a love one or neighbor who lived a homosexual lifestyle, how would you share the gospel to this person to express God's love? Suzanne 6/2/2021 03:11:21 pm Exactly. Wonderful. REPLY Moira 4/5/2021 10:07:32 am "people like them, locked in their own theology and certainty, with their boundaries and power threatened by expansion, who demanded the crucifixion of Jesus?" People like them? Not the same at all. Author is not refusing to recognize Jesus as the son of God. And, "What part of Jesus’s life encourages fearing and disparaging others and seeking enemies?" Read the scriptures re: what Jesus said and did to the money lenders in the temple. REPLY Andie 4/15/2021 08:10:28 am I am referring to people who are so certain of their own truth and are threatened by another’s experience and insight. Remember that Jesus was a threat to the religious establishment of the day because he taught another way of seeing? Richard Rohr offers another theological perspective, a Franciscan one, that offers an alternative to original sin and atonement doctrine...theology which has given way to a host of human actions that have caused much harm and confusion among God’s beloved people. You don’t have to consider his ideas, but they just offer an alternative way of seeing God which can be very healing to those who have experienced spiritual abuse at the hands of the current religious establishments. Richard Rohr always points to the Christ. He is a beloved human brother and his work is meaningful and healing for many. He is not someone who needs to be feared by Christians. REPLY John Jacobson 4/9/2021 06:20:17 pm We need more people like Richard Rohr who seek to follow Jesus, rather than use the Bible as a weapon to separate people from the Kingdom. At best the conservative evangelic church, particularly the American variety is heretical, at worst it's totally idolatrous. Martin Luther's reformation was in response to a Roman Catholic church that had become so powerful, so corrupt, and so focues on earthly power that it had lost it's way. You don't have to look hard to see that is what is wrong with the conservative evangelical church when it is corrupted by QAnon, votes so much for an antichrist, and is blind to all of this. I pray that the Kingdom of Heaven can continue to break into our reality, and shine it's light in the darkness. We are in the stages of an new reformation if you have eyes to see it. REPLY Julie 4/11/2021 01:14:06 pm I praise God for Richard Rohr and people with open minds! REPLY Janet Lynn Ash 4/12/2021 05:07:58 pm I could not believe what i read from my Sunday Bulletin from mass..it was from The Daily Meditations from Richard Rohr... he said we don't pray to Christ!! How can he say such a thing?? I have never,ever been so upset by reading something so shameful and disturbing in my Sunday Church Bulletin!!!! REPLY William 4/24/2021 01:42:42 pm What Rohr wrote was: "No wonder all of the great liturgical prayers of the churches end with the same phrase: “through Christ our Lord, Amen.” We do not pray to Christ; we pray through Christ. Or even more precisely, Christ prays through us. This is a very different experience! We are always and forever the conduits, the instruments, the tuning forks, the receiver stations (Romans 8:26–27). To live in such a way is to live inside of an unexplainable hope, because our lives will now feel much larger than our own. In fact, they are no longer merely our own lives and, yet, paradoxically, we are more ourselves than ever before. That is the constant and consistent experience of the mystics." I find it delightful and comforting to pray in tandem with - through - Christ, who lives in us and with us, not beyond and outside of us! REPLY Alejandro De Miranda 4/30/2021 09:48:36 am So much fear! So much dualism. This deplorable article is precisely the type of attitude and thinking that Rohr tries to dismantle. Your egos feel threatened by his teachings (a good thing) and you equate your egos with who you are so you feel threatened. Open your minds to a nondual perspective. Christian mysticism offers a more expansive, fuller, and intimate relationship with Christ; amd Richard Rohr by no means started it. He is simply another one pointing to this way of being amd thinking. I pity those who listen to the garbage in this article. REPLY Tim 5/21/2021 04:26:23 pm Alisa is on point. Richard Rohr is false. Now that I have the wisdom and discernment of God, it baffles me that anyone how anyone could still think Richard Rohr is true after reading the fallacy of this man's teaching. You either do not have the Spirit of God (Romans 8:24) or you are a new Christian. For those claiming Christianity shouldn't be black or white or God is vast and therefore has many interpretation is lacking God given common sense. Richard Rohr has twisted the word of God because it's sweet to the ear. One of the way you know a teacher is false is when Oprah Winfred enjoys their altered teaching. Do you think Oprah is open to having true men of God on her show such as Charles Stanley? Of course not, Oprah wants a person like Richard Rohr, Joel Osteen, TD jakes because these men have universal teachings. News flash folks, God does not accept universal teaching. Christ died for the sins of the world. However, we must accept Christ to accept his sacrificial gift. Alisa is speaking the truth, listen to hear. Christ talked about the broad and narrow path. Men such as Richard Rohr, Joel Osteen and TD Jakes teachings will lead people down the broad path. This is why they are so popular (James 4:4). As I said true men of God like Charles Stanley, Michael Youssef, etc. may never be welcomed on Oprah because their teachings if based on the true gospel; the narrow path (Matthew 7:13). The devil has so deceived many people in our culture to where folks would view what I just stated as hateful. Fleshly speaking we want a God with no restriction; yet life is full of restriction. You know how you cannot be approve for a credit card, apartment, house, driver license without some form of restriction. Those who want a God with no restriction, restricts who they are married to, having children with and who they invite to their home. Where do we think we got that from? Remember we're made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). The reason we have these restriction is because this is how God is. Therefore, anyone who thinks they can enter the kingdom of God without accepting Christ and repenting of their sins is in for a shock of their lives. The devil knows God will not accept a person who rejects his sacrificial lamb and refuses to repent. Don't be deceive, read your Bible ask Christ to come into your life and fill you with his Holy Spirit. Pray for wisdom and discernment it is the best weapon to deception. REPLY Ian Huntington 5/25/2021 06:06:53 pm Thank you all off you who are defending Father Rohr’s orthodox Christian teaching against the narrow, arguments of those hooked on a faulty but prevalent blood atonement interpretaron of biblical texts. God does not change but our understanding of God must as we progress. We must be humble enough to acknowledge that the writers of the various books of the Bible where simply faulty humans like all of us inspired to convey their perspectives on God. The various authors had varying perspectives and varying levels of spiritual development and insight. Some are not who they claim to be but still, they convey insights worthy of faithful consideration, inspection and discussion. Over the centuries, Christians have developed various theologies. The theory of blood atonement was finally worked out by St. Augustine at roughly the same time as Franciscan theology based on almost entirely opposite theology based on original blessing rather than Augustine’s original sin. Eastern Orthodox and Celtic theologies are more aligned with Franciscan interpretations. During the Protestant reformation, many beliefs and practices were abandoned but Luther and other reformers did not question Augustine blood atonement theology. I believe the positive, life affirming, mystical approach to Christianity advanced by Father Rohr’s teachings to be a positive Christ centered approach to God. And to me, it is uplifting to hear others stand up in defense of alternative ways to faithfully follow Christ. It is my hope that Christianity will morph away from the dark, sin obsessed, blood atonement theology which is loosing post modern, educated believers such as myself. Like Father Rohr, I believe that Christian mysticism has the ability to give us and future generations a positive, uplifting Christian message. REPLY Tim 5/27/2021 07:30:42 am I am learning on my journey of life that people who say "avoid" those teachings or people are usually afraid of losing something. My question to the author and those who disagree with the teachings of Richard Rohr is this: what are you afraid of losing? Are you afraid of losing followers? Are you afraid of losing the power and privilege your view holds? Are you afraid of being wrong? Are you afraid people will go to hell instead of heaven when they die? Let me quote from the Holy Scriptures the words Jesus proclaimed. "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and the gospel will save it." (Mk 8:35, Mt 16:25, Lk 9:24, Jn 12:25, Lk 17:33, Mt 10:39) The first words out of Jesus' mouth is "The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent (Change) and believe the good news!" (Mk 1:15) Jesus' message turned the world upside down and put everyone on the same playing field because we all fall short of perfection AND we are all loved because of it. Change your comparing people, your way of thinking of what is right and wrong, change your "othering" and putting people in boxes, change your ways of calling people sinners because we all are sinners. These ways of thinking need to die in order to rise in loving others. By doing so, a person will then love and serve others and thus love and serve God. REPLY Tim 5/28/2021 02:06:30 pm May I ask, what is your religion? The Bible verse you mentioned has no connection to your response. Let me explain the word of God to you because the fact that you cannot see the fallacy in the teachings of Richard Rohr (2 Corinthians 11:13-15, 2 Peter 2: 1-3) shows your lack of discernment. The purpose of this article by the author (Alisa Childers) is to warn those without discernment: such as yourself. If you want to know what love is, you are looking at it. Love is when you see a hole (false teacher Richard Rohr) spiritually speaking and warn others about the dangers so they can avoid it. You see, your view of love is faulty; it is what the world believes love should be. Our world says when Christ delivers us, we are to keep it to ourselves. Christ says to go and show love by sharing the gospel to the world that includes pointing out false teachers like Mr. Rohr (Mark 16:15). It’s crazy how you think the author is afraid; the fact you mentioned “afraid” doesn’t even make sense because true Christians are bonded by the Holy Spirit to continuously warn others even when they mock us. What you’re doing is mocking (2 Peter 3:3). I don’t know the author personally but what I do know is what she pointed out can only be grasped by a believer in Christ. All she is doing is showing love by warning the unsuspected (you). When you said, stop comparing people, you are being a hypocrite because the mare fact you’re on here is to compare (judge) the author and those who agree with her. The author is comparing (judging) righteously. However, you’re judging unrighteously (John 7:24). I believe you should repent because the author is on the side of God; she’s educating people. You’re here to tell me and others to stay in our ignorance, but somehow you think you’re the loving person. Hear me out when I say this the purpose of my response was not to insult you. I intend to educate you. Based on your response, your thinking is of someone who will not point others in the right direction according to the Bible because you view that as judging. Do you know we judge all the time for our survival? Thinking God says don't compare is a trick of satan, and unfortunately, you and countless people have fallen for this deception. This author (Alisa) did an outstanding job by quoting what Mr. Rohr said, and then she pointed to why it does not correspond with the teachings of Christ. Do you not know the word of God has no gray areas? You either believe what the Bible says, or you do not. Those with itchy ears (2 Timothy 4) like Mr. Rohr’s false teaching. The danger of his teachings is they will lead many people to hell because of their itching ears. So let’s stop saying the author is unrighteously comparing because God says we are to judge but to judge righteously. I hope this makes sense to you. Please, please examine yourself to see if you are of the faith (2 Corinthians 13: 5) and pray for the Holy Spirit to bless you with wisdom and discernment. The fact you are on here: to criticize the author for doing the right thing; says a lot about your spiritual maturity. REPLY Timothy 5/30/2021 07:43:38 pm I find much of the bible to be challenging. It's rarely a simple thing for me. Often more questions, it seems, than answers...at least not easy ones. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing REPLY Tim Williams 6/7/2021 10:33:29 am Here's the thing folks, Jesus said many, will say Lord, Lord, and He will say I knew (Matthew 7:21-23). And we must also read John 3. In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus you must be born-again to enter the Kingdom of God. So how can we know if you're born again and not mouth professing Christians? 2 Corinthians 5:17, we know we are born-again because the Holy Spirit will dwell within us (Romans 8:14). Not everyone is children of God, folks only those filled with the Holy Spirit. However, we are all created by God, now this is true. But we know we are born-again because, as 2 Corinthians 5:17 noted, our mind will be renewed, and once that happens are desire will be towards Godly things. When we sin, we will experience conviction like never before. The truth is those who are not filled with the Holy Spirit will never experience this truth. The fact that anyone proclaiming Christ is on here to bash the author (Alisa) is scary because any true Christian should quickly discern false teachers such as Richard Rohr. Paul warns about false teachers (Galatians 5:7-12). Those proclaiming love are the last folks lovingly tell their loved one's the importance of repentance. Because to them tell folks to repent is "not love." What they fail to realize Christ boldly told people the truth without drifting away from it (Matthew 23, John 8:11). You who proclaim love should spend time on secular media proclaiming the gospel (Mark 15:16) instead of bashing Christians. REPLY Andie 6/16/2021 07:09:27 am Why is Alisa the ‘true Christian’ and Fr. Richard isn’t? Why must you insist that everyone have the same experience and understanding of God...(which is of course YOUR experience and understanding)? Even the disciples had different experiences with Jesus, and there were only 12 of them! Christians need to stop policing the gate to heaven, stop ranking who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’, and tend to their own hearts and experiences. It is so disheartening to see people spend their precious lives dividing against others in this way. This is the way of the Pharisee, not the Christ. REPLY Tim Williams 6/18/2021 11:24:53 am @Andie, yes, the 12 disciplines all had a different experience. However, they all held to the same message. Every true Christians have different life experiences. Again, we all hold to the same message which is Christ is thy way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6) and there is no other way to God outside of Jesus Christ. And we must tell people to repent of their sins to accomplish this; we must be led by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:24). You who believe one can profess Christ with their mouths but live a life that does not reflect Christ or speech that aligns with the devil are delusional. The Kingdom of God has order, but somehow you who have created God in your image and twist the Bible (by calling those who follow the gospel, Pharisee) by the way the Pharisee did what you are doing. If you cannot see that Richard Rohr's teachings are false even after all of the evidence, then the problem is your itchy ear (2 Timothy 4). @Andie, my question for you is this: if you had a family or neighbor who lived a homosexual, transgender lifestyle or was pro-choice (had an abortion). Would you tell them the truth of God's word? Meaning Christ died for their sins and they must repent and turn from their sins? Or would you say nothing because it's not your business? Andie 6/21/2021 09:26:50 am @Timwilliams I think its pretty clear that we have different ways of reading scripture, seeing the incarnate Christ in the world, and what it means to journey through life in the Christian faith. I believe that this is totally ok with God and that God is patiently loving and guiding us both. I do hope that you choose not to injure those you encounter in life by telling them that their very creation is flawed. I hope you choose the way of love and care for the other, not by placing yourself above them, but beside them. I hope you can take the patient and hopeful way with others…and yourself. I hope you have the opportunity to truly love another for all they are, leaving room for all they will be. Peace to you. REPLY Tim Williams 6/21/2021 02:06:05 pm @andie, your very response explains why you admire Richard Rohr. Your words are empty and full of fluff. No disrespect to you Andie, I knew you were the type of person who would not confront others with the truth of God by calling homosexuality and abortion a sin. Haven't you heard, such were some of you (Laura Perry, Walt Heyer, Charlene Cothran, Stephen Black, Angel Colon, and Luis Javier Ruiz, Bevelyn Beauty or Star Parker) read 1 Corinthians 6-9:11? If these men and women who Christ delivered were only around people such as yourself, they would forever be in bondage to their sins because you do not know true Love. Your definition of love is all fluff (emotionalism). "I do hope that you choose not to injure those you encounter in life by telling them that their very creation is flawed?" Wow...who did this to you, the media or education which one? Telling the truth injures people? You know what? Since The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrew 4:12) than it is supposed to injure us, that is a good thing. Using your logic, a heterosexual male or female with the proclivity to commit adultery is flawed? or could it be due to our falling nature? (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:23, Romans 7:18, Galatians 5:19-21, Colossians 3:5). We are all sinners Andie; our nature is flawed because of the sins of Adam. Using your logic, serial killers, thieves or liars are flawed because they were created by God? Do you see why you are into Richard Rohr? You and Mr. Rohr pick and choose which verse to follow in your Bible. If you and Mr. Rohr's world emotionalism rules, truth is to be disregarded. Hey Andie, what I am trying to convey is I am human like homosexuals and other sinners. All I am saying is we can believe God is love all we want (God is love); however if we do not repent of our sins, we do ourselves a great disservice, which will eternally cost us. Andie...you're living in deception like Mr. Rohr. Turn from your sins and embrace the truth. Alisa is not the enemy, neither am I. You are allergic to the truth. Spend time reading the entire Bible. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes; so you can understand His word and not be lead astray by your emotion. REPLY Andie 7/8/2021 06:18:26 am @TimWilliams Looking through this comment thread, it is obvious that you are seeking confirmation of your way of seeing from others and choosing war with bible verses taken individually, out of original context and translation to argue with those who have a different experience of God, insisting on your worldview as the only correct one. That, to me, is an odd way to evangelize or convince anyone of the beautiful, good news of life in Christ. Our conversation will end here Tim. Internet conversations have eroded civil discourse and its pretty clear this one will not be productive. Again, I offer the peace of Christ and his way to you. Tim Williams 7/12/2021 09:30:54 am @Andie, I reject the Christ you are offering. The one who does not call sin but is full of fluff. That is not the real Christ. I will continue to pray for you because you Andie have created your own Christ. End of discussion. REPLY Andrew 6/29/2021 09:51:26 am I am currently in Bible college, majoring in Bible and Theology. In several of our class textbooks, the authors have cited the teachings of Richard Rohr. Thank you, Alisa, for this article; I will pray for the Lord to give me wisdom and discernment so that I can see and avoid false teachings. Mr. Rohr's teachings are unbiblical, and I would even go so far as to say that he teaches heresy. May God give us wisdom to discern what is true and what is false. REPLY Gordon Hackman 7/4/2021 11:20:42 pm Thanks for this article Alisa. I loved your book and I appreciate your exposing the false teachings of Rohr. I have friends who like him and it concerns me. Anyone with a basic grasp of sound doctrine would immediately see that what Rohr teaches does not align with historic, biblical Christianity. REPLY Ian Huntington 7/8/2021 07:52:02 am Gordon Hackman, I quote you, “Anyone with a basic grasp of sound doctrine would immediately see that what Rohr teaches does not align with historic, biblical Christianity.” Mr. Hackman, what you are really saying is, “Anyone who who differs with my interpretation of the Bible does not align with historic, biblical Christianity.” Your statement reveals your complete ignorance of historic Christianity. You make a gross error in assuming that your rather late interpretation of western Christianity, originating as a consequence of the reformation, is somehow “historic, biblical Christianity.” If you think that you are aligned with early Christian beliefs you are sadly delusional. Do an honest, thorough, unbiased study of Christian history and you will find that your Christian beliefs are probably more based on Greek, especially platonic teachings, Roman Empirical decrees, Zoroastrian influence and dualistic reasoning, to name a just the most obvious, instead of the hard, simple message of Christ’s kingdom of heaven. You will also see that Richard Rohr’s Franciscan interpretations have just as much historical, biblical validity as your own. Then, you might become less smug in your ignorance and perhaps more open to a mystical knowing of God, that Rohr advocates. Historic, biblical Christianity as has been variously defined post reformation is dying in today’s post modern world. It no longer holds any appeal to me or to millions who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.” Christian mysticism is much more expansive, less doctrinal, adaptable to science, adaptable to logic, adaptable to an evolving understanding of God, Christ, salvation. Obviously, you believe you are on a “straight and narrow” path to God and whatever I write will not disuade you from your truth. I hope it works for you. It didn’t for me and I really tried to make it work. Father Rohr has guided me closer to a mystical knowing of God that doesn’t claim to know everything, that doesn’t think in a dualistic, black and white, right and wrong, my way or the hi way mentality. Our God is bigger than any book, bigger than you or I imagine. We are all right, we are all wrong, but God’s love doesn’t care. We are all loved by God. All will be well. You and I can argue in our mutual ignorance but in the end, God. We will both be absorbed by God’s great mercy. Blessings!