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After reading my cousin's questions for God on his blog, Me and Leuk, I had to look up the pages in Richard Rohr's newest book Immortal Diamond about "The Great Allower." These words make a lot of sense to me.
"In this regard, God is the Great Allower, despite all the attempts of ego, culture, and even religion to prevent God from allowing. Show me where God does not allow. God lets women be raped and raped women to conceive, God lets tyrants succeed, and God let me make my own mistakes again and again. He does not enforce his own commandments. God's total allowing of everything has in fact become humanity's major complaint. Conservatives so want God to smite sinners that they find every natural disaster to be a proof of just that, and then they invent some of their own smiting besides. Liberals reject God because God allows holocausts and torture and does not fit inside their seeming logic. If we were truly being honest, God is both a scandal and a supreme disappointment to most of us. We would prefer a God of domination and control to a God of allowing, as most official prayers make clear.
"Both God and the True Self need only to fully be themselves and generously show themselves. Then the major work is done. I would go so far as to define God as a 'deep allowing' to the point of scandalous 'cooperation with evil' both natural disasters and human evils. To allow yourself to be grabbed and held by such a divine wholeness is a dark and dangerous risk, and yet this is exactly what we mean by 'salvation.' We are allowing the Great Allower to allow us, even at our worst. We gradually learn to share in the divine freedom and must forgive God for being far too generous. This is not my 'liberal' idea; Jesus says the same thing (see Matthew 20:15), but we cannot hear it for some reason." (18-20)
Perhaps it is easier for me to say God is not "all powerful", though I believe Richard Rohr is saying here that God is so powerful that he gives it up to let us live however we choose. We may decide to believe God does not care or has no power or . . . . .any numbers of questions, as my cousin asked.
My simplistic faith is to try to remember to ask "WHO is with me? instead of "WHY?" The first is the only question that can be answered. God is with me. Even (and most especially) when I do not feel that God is here, GOD IS.
"In this regard, God is the Great Allower, despite all the attempts of ego, culture, and even religion to prevent God from allowing. Show me where God does not allow. God lets women be raped and raped women to conceive, God lets tyrants succeed, and God let me make my own mistakes again and again. He does not enforce his own commandments. God's total allowing of everything has in fact become humanity's major complaint. Conservatives so want God to smite sinners that they find every natural disaster to be a proof of just that, and then they invent some of their own smiting besides. Liberals reject God because God allows holocausts and torture and does not fit inside their seeming logic. If we were truly being honest, God is both a scandal and a supreme disappointment to most of us. We would prefer a God of domination and control to a God of allowing, as most official prayers make clear.
"Both God and the True Self need only to fully be themselves and generously show themselves. Then the major work is done. I would go so far as to define God as a 'deep allowing' to the point of scandalous 'cooperation with evil' both natural disasters and human evils. To allow yourself to be grabbed and held by such a divine wholeness is a dark and dangerous risk, and yet this is exactly what we mean by 'salvation.' We are allowing the Great Allower to allow us, even at our worst. We gradually learn to share in the divine freedom and must forgive God for being far too generous. This is not my 'liberal' idea; Jesus says the same thing (see Matthew 20:15), but we cannot hear it for some reason." (18-20)
Perhaps it is easier for me to say God is not "all powerful", though I believe Richard Rohr is saying here that God is so powerful that he gives it up to let us live however we choose. We may decide to believe God does not care or has no power or . . . . .any numbers of questions, as my cousin asked.
My simplistic faith is to try to remember to ask "WHO is with me? instead of "WHY?" The first is the only question that can be answered. God is with me. Even (and most especially) when I do not feel that God is here, GOD IS.
2 comments:
I just read that book jan and was struck by the great allower. Something worth pondering.
Thanks for a very interesting post.
My book club is reading "Falling Upward" next.
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