Book Rec. - Sept. 26, 2020

 Book Rec - Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount by Richard Rohr

“When there is no experience of the True Sacred, we will always fall into the worship of the false sacred, The false sacred will invariably become a pretext and even a holy justification for prejudice, marginalization of others, scapegoating and violence. If God is not God, in other words, we will ourselves become gods and create strange gods. Why wouldn't we? If God is not God, we will also demonize others as a way of validating our fragile identity. Such a pattern has become increasingly apparent in human history” (p.6).

“It might be a little cynical, but you could almost figure out what Jesus said by looking at our history and naming the opposite of what we did! We keep worshiping the messenger, keeping Jesus up on statues and images, so we can avoid what Jesus said. It's the best smokescreen in the world! We just keep saying, ‘We love Jesus.’ The more we talk about Jesus, the less we’ll do what he said. That's the way the ego fools itself. And in this case, it's the way culture, nations and even the churches have fooled themselves” (p.31).

The first three decades of my life in the white evangelical churches I was a part of resulted in idolatry in the form of worshiping a false god that I’ve heard Dr. Christena Cleveland call white patriarchal god and the god of the gaslight. Through this book and the work of Richard Rohr as well as the work of theologians who are part of marginalized groups, such as Black, Brown, Indigeneous, Asian/Asian American, and Pacific Islander People of Color, people who are LGBTQIA+, non-binary, and gender non-conforming, and people who are not Christians in this country, the narrative has broadened for me surrounding religion and the character of the Jesus I said I loved. In Jesus’ Plan for a New World, Richard Rohr challenged everything I was taught about the Sermon on the Mount, and I’m deeply grateful. Have you read this book?

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