INTERVIEWER
You have written that one of the most effective ways to avoid having a religious experience is by becoming religious and that too often we seem to worship the messenger, almost as an avoidance of the message. These thoughts seem to be somewhat related. Would you elaborate on this?

FATHER RICHARD ROHR
It feels in a way like two different points. I don't know the psyche works but for some reason a very effective way to avoid what a person is really saying is to you to flatter them, just on a human level. Flattery actually pushes the person away, puts them up on a pedestal. I believe that historically we have done this with Jesus. We have pedestalized him, quickly worshipped him as god, and it gave us a very effective way to avoid what he was really talking about - and it works. If you worship the messenger you can for some reason avoid the message and if you look at Jesus, his words to his disciples are always "follow me", not worship me. Yet most of Christian services are preoccupied with worshipping Jesus. He's saying "follow me and do what I'm doing, come and, and live the way I'm living, a simple life in this world, a shared life in this world a non violent life, a compassionate life."

I don't think we did this consciously. I think it's simply the nature of the ego that if we can avoid surrender, we'll find some way to do it. Jesus whole message is about vulnerability, so we found a way to avoid his vulnerable message by making him god. Now I, as a Christian believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. But I think that's something you have to come to through experiencing the depth of his humanity and when you too quickly say Jesus is Lord, before the spirit has led you there and taught you that, in the depths of your experience in your own heart, it usually is pushing Jesus away. In the name of loving Jesus - in the name of worshipping him, you can stop following him. Strange, isn't it.

INTERVIEWER
In your book Jesus Plan for a New World Order you address how modern culture has forgotten how to read sacred literature. Can you describe the importance of reading sacred literature properly and can you further comment on the current phenomenon of fundamentalism?

RICHARD ROHR
We probably don't know how to read sacred literature, when I see what we've done with the bible which is my primary field. I've said to some groups I think the bible has done more damage in human history than probably any other book. It's been used to justify more violence more prejudiced more enmity more vengeance than probably any other book. The very best thing is, is also the very worse thing. People who already think they're spiritual are almost always going to abuse sacred texts because they use them as power, they use them as righteousness, they use them as a way of being in control, a way of being more right or more saved.

What spiritual texts should really do is keep us always with what I like to call a beginner's mind - an awareness that I'm just starting and this is merely parting a veil for a moment. It doesn't give you certitude, it gives you curiosity. In the very beginning of the bible in the book of Genesis, the great sin is really a strange kind of sin. When you think of it, it doesn't sound like sin at all. The sin is described in Genesis as eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now that doesn't sound like a sin does it? Sounds like something that would be good to do, it describes what I would call a lust of answers, a lust for explanation a lust for certitude. I want to know who's in and who's out -who's right and who's wrong - who's up and who's down who's going to heaven and who's going to hell. That's this eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God in the Hebrew scriptures seems to be saying that's a major problem. When you think that you've got all the answers, you stop listening, you stop growing, you stop being transformed. Now that's reached its, it's low point all over the world in this century in what we call fundamentalism which is found in all the great world religions - where the spiritual journey is no longer a journey in to the dark night of the soul the, the desperate journey for god. But it's having happy little answers and being absolutely sure about them so you never have to suffer humiliation, you never have to suffer insecurity. I can see why the ego wants that but that really is not mature religion is almost feels as if we're dumbing down on some levels, and maybe it's because the world is too complex. The human person just wants to be certain about something.

I wish I could say that god offers us that but I don't have any evidence in the bible that god is offering us a little plate of certitude's, it seems that god is instead offering us a dark and dangerous and wonderful journey toward god, he's offering us faith not certitude. And one of the greatest heresies if I can call it that in the history of Christianity is we've turned the meaning of faith absolutely around to mean the exact opposite of what Jesus seemed to call it. Jesus seemed to be calling us out of our comfort zones - get out of your boats and cross the shore onto the other side where the Pagans live.

Jesus was always taking people where they didn't want to go and we turned it around and we have made religion into people who don't have to go to any place new because we've got everything right here at home. And it simply doesn't create great people, it doesn't create people who can build bridges, doesn't create people who can understand, doesn't create people who have compassion, doesn't create a people of forgiveness or understanding. So sacred texts are meant to humiliate and then console the soul but not console it before the humiliation if, if that makes sense. When you give consolation too quickly it's usually the ego taking care of itself, not really going to some place new.

INTERVIEWER
You have stated that the Church has been most effective when it's been in the minority position - even a persecuted position. We have heard this spoken in relation to Jesus. How does this quality relate to the Church?

RICHARD ROHR
If the Church is "the body of Christ," which is what we always called it, our job is to share the experience the placement of Jesus in human history. The excluded one, the outsider in history, always has a privileged knowing because they experience in their rejection what the real loyalties and beliefs of the system are. Therefore the Church itself doesn't really understand this journey of Jesus untill it itself is not in the dominant position but normally in the rejected position -the minority status.

You may remember some years back when a group in America called themselves "The Moral Majority" without any stretching of language. This is very ironic because Jesus did everything he could to identify with the immoral minority. It was the minority position that he trusted much more than the majority position. I went through Luke's Gospel to look for every time the word "the crowd" is used. Hoipoloy in Greek. Every single time with one exception the word "the crowd" is used in Luke's Gospel the crowd is always wrong. The crowd never gets the point. The crowd is always accusing and blaming and attacking or running. You can say the the crowd is always wrong. It's always the individual who has been rejected. The leper. The little poor man. Or the blind man. You understand. He or she, they always get the point. It's extraordinary.

The ones on the bottom always get it and the ones on the top always miss the point. So you'd almost scramble, like my father Saint Francis did, to want to be in the minority position. It has a symbolic advantage toward truth and that comes at the price of tears, and suffering and rejection. If there is one theme that is constant in the Hebrew scriptures it's that. Starting with the Jewish people being the enslaved people in Egypt. I always felt it must be terrible to be an Egyptian and read in the scriptures, God loved the Jews and hated the Egyptians. Well God isn't really anti-Egyptian I'm sure. But what the scriptures are saying is God realizes that the guy at the bottom has a head start in understanding who I am and the compassion of God. Then you have the barren woman. The rejected son. The son left out in the field. They're always the one that God chooses. God never chooses the person at the top. The privileged person. You pay a price for being at the top and the price is normally illusion and blindness. and so God has to, as Mary says, pull down the mighty from the thrones and lift up the lowly.

INTERVIEWER
Did religion in the traditional/institutional sense matter to Jesus and should it matter to us.

FATHER RICHARD ROHR
It doesn't have anything to do with belonging to the right denomination or spinning the right prayer wheels or belonging to the right tradition. If I meet a little person in another religion who can forgive and trust and surrender and love, I would say to her what Jesus said to the Serophynician woman as a Jewish man. He says to this non-Jewish woman, "Go in peace. Your faith has made you whole". He doesn't ask her to come and join the Jewish religion or to come over to the Synagogue on Saturday. Go in peace. You've got it lady already. You can see why they killed Jesus. Because he isn't into group loyalties. He's into truth. And for him it seems the proof of living that truth, being that truth, is quite simply the capacity to live in some kind of vulnerable trust and love. That it's OK. And that God is good. And once you know that God is good and you can trust that God is good ... it's easier to be good yourself. God rubs off on you.

INTERVIEWER
What do you see as healthy religion?

RICHARD ROHR
They say that most of the literature and operas and poetry of the world are all about two things, they're all about love and death because there's really nothing else to talk about. Once you hear that it becomes somewhat obvious - every great piece of literature is about love and death because those are the only two things that really transform us. We are constantly trying to get a handle on them because they're too big and so we just get them in little doses and little pieces. I think that's what the work of religion should be. We call it the quita ani moram or the care of the soul; readying the soul so that when the spirit shows itself you're ready to say this is great, this is god, this is everything, this is what I've been waiting for.