Reignite

I am an ecumenical and pluralistic type of bloke. I experience profound inspiration and wisdom, not only from a variety of Christians, but also from people of many other faiths, both in my everyday life, and in books. For example, I get a huge amount from listening to Richard Rohr, and would thoroughly recommend you checking him out if you never have. But, with someone like Richard Rohr, I occasionally disagree when he talks about the Trinity. I'm on board with 95% of his teaching, but with this, I'm not. That's OK, of course, I don't expect to agree 100% with anyone on anything. And spiritual practice matters more than doctrine. But I think it is worth putting the alternative viewpoint, because if the alternative viewpoint is not put, people might think there is no alternative viewpoint worth listening to. So I want to spend some time doing something I don't think I've done before in fourteen years on this blog - and that is arguing against the doctrine of ...

I've been thinking about a comment I heard recently from Richard Rohr - that we have to go from order to disorder to reorder. This is the spiritual journey. But a lot of us get stuck along the way. Order is the first instinct that everything should be neat, tidy, clear, in proper categories. It is the dualistic thinking that things are right or wrong, true or false; that people are saved or unsaved, included or excluded. A lot of conservative religion gets stuck in the order stage. It rejects any level of nuance, complexity, ambiguity as a sign of "back sliding". And people who think that are right in a sense - if you start to question things, start thinking "does this really make sense?" you may well end up leaving conservative religion as it will become too constrictive for you. You begin to pick the order apart. You start to do this because you want order, but your questions don't lead to clear answers, but just to more questions. It may start with a ...