Father Richard Rohr understands liberation to be the underlying story of both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures:
The theme of liberation is the largest frame in which to understand spirituality. The term liberation theology has a negative connotation for some people. It sounds like something heretical, leftist, or Marxist, and certainly not biblical. In fact, liberation is at the heart of both the Jewish and Christian traditions from the very beginning. It’s amazing that much of Christianity has been able to avoid that truth for so long, probably because many of us read history from the top down and seldom from the bottom up, which is the recurring perspective of both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures.
We see the beginnings of the liberation theme as early as fourteen hundred years before Jesus with the enslavement and exodus of the Jewish people. Something divine happened that allowed an oppressed group of Semitic people in Egypt to experience many levels of gradual liberation. This story became the basic template and metaphor for the entire Bible. The Exodus was both an inner and an outer journey. If our inner journey does not match and lead to an outer journey of liberation for all, we have no true freedom or “salvation.” That is what liberation theology is honest enough to point out.
Moses is the historical character at the heart of the Exodus event and of the spirituality that grew from that experience (Exodus 3:1–15). The voice Moses hears from the burning bush immediately calls him to confront the pharaoh and tell him to let his people go! It does not tell him to go to a temple or to build one.
Here we see a primary inner experience that immediately has social, economic, and political implications! Liberation theology shows that spirituality and action are connected from the very beginning and can never be separated. Some people set out to act first, and an inner experience may be given to them on the journey itself. Others have an inner experience that then leads them into action. It doesn’t matter on which side it begins. Eventually action and spirituality must meet and feed one another. When prayer is authentic, it will always lead to actions of mercy; when actions of mercy are attempted at any depth, they will always lead us to prayer.
Very early in the Jewish tradition there is a split between the Exodus tradition—which I believe is the original tradition of liberation—and the priestly tradition that develops in Leviticus and Numbers. The priestly mentality invariably tries to organize, control, and perpetuate the initial mystical experience with prayer and ritual. It’s the Jewish prophets who bring together the inner God-experience and outer work for justice and truth. This connection is desperately needed and yet resented and avoided to this day. We always and forever need the prophets or else most religion worships itself instead of God. The pattern is persistent.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Yes, And…: Daily Meditations (Franciscan Media, 2019), 34–36.
Image credit and inspiration: Sushil Nash, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, United Kingdom, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The fist is a simple but mighty symbol of resistance, solidarity, and unity in the face of oppression and injustice. An innate desire for the liberation of the oppressed also results in the unexpected liberation of the oppressor.
Story from Our Community:
Contemplation was not something I was taught to embrace as a child. I received the message that introspection and trusting your intuition were wrong. Now, as I approach my 42nd birthday, I realize the importance of deconstructing beliefs before you begin reconstructing them. Questioning with a curious mind and then yielding to the flow state has led me to live a more authentic, compassionate, and liberated life. Like a seed which was planted and is now emerging from the shell, I find that my years of darkness offered me rich nourishment for the journey ahead.
—Crystal I.
