Richard Rohr describes how Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ death critiques both the conservatives and liberals of his day:
One of the dialectics that Paul presents is the perennial conflict between “conservative” and “liberal”, to use today’s terms. In his writings, Paul’s own people, the Jews, are the stand in for pious, law-abiding traditionalists; the Greeks provided his model for liberal intellectuals and cultural critics. Paul sees the Jews trying to create order in the world by obedience to law, tradition, and kinship ties. The Greeks attempt order through reason, understanding, logic, and education. Paul has a unique vantage point, with a foot in each world—as both a Jew and a Roman citizen.
Paul insists that strict adherence to neither worldview can finally succeed because they don’t have the ability to “incorporate the negative,” which will always be present. He recognizes that the greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order. There seems to be a shadow side to almost everything; all things are subject to “the principalities and powers” (Ephesians 6:12). Only the unitive or nondual mind can accept this and not panic; in fact, it will grow because of it, and even grow beyond it.
Neither a liberal pattern nor a conservative pattern can deal with disorder and misery. Paul believes that Jesus has revealed the only response that works. The revelation of the cross makes us indestructible, Paul says, because it reveals there is a way through all absurdity and tragedy. That way is precisely through accepting absurdity and tragedy, trusting that God can somehow use it for good. If we can internalize the mystery of the cross, we won’t fall into cynicism, failure, bitterness, or skepticism. The cross gives us a precise and profound way through the shadow side of life and through all disappointments.
Paul allows both conservatives and liberals to define wisdom in their own ways, yet he dares to call both inadequate and finally wrong. He believes that such worldviews will eventually fail people. He writes, “God has shown up human wisdom as folly” on the cross, and this is “an obstacle that the Jews cannot get over,” and which the gentiles or pagans think is simple “foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:21–23).
For Paul, the code words for nondual thinking, or true wisdom, are “foolishness” and “folly.” He says, in effect, “My thinking is foolishness to you, isn’t it?” Admittedly, it does not make sense unless we have confronted the mystery of the cross. Suffering, the “folly of the cross,” breaks down the dualistic mind. Why? Because on the cross, God took the worst thing, the killing of the God-human, and made it into the best thing, the very redemption of the world. The compassionate holding of essential meaninglessness or tragedy, as Jesus does on the cross, is the final and triumphant resolution of all the dualisms and dichotomies that we face in our own lives. We are thus “saved by the cross”! Does that now make ultimate sense?
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi, rev. ed. (Franciscan Media, 2024), 73–76.
Image credit and inspiration: mohammad hassan taheri, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The fluid, impermanent sand slipped through Paul’s once-certain grasp, as his Divine encounter cracked open his clenched knowing and invited him to see from a transformed perspective.
Story from Our Community:
I have often wondered if perhaps I am a complete outsider, even to the ultimate mercy of God. But despite those doubts, at times I have been allowed to glimpse the truth that I am deeply known and accepted for who I am by divine Presence. I’d like to offer this message to others who see themselves on the outside: There are helpers around you, sometimes unseen—but real.
—Paul N.
