Things Hidden

Introduction

Connecting the Dots

“We teach not the way that philosophy is taught, but in the way that the Spirit teaches. We desire to teach spiritual things spiritually.” —1 Corinthians 2:13

“In your goodness, you let the blind speak of your light.” —Nicholas of Cusa

The content of this book is based on a set of talks I gave in 1998, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of my first taped talks, The Great Themes of Scripture, given in 1973 at Mount St. Joseph College in Cincinnati, Ohio. The editors at St. Anthony Messenger Press (now Franciscan Media) asked me to reflect again on what I thought were the “great themes” twenty-five years later. This book is the result.

I dare to write not because I strongly trust in my own ability to write, but with a much stronger faith in the objective presence of the inner “Stable Witness” who “will teach you everything” (John 14:26) and whose “law is already written on your hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). All that a spiritual teacher really does is “second the motion” of the Holy Spirit.

The first motion is already planted within us by God at our creation (see Jeremiah 1:5; Isaiah 49:1), and that is probably what gives spiritual wisdom both such inner conviction and such outer authority. I have always said that the best compliment I ever get is when people tell me something to this effect: “Richard, you did not teach me anything totally new. Somehow, I already knew it, but it did not become conscious or real for me until you said it.”

That is the divine symbiosis between mutual members of the Body of Christ, or the “midwifery” of Socrates, who believed that he was merely delivering the baby that was already inside the person. On some level, spiritual cognition is invariably experienced as “re-cognition.” Even Peter said that his work was largely “recalling” and “reminding” (see 2 Peter 1:12–15) his people. For some reason, we have forgotten that. It makes us preachers and teachers take ourselves far too seriously, and it makes believers far too reliant upon external authority.

I am also convinced by what Malcolm Gladwell, in his 2006 bestseller Blink, calls the phenomenon of “thin slicing” in our human search for patterns and wisdom. He believes that what we call insight or even genius comes from the ability some of us have for “sifting through the situation in front of us, throwing out all that is irrelevant while we zero in on what really matters. And the truth is that our unconscious is really good at this, to the point where thin-slicing often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and exhaustive ways of thinking.”

I would hope that I am doing some sort of thin slicing here, and that it will open us to real spiritual transformation and “what really matters.” Frankly, my disappointment in so much scriptural preaching and teaching is that it never seems to get to this level of patterning, but often just remains on the level of anecdote and historical-critical analysis. It’s often inspirational and even good theology, but it seldom seems to connect the dots and reveal the developing tangents. Connecting those dots is absolutely necessary, or we will have no markers by which to recognize the regressive passages that back away from those same tangents. We must see where the dots are leading us.

Our unwillingness, or our inability, to thin-slice the texts and then discern the tangents has created widespread fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which, ironically, usually miss the “fundamentals”! If we do not know the direction and the momentum, we will not recognize the backpedaling. We will end up making very accidental themes into “fundamentals” while missing the biggies. One dot is not wisdom. We can prove anything we want from a single Scripture quote.

My assumption throughout this book is that the biblical text also mirrors the nature of human consciousness. It includes within itself passages that develop the prime ideas and passages that fight and resist those very advances. We might even call it faith and unfaith—both are locked into the text.

The journey into the mystery of God is necessarily a journey into the unfamiliar. While much of the Bible is merely a repetition of familiar terrain, where nothing new is asked of history or nothing new given to the soul, there are also those frequent breakthroughs, which we would rightly call “revelations” from the Spirit (because we would never come to them by our own small minds).

But, once we observe the trajectory, we are always ready to be surprised and graced by the Unfamiliar, which is why it is called “faith” to begin with. That is what I will attempt to do here. It might at first feel scary, new, or even exciting, but if you stay with the unfolding texts, you will have the courage to know them also as your own deepest hopes or intuitions. Such is the dance between outer authority and inner authority, the Great Tradition and inner experience. This is the balance we will seek here.

Unlike many who might go book by book through the Bible, my intention is to show how the prime ideas of Scripture are already revealed in capsulated form at the beginning in the Hebrew Scriptures. From that early statement of the theme, we will proceed with something akin to character or theme development through the whole middle part of the Bible. By the end, especially in the Risen Christ and in Paul’s theology of the Risen Christ, we have the crescendo, the full revelation of One we can trust to be a nonviolent and thoroughly gracious God, who is inviting us into loving union.

It takes all the Bible to get beyond the punitiveness and pettiness that we project onto God and that we harbor within ourselves. But, for now, we have to keep connecting the dots. Remember, how we get there determines where we will arrive. The process itself is important and gives authority to the outcome. The medium does become the message, as Marshall McLuhan famously stated in the 1960s. The two-steps-backward texts give us even deeper urgency to go forward and much deeper understanding when we get there.

My desire here is to make some clear connections between what I perceive to be the prime ideas in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and a practical and pastoral spirituality for believers today. Although my tangent definitely coalesces in Jesus, whom we Christians call the Christ, I would like to believe that a lover of the Hebrew Scriptures will also find much to relish here.

I love the clear continuities between the two Testaments and clearly see Jesus as first of all a Jew, who brilliantly thin-sliced his own tradition and gave us a wonderful lens by which to love the Jewish tradition and keep moving forward with it in an inclusive way (which became its child, Christianity).

Although I am clearly a Roman Catholic, I would hope that my Protestant brothers and sisters would also find much to guide and inspire them here. There is an “emerging church” that has gathered the scriptural, the contemplative, the scholarly, and the justice-oriented wisdom from every part of the Body of Christ.

The ecumenical character and future of Christianity is becoming rather obvious. It is really the religious side of globalization. We cannot avoid one another any longer, and we do so only at our own loss (1 Corinthians 12:12–30), and to the loss of the Gospel.

Finally, you will note that I use many Scripture citations with only a small comment, hoping that such a small comment will tease and invite you into deeper involvement with the text and context for yourself. I would love to inspire you to love Scripture, and go there for yourself, to find both your own inner experience named and some outer validation of the same.

Only when inner and outer authority come together do we have true spiritual wisdom. We have for too long insisted on outer authority alone, without any teaching of prayer, inner journey, and maturing consciousness. The results for the world and for religion have been disastrous.

I am increasingly convinced that the word prayer, which has become a functional and pious thing for believers to do, is, in fact, a descriptor for inner experience. That is why all spiritual teachers mandate prayer so much. They are saying, “Go inside and know for yourself!” We will understand prayer and inner experience this way throughout this book. As Jesus graphically puts it, prayer is “going to your private room and shutting the door and [acting] in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Once you hear it this way, it becomes pretty obvious.

My scriptural citations are paraphrased from any number of excellent Bible translations—and, to be honest, some of them are my own, but they are not offered without study and, I hope, inspiration.

I offer these reflections to again unite what should never have been separated: sacred Scripture and Christian spirituality.

—Richard Rohr