The hostility of belief.
I just copied a sentence into my Rohr Word doc that I have been adding to for years now. It is this:
In and with God, I can love everything and everyone—even my enemies. Alone and by myself, willpower and intellect will seldom be able to love in difficult situations over time.
Immediately, my mind thought several things at once.
I thought of a friend that I had breakfast with a few months ago. When talking about our families and adult children, how grateful we were for where they were and what they were doing in life, he remarked that it’s a good thing we know we’re sinful and fallen and in need of salvation.
I thought of how different this phrase hit me, how much expansiveness I have in my soul from the phrase above in contrast to a belief of fallenness and then concurrently, of having found the right way.
If you believe all are truly fallen and sinful, then finding a Way is of utmost importance, for yourself and for everyone else.
In fact, if everyone else doesn’t believe what you believe, they’re still fallen, and therefore you could view them as a threat, really, if you were so inclined. It’s not a stretch.
Where does all this hostility come from around belief? The phrase above brought relief and peace to my body and mind. It was a phrase I needed to read a few times to remember, yes, this is where we live now. We’re good.
I don’t know what it comes down to ultimately in psychological terms other than believing this way about life and death and salvation and today contributed to my mental illness. It didn’t represent what I’d come to know of Christ and God and myself.
What’s life-giving to me is knowing I’m loved and I can give love. There aren’t conditions wrapped about that. It’s open and free and available and millions and billions of people have found it that have never heard of Jesus.