Richard Rohr Meditation: The Healing Power of Meditation
we made the Gospel largely into “an evacuation plan for heaven.” [1] If we don’t understand the need and desire for healing now, then salvation (salus = healing) becomes a matter of hoping for some form of delayed gratification. We desperately need healing for groups, institutions, marriage, the wounds of war, abuse, race relations, and the endless social problems in which we are drowning today. But we won’t know how to heal if we never learn the skills at ground zero: the individual human heart.
For much of its history following 313 AD, the Christian church’s job or concern was not healing, but rather maintaining social and church order: doling out graces and indulgences (as if that were possible); granting dispensations, annulments, absolutions, and penalties; keeping people in first marriages at all costs, instead of seeing marriage as an arena for growth, forgiveness, and transformation. In general, we tried to resolve issues of the soul and the Spirit by juridical and “transactional” means, which in my opinion seldom work.
As priests, we felt our job was to absolve sin rather than actually transform people.
.. In the four Gospels, Jesus did two things over and over again: he preached and he healed. We have done a lot of preaching, but not too much healing.
.. Religion usually focuses on imputing and then forgiving guilt. This is much more about “sin management”
.. We too often settle for problem solving. It really is the best way to keep the laity coming back, strangely enough. Carrot on the stick theology keeps us clergy in business. I wish it did not work so well.
Christianity must first teach people how to really pray so they can relate to God as adults.