Fr Ronald Rolheiser
The thought of some of the greatest and most influential people in history seems at times riddled with inconsistencies. Jesus, Augustine, Socrates, Aristotle, among others, appear at times to be contradicting themselves. It’s not always easy to see how everything squares with everything else in their teachings.
That’s why the great religions and philosophies of the world are so prone to multiple interpretations. For example, given the depth and scope of Jesus’ teaching, Christianity in particular is open to different kinds of understanding. It’s no accident that there are hundreds of denominations within Christianity and every variety of spirituality and worship inside these. Jesus’ teaching is so rich that it would seem none of us can carry it like master. Rather we each pick our parts selectively, struggle to hold them in some consistency, and end up much narrower than the master.
Consistency
Consistency, someone once quipped, is the product of a small mind, just as inconsistency is the mark of a great one. There’s a truth in that, though it must be carefully understood. For instance, sometimes we achieve a certain consistency, a view of things that seemingly has no internal contradictions, though at a high price, namely, we end up narrow, non-inclusive, one-sided, impoverished, and reductionistic. Whatever else might be said about them, racism, bigotry, fundamentalism, and unhealthy nationalism are consistent. However, their consistency is predicated on a synthesis that is so narrowly drawn that it ignores and denigrates important areas of life.
Conversely, sometimes what looks like inconsistency is really a person holding together a number of important truths in a higher synthesis. The person may look inconsistent, but what she is really doing is holding a number of truths in creative tension that are seemingly in opposition to each other but are not. The person who tries this juggling act will often find herself in great tension, but (metaphorically) she will also find that she has no blocked arteries and very resilient lungs, that blood flows freely to every part of her person and she is able draw life-giving oxygen from whatever kind of air within which she finds herself.
His teachings are more both/and than either/or. We struggle with that. It’s easier to carry a select few truths than try to carry them all”
Jesus was like that. He held important truths together in creative tension and as a consequence was misunderstood by just about everyone and scandalised people on both sides of the religious and ideological spectrum. His teachings are more both/and than either/or. We struggle with that. It’s easier to carry a select few truths than try to carry them all.
Contradictory
What are some of the seeming contradictory truths that Jesus held together and carried in a creative tension? Here are ten of them, chosen because a healthy spirituality must always carry both sides of these.
1) A strong sense of individuality, a focus on private integrity and private prayer, but coupled with an equally strong commitment to community, family, civic and ecclesial involvement, and social justice.
2) A healthy capacity to drink in life and enjoy it without guilt, even as one befriends an equally healthy capacity for asceticism and renunciation.
3) A self-confidence and healthy self-assertion in using the particular gifts that God has given us but held always in tension with a healthy humility and a habitual self-effacement.
4) An eye for the prophetic, a sympathy for what lies outside the centre, for what is marginalised, a challenging voice for the excluded, even as one recognizes the importance of the institutional, defends against anarchy, and helps nurture what’s sacred within family, Church, and tradition.
5) A perpetual openness to what’s new, what’s strange, what causes discomfort, to what’s liberal, even as one works to ground oneself in what conserves, in the familiar, in routine, in what gives rhythm and makes for stability.
6) An eye for the sacred, for God, for the eternal horizon, but always coupled with an unabashed love for this world, for its joys, for its achievements, its present moment.
7) A passion for sexuality and a defense of its goodness and earthiness, coupled with an equal defense of chastity and reverence.
8) An eye for world community, for stretching the boundaries we were born into, for an ever more inclusive embrace of the foreigner and the stranger, even as one remains deeply loyal to family, personal roots, and hospitality at home.
9) A hope and an idealism that defies the facts, that relies on God’s promises rather than on the evening news, that will not let the truth of the resurrection be silenced by the accidents of history, but is still held together with a realism that is pragmatic, programmatic, and is committed to doing its share of the work.
10) A focus on the next life, on life after death, on the fact that this is not our final home, even as we focus on the reality and goodness of life here on earth.
Jesus held all of these together in one synthesis and he paid the price – misunderstanding. Are we willing to pay that price to give fuller expression to Christ?