“We think fear and anger and judgment and punishment are going to achieve love—but show me where?”
Restorative justice and retributive justice are common topics for Richard Rohr. While this article of his (https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-big-picture-of-love-2023-08-24/ ) is not explicitly about those themes applied to our inner life, it’s no leap. In our psyche, it’s tragically common for our ruminations to involve retributive justice. As he insists, we cannot transform our selves nor anyone else without “loving [our selves] more and loving [our selves] more deeply.”
“Almost all of us in Western civilization were educated with the notion of retributive justice… if we sin this much, we get this much punishment…
“Many…grew up with the threat of…sentences doled out for various sins… Please tell me how that makes us love God more? In fact, what it’s done is make a high percentage… fear God, not love God. It certainly did not make us love our neighbor. [nor our selves]
“Show me anyone whose heart was changed by punishing them! … the more we punish people and imprison people, the worse they become.
“It’s a pretty sick system… nothing grand, transformative, or godly about it.
“We think fear and anger and judgment and punishment are going to achieve love—but show me where?
“Here’s the great surprise of the Hebrew Scriptures… People are not going to get what they deserve, they’re going to get much better than they deserve… God says, ‘The way I punish you…is actually going to be by loving you more and loving you more deeply.’
“Love is the only thing that transforms the human heart. Nothing else.
You think self anger and self judgment and self punishment are going to achieve love—but show me where?
Neil D. 2023-08-24
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