Your Life is Not About You

I continue to plow through Adam's Return by Richard Rohr.  Message #3 of the ubiquitous male initiation rite is "Your life is not about you."  Rohr starts off the chapter with this explosive quote that I really liked:

"The important religious question is not that of the rich and young man, 'What must I do to inherit eternal life?'  The essential religious question is the one God, in effect, asks Adam, 'Who are you? and Whose are you?'  We like the first question because we think there is something we can do about it, and it gives us control.  We fear the second question because only God can answer it, and his answer seems too good to be true."

He is circling back to that theme that was brought up in the introduction--all true spirituality is about letting go.  About recognizing the cycle of birth and death that God officially introduced with the first passover.

I need control, because in my heart of hearts, I don't really believe that God loves me.  If I really, completely, totally and fully understood the radical love that my Father has for me, I would be a different person.  I would hold the things God has given me with open hands and an open heart, rather than clutching impulsively and fearfully at them.  That knowledge of love--which begins as belief and is transformed into knowledge through experience and then comes full circle back to belief (all the while looking absurd and impossible!)--is the religious question that Rohr is referring to.  My identity is who I am, not what I do.  It doesn't so much matter what I do, compared to who my Father is.  Because we all grow up to be like our dads (or moms).

Like John Wimber said, "I'm a fool for Christ.  Whose fool are you?"