Yes, and... by Richard Rohr

Author:Richard Rohr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Yes, and…
ISBN: 9781632532930
Publisher: Franciscan Media
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE INVISIBLE SPIRAL OF VIOLENCE

If we cannot recognize evil on the level of what I call the world, then the flesh and the devil are inevitable consequences. They will soon be out of control and everything is just trying to put out brush fires on alreadyparched fields. The world or the system is the most hidden, the most disguised, and the most denied—but foundational—level of evil. It’s the way cultures, groups, institutions, and nations organize themselves to survive.

It is not wrong to survive, but, for some reason, group egocentricity is never seen as evil when we only concentrate on individual egocentricity (the flesh). That is how our attention has been diverted from the whole spiral of violence. The devil then stands for all of the ways we legitimate, enforce, and justify our group egocentricity (most wars; idolization of wealth, power, and show; tyrannical governments; and many penal systems), while not calling it egocentricity, but necessity!

Once any social system exists, it has to maintain and assert itself at all costs. Things we do inside that system are no longer seen as evil because everyone is doing it. That’s why North Koreans can march lockstep to a communist tyranny and why American consumers can shop ’til they drop and make no moral connections whatsoever. You see now why most evil is hidden and denied, and why Jesus said, “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). We don’t.

+Adapted from Spiral of Violence: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Recording).

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