The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage

by Richard Rohr

Few cultures, if any, develop such a counterintuitive role.

Revolutions took the place of evolutions,

The process of allowing and creating holy disorder is surely what Representative John Lewis called getting into “good trouble.” He was referring to the good and necessary trouble of civil disobedience in the pursuit of racial justice, but his philosophy is equally powerful when we think about the prophets. For them, good trouble and holy disorder could draw forth better things—an entirely different consciousness characterized by more justice, more mercy, greater closeness to God. Of course, the process is never linear, and it never stops. The new reorder soon becomes a new order, and we need prophets to keep us from idolizing the new status quo. The only thing more dangerous and more common than narcissism is group narcissism. We have always needed a mechanism for positive change that is organic and comes from within, although we did not usually know that.

The evils that ate us alive were seldom called evil because the “priestly” groups were intent on enforcing ritual requirements and purity codes—in which Jesus and the prophets showed little or no interest. Once we lose the prophetic analysis, most evil will be denied, disguised, or hidden among the rules and rituals of religion and the law itself.

In short, the prophets and Paul teach that law is never to be an end in itself, but only a boundary for the inflated human ego and a protector of the common good.

But that’s exactly what the prophets do. They call out the collective, not just the individual, as a way of seeking the common good and assuring us that some common good might just be possible. It is a lesson we still find hard to learn.

Aaron without Moses is always a problem in the making.

Without such a love foundation, almost all religions and worldviews devolve into forms of sacrifice, in which we debase something (or someone) else in hopes of achieving worthiness.

You can have values without group belonging, although you will probably be less strategically effective without a team.

Over time, the Hebrew prophets came to see this profound connection between sadness and anger. It was what converted them to a level of truth-telling that is deeply and forever true—which is the real sign of a prophet.

Those communities offer us a place where our sadness and rage can be refined into human sympathy and active compassion.

Mere rage or resentment will not change any of these realities. Tears often will, though: first by changing the one who weeps, and then by moving any who draw near to the weeping. Somehow, the prophets knew, the soul must weep to be a soul at all.

suspect that this is what the church was recognizing with its poorly named idea of “original sin.”

Truth and prophecy must be subjected to the refiner’s fire of discernment. As we are slowly discovering with wildfires, a healthy forest needs to have its overgrowth and undergrowth cleared out, to prevent a more destructive future blaze. This is the more common way the metaphor of fire is used in the Bible—not as an element of torture, but as a purifying force.

Frankly, I think you could describe every one of the prophets eventually yelling “Nevertheless!” after all their raging and convicting.

You must stay with the text and follow the prophets’ progress toward the full word of God.

Those at the top tend to believe things are the way they are for good reason, but the poor know in their bones that things are not as they should be.

Throughout Scripture, Yahweh’s willingness to continue to work with “the few who get it” forces Israel to constantly rethink its own theology of salvation. It becomes a token of God’s own faithfulness: “In your midst I will leave a humble and lowly people; those who remain will seek all their refuge in Yahweh” (Zephaniah 3:12). The “remainder” becomes a standing symbol of how little it takes for God to stay with us. Yet those who are often called the “chosen” or the “elect” are chosen not because of God’s actual favoritism toward them, but because of their radical trust in God’s universal, nonpunitive, and unconditional love for them.

Divine largesse will always be too much love for the masses and those who are convinced of their own innocence, but that does not mean divine love is not at work—and most effective for those who widen their nets and open their hearts. God can love the whole, and the whole can enjoy God’s mercies (as we do every day!) without consciously knowing it. It just increases our joy and effectiveness tenfold when we do.

True worship’s function is to radically decenter our naturally imperial ego, but too often it devolves into some notion of needed sacrifice, as it did for the ancient Israelites.

Eventually one has to decide, Am I in love with the metaphors for their own sake? Or am I in love with the thing itself?

Collective evil—such as institutionalized racism, corporate greed, structural homophobia, and gun culture—is almost impossible to adjudicate and, sadly, almost always implicates us! So we just keep looking for obvious bad apples out there. If we can identify those wrongdoers, blame them, punish them as scapegoats, we can carry on living as we did. It also unites society rather well, making it a big payoff for politicians and “high priests,” who blame and accuse others as a way of diverting attention from their own misdeeds.

collective language:

personal biography.

I will not cease in my efforts for their good, and I will put respect for me into their hearts, so that they turn from me no more. It will be my pleasure to bring about their good, and I will plant them firmly in this land, with all my heart and soul. (Jeremiah 32:40–41, jb)

This is so hard to conceive of that most of us are still not there twenty-five hundred years after Jeremiah. Sincerely religious people, trained in forgiveness, exodus, exile, and crucifixion, should be the readiest and most prepared for this full journey, but up until now that has only been the case in a small remnant of every group.

Prophets who continue to lead (or end) with their rage have only half of the message, it seems. They have the anger but lack the compassion; mere moral positioning and ethical “answers” are not really the work of conversion. Smug people are not really holy people. These unfinished prophets often pass for the real deal because people confuse firebrands, liberals, zealots, and ideologues for those possessing deeper truth. But just because a person is passionate and skilled at gathering crowds does not mean that she or he knows how or where to lead people beyond that. As Jesus says, “many false prophets will arise, and lead many astray” (Matthew 24:11, nrsv). In our times, it is common to confuse articulate passion with prophecy when it is often simply untransformed anger that will not change anything in the long term or lead us anywhere good. Passion and prophecy are not the same thing. Contrarians are often just contrarians.

That’s largely what makes it a “sign.” As Jesus later points out, the Ninevites repent of their evil ways, while Israel did not (Matthew 12:41–42). The supposedly unconverted show themselves to be converted, while Jonah is shown to be unchanged, despite his three days in darkness.

have seen so many Christians, on the one hand, and justice activists, on the other, who are morally correct in their actions but spiritually quite immature—doing the right things for the wrong reasons. (This was one of the major reasons I founded the Center for Action and Contemplation nearly forty years ago, and it is still true.) Some live a countercultural lifestyle, not really to help the poor, but to be seen as counterculturally chic. Many Catholics, meanwhile, assume we are saved by doing church rules right and not really by the pure grace and experienced love of God that radically rearranges our consciousness. Both groups are, in a sense, externally baptized with water, but not the “fire and Spirit” of Jesus’s baptism.

The transformative journey of the prophets from anger to tears to compassion is the journey of the God of the Bible and those who read the Bible with love.

This participation in others’ sadness is precisely what should happen when we gaze upon the crucified one, upon a child bleeding alone on the streets of Gaza, or upon any act of human tragedy.

Somehow this empathy liberates us, even as it scours the soul.

I cannot say it strongly enough. This is an utterly new tactic and a new agenda, and hardly a “tactic” at all.

Thus it should be no surprise when we identify evil with darkness—a state in which we cannot see—and goodness as a form of light, in which even our own darkness is illuminated.

We all have to admit we are prone to the same failings we see in others—and prone to deny them as well. This seems to be perennially difficult for us. “One after the other, the apostles say, ‘Surely not I?’ ”(Mark 14:19) when Jesus announces that one of them will betray him. Without undergoing a fearless moral inventory, accompanied by some divine light and love of self and the other, you just cannot see your failings or hypocrisy.

Wounded healers are what we need. Wounded wounders, not at all.