The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality

by Ronald Rolheiser

Among many things, this is an image of the relationship between the Judeo-Christian tradition and the culture within the Western world today. The culture is the son. It stands before its parent, the Judeo-Christian tradition, more than a little deviant. Using the very secrets that it learned from its father, it is telling him: “You handed bitterness to me when you should have been handing me sweetness. You lied to me! You are too full of false prohibitions, bitter taboos, and needless fears! You are supposed to be handing down the sweetness of life, but your commandments and taboos bring death and guilt instead of life and sweetness.” The Judeo-Christian tradition is the father, patriarchal, hierarchical, standing at the foot of the honey tree, feeling betrayed by the child who it itself taught the secrets of the woods—indeed, as René Girard says, it is not because we invented science that we stopped burning witches but rather when, because of the Judeo-Christianity, we stopped burning witches that we invented science.21 And so we are caught up in another divorce. On the one side, we have the Judeo-Christian tradition which taught us the secrets of the woods and which now feels itself betrayed, sees its foundational commandments breached, and senses itself as harshly judged by its own children. On the other side, stands our culture, adolescent in its defiance, accusing that tradition, its parent, of dealing it death not life. Like any child, caught in a painful