The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder

by Richard Rohr

When we do not feel safe or secure or “at home,” we naturally take a strong stance to defend ourselves. Unfortunately, that puts us in a corner that we cannot escape and where others cannot get to us. That’s not a very good position from which to proclaim the great Good News. Of course, conservatives push progressives to the same reactionary position by their seeming worship of authority and order as ends in themselves. To educated people, most traditionalists appear to have no interest in honest history or critical thinking, but only in soft piety and propaganda passing for religion. So the liberals get out their information, statistics, and scholarship and use them to dismiss the conservatives as promoters of romantic rubbish. The trouble is that both are, to some extent, right.