Faith is useless if the central core is missing. It then becomes just another ideology; closed to change and lifeless since it is cut off from what is most essential. “To love one neighbor as oneself” is the essential core of any faith that is alive and vibrant. “To treat others as you want to be treated”, if practiced cannot kill, maim nor tortured others, for they or seen as other selves. “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me”.
Ideologies die, not because they are evil or bad, but they are closed systems unable to foster love and compassion for those outside. Faith if not lived is just show, useless and best if it is not promulgated. Failures are inevitable, ideologies cannot admit this, so they become rigid and people have no recourse. Faith systems if they have the humility to accept failures, then there is hope for growth and an ever deepening openness to graces healing. Humility leads to the death of an outworn way of life; pride dies of its own rigidity. That goes not only for ideologies but also religions that cease becoming life giving and fruitful.
Two paths
Humility allows sight,
understanding,
conversation and change,
flexibility.
Pride becomes blind,
its fruit contempt,
unwilling to listen and learn,
rigid unbending.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
