This book on “men in the Bible” really has a message for everyone.
If you are a man (or know one), I am happy to recommend the new edition of Richard Rohr’s Soul Brothers: Men in the Bible Speak to Men Today. Rohr, a Franciscan priest, is recognized around the world as one of the leading spiritual teachers of our time. (An anthology of his writings in the Orbis Modern Spiritual Masters Series is a bestseller.)
Rohr begins by saying that his book is “not just for men and not just for Christians,” but hopes “it will be helpful to anyone involved in the human struggle.” So it is. Each of the men he profiles — including Abraham, David, Moses, John the Baptist, Peter, Jesus — engaged in that struggle, shaped by their own complex personalities, as they responded to God’s call to be fully human. “This book is an invitation to let their souls touch our own.” Here are some excerpts.
On St. Peter:
Why was this man given any keys? Why would this largely unsuccessful working man be given the keys to anything?…
The whole Gospel story, with its cast of constantly unlikely and un-pious people, reaches the level of farce when we come to Peter. He is the only one whom Jesus ever calls a devil; he is the only one who directly denies Jesus. His first response in every encounter is always wrong, and yet he is clearly the one whom Jesus makes the spokesman and the symbol for this whole new enterprise that he is starting. …
Peter is undoubtedly everyman and everywoman. Peter is humanity at its most lovable, disheartening best … often presented as a bit of a buffoon — but the very buffoon that we all are and that God in Jesus loves and uses for God’s purposes. …
Peter is a grand and honest statement about how we all come to God … We are all saved in spite of ourselves, and never is that more clearly illustrated than in the life of Peter. God does not love Peter because Peter is good. God loves Peter because God is good, and that is what Peter finally sees and what makes him fall in love with Jesus in return.
On Jesus:
We are not human beings trying to become spiritual. That task has already been done for us by our initial creation as “images of God.” That is God’s gift. Our desperate and needed task, the one we have not succeeded at very well after all these centuries, is how to become human! Jesus literally turns religion on its head. He is always moving down, descending into the fully human, identifying freely with our tragic and finite situation. We miss him entirely when we are always running up the down staircase. Our task is to follow and imitate him, not offer him incense, titles, and shrines that he never once asked for. Again, all we need to do is take his lead. Most of the world is so tired of “spiritual people.” We would be happy just to meet some real human beings. They always thrill the heart, just as he did.
As should be clear, this book on “men in the Bible” really has a message for everyone. As Richard Rohr concludes:
The authentic foundation of all true religion is the rediscovery of the defaced image of God inside of the human person, inside of this world, in what will always feel like the naked and empty now. This is the ladder to heaven, and it is everywhere.
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