Perspective distortion...

The ego wants to ensure us that the things we do are all significant and worthy of our attention, that this event will make me important. Our activities become attempts at self validation and little life merit badges. We all enjoy putting another check on our life resume, or even on our spiritual resume.

Much religion uses God to bolster one’s own self-image, I am afraid. True religion would not be attached to self-image at all, but only to God. In fact, the closer you actually get to the Light, the more of your own shadow you see. Maybe that is why a lot of people do not persevere on the journey toward the Lover.

Christian life has little to do with me doing anything right. It has everything to do with falling in love with a Lover who always does everything right. What I love is that Lover and not my own accomplishments; nor am I surprised or unduly humiliated by my own failures. We must come to know who is always the Lover and who is always the beloved.

Richard Rohr, Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, adapted from p.23, Day 22

I think Rohr is right here. It’s a strange fact that as I go on in this life of trying to follow Christ, the more obvious is the distance between us. It’s a perspective thing, possibly. The closer a camera lens is to an object it’s focused on, the greater the apparent perspective. The farther away it is, the less the distance between related objects appears to be. It’s called perspective distortion. The phrase makes me slightly uncomfortable…