God Isn't Really Everywhere?

"Conservatives tend to understand this much better than liberals do. Guilt-based religion, strong boundary markers, and shame work well to keep the troops in line...

I remember being trained in the Baltimore Catechism as a little catholic boy. One of the first questions (#16) was "Where is God?" The correct answer is "God is everywhere." And then the whole rest of the book proceeds to teach that such ambiguity is not really true! God was really only with Catholics, in our churches, in fact, really only in the tabernacle, and then only if the priest said a valid Mass, and then only available to "good" people who followed the rules. We have been much better at binding up" God than "loosening" divine availability, even though Jesus gave us both powers (Matthew 16:19). For some reason, we really do not want God to be everywhere, just here, and we of course end up losing God even for ourselves."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.