Why People Love False Christianity

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I awoke this morning to this headline: Why People Hate Religion. Oh boy. So in the spirit of the headline, though admittedly with far less clickbait power, I am writing about why people so love false Christianity.

You see, it’s because it doesn’t challenge them. It doesn’t make them feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t call them to repentance. It tells them that whatever they already believe and whatever they feel is good and to be embraced. It tells them that if something or someone challenges them, then that thing/person is to be shunned as evil.

The religion this guy suggests is precisely that flavor of “Christianity.” “I’m okay. You’re okay. As long as you’re not a Trump supporter, or even a social conservative.” “Jesus was just this nice guy, ya know?” It is a reductionism of Christianity to secular humanism—using religious terminology that is void of theological and soteriological content. Just “be nice and be nice to people” is all this version of Christianity demands, which is all that secular humanism calls for.

The NYT article author, Timothy Egan, says, ‘Archbishop Thompson says he tries to be “Christ-centered” in his decisions. If so, he should cite words from Christ condemning homosexuality, any words; there are none.’

Oh really. How about Matt 19:3ff:

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” (emphasis mine)

In Christ’s only explicit teaching about marriage, he very clearly says that it is a lifelong, sexually exclusive union of male and female. If Christ were the sexually-progressive person our contemporaries try to make him out to be, he surely would have been careful to avoid being clear that Divinely-instituted marriage is between a man and a woman. (And not only that, that "binary" sexuality is also of Divine origin.)

But let’s not stop there, because the suggestion to "cite words from Christ” for any Christian teaching is fabulously ignorant on its face. While on this planet, Jesus went to great lengths to make it clear that he considers himself to be the eternal Son of God, as Pope Benedict XVI so compellingly showed in his wonderful book, Jesus of Nazareth. And that has been unalterable Christian dogma since the beginning of our Faith. (It was precisely this claim that got him into such hot water with his Jewish contemporaries.)

Christ is, as the beginning of the Gospel of John makes evident, the eternal Word of God. Christian theologians have ruminated on this doctrine since the earliest times, and why that is particularly significant, in our context here, is that the entire canon of Christian Scripture is “The Word of God.” This means, through simple, syllogistic logic, that the entire canon of Scripture is "words from Christ." Christ, being the eternal and incarnate Word of God, therefore speaks directly through all of our Scriptures—not just the quotes attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. And there is plenty in the Word of God about sexual morals (including about homosexuality but by no means limited to it), all pointing toward what Christ was saying—that our sexuality is only rightly expressed within the bounds of that lifelong union of man and woman.

Simply put, if you do not believe that Christ is the eternally-begotten Son and Word of God, you are not a Christian. End of story. There can be no debate on this point. You can cite the words from Christ all you want, but you do not hold the Christian faith.

Furthermore, that same Word of God teaches that the Church is the pillar and ground of truth (1 Tim 3:15). That same Word of God teaches that Christ anointed his apostles with the power to forgive and retain sins (John 20:22-3). That same Word of God (in John 16:13), quotes Christ telling those same Apostles that when he did give them the Holy Spirit (by breathing on them as recorded in John 20), that the Spirit would lead them into all truth--even after Christ in his human person left the Earth. That same Word of God is where we find Christ anointing Peter as the rock upon which he would build his Church and conferring on him the power of loosing and binding (Matt 18:18-19).

And so, not only is the truth from Christ expressed in more than just the "words from Christ" attributed to him in the Gospels in Scripture, that truth is also to be found in the Church that Christ founded upon Peter. It is in that Church--when submitting ourselves to the authority granted by Christ to his apostles--that we are led into all truth through the charism given by Christ to the apostles and their successors. It is in the Church that we can rightly understand the Word of Christ, the Eternal Word of God.

And so we come to the teaching of the Church, which is supremely clear on these matters, not only on matters of morality (sexual or otherwise) but also on what the content of the Christian faith itself is. All of this is comprehensively but approachably explained in the Church's Catechism. Our bishops, with all their warts and flaws (some of which are direly serious), are our pastors, our shepherds. Under the headship of Peter's successor, they are the inheritors (not due to their own personal holiness but due to their office imparted by the laying on of hands) of the Apostolic charisms that Christ imparted, and it is in our union with those successors of the Apostles that we find the fullness of the Christian faith.

All of that is a somewhat long-winded way of saying that when judging what is or is not the Christian faith, and judging what is or is not part of the Christian approach to morality, one can't just consult the quoted words of Christ. Egan's version of Christianity is wholly insufficient and, in places, just plain wrong, especially in his following the notion of "be nice" as our primary guiding principle.

To be fair, he is right in some respects, as well. Part of Christian morality is to help the weak and the poor. (One can't help but wonder if he'd extend that principle of help of the weak to the not-yet-born.) He and the sister he quotes are right, in as much as our guiding light in the humanitarian work that we do is that we recognize the image of God in each person--no matter what condition they are in, no matter their developmental stage, no matter their mental or physical capabilities.

But in criticizing Christians for standing by the morals of the Faith that are not in line with popular secular culture, he is dead wrong. Perhaps the most fundamental principle of the Christian faith is the universal call to holiness. We are all called to be holy all throughout Scripture--it is the overarching theme. We are all called to repent from our sins and conform ourselves to the will of God (Romans 12:1-2). We know the will of God by his revealing it to us in creation, in His person, in Scripture, and within the guidance of His Church. Just being whomever we find ourselves to be is not a Christian way of life; it is the way of the world. No matter what our sins and inclinations are, we are called to take up our cross and follow Christ--and God gives us the grace to do that, especially through the Sacraments, especially through baptism, confession and reconciliation, and the Eucharist.

This personal, individual, on-going conversion is so often overlooked, particularly by those who want to change Christianity to fit our popular culture today. The Christian faith is completely opposed to the notion that whatever we feel, whatever we are inclined to do, is OK as long as it is not harmful to others. Furthermore, our Faith is wholly opposed to the notion that harm means challenging someone, that is, telling someone that, "no, 'you do you' is not OK," that there are in fact objective morals and objective truth, a standard of living to which all are called, no matter what our genetics and upbringing and social context, that we are all bound to respond to that universal call to holiness as best as we are able.

Sure, we Christians can and often do screw up, both in our responding to the call as well as in how we communicate it, but the call remains. And we are bound, as Christians, to share the whole Gospel--not just the parts that feel good and are acceptable to our contemporary cultures. We are bound to help the poor and weak and also correct the sinner, in addition to doing our best to conform our own selves to God.

The Eternal Advent

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. 

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen. 

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”   

(Revelation 1:4-8)

The Eternal Advent, that is, God--He who was, who is, and who is to come. Fr. Yves Congar, O.P, notes in The Word and the Spirit, that the Hebrew word for 'truth' comes from the verb that means to be stable, firm, sure, reliable, and that in the 132 times it is used in the Old Testament, more than half are used of God. The concepts of truth and faithfulness (steadfastness) are therefore linked, and they are rooted in God's very being. 

"I am who I shall be" is, according to the TOB, a more favorable rendering of the name God reveals of himself in the burning bush (more commonly "I am who I am"). In this rendering we see an echo of Revelation above--God was, God is, and God will be, He who is to come, and always will be to come. 

While the primary mode of Advent is anticipation of the celebration of the Incarnate Word's Nativity, we know it also is a time to reflect on His Second Coming, and in the above Scripture, we see also that it can also be a time of reflection on God in Himself, a coming of Being that will always be. This is a joyful anticipation that we always have had, we have now, and will have in eternity. God is sure. He will always be. What a great joy it is to know this!

So let us now welcome God, in union with the Word and Spirit: 

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. (Rev 22:17)

Disconnecting from Catholic Social Media

After the latest brouhaha resultant from this post (and the convo before it I mentioned), I have been pushed over the edge. I'm done with Catholic social media.

It's not like this hasn't been long in coming. It seems what passes for the majority of Catholic blogging, and perhaps more so social media, is a sludge of conservative outrage inducing link regurgitating. The echo chamber is in full effect, and it has gotten worse since our new pope has been elected. Now it's not just the broader decadent Western culture that has the watchdogs frothing at the mouth, but apparently the Pope himself is not Catholic enough for them.

Enough already. It is downright embarrassing and, for me, infuriating. It's all just so much gossip.

We conservative Catholics need to stop conflating political ideals with Catholic doctrine, as if the Right has a corner on truth and goodness. We need to stop vilifying those on the other end of the political spectrum. We need to stop overreacting to everything homosexual and abortion-related. We need to stop setting ourselves up in our own personal popedoms. We need to relax about the liturgy. We need to relax about the world's sexual profligacy. We need to relax. Chill out a bit. Take a deep breath and stop wigging out every time something in the world doesn't align with the way we think it should be.

It goes without saying (for me) that I'm not suggesting keeping silent when we should speak. I'm not suggesting not being active in the political process how we should be. I'm not suggesting ignoring or suppressing Truth, Goodness, or Beauty. I am by no means suggesting we don't share the Gospel--exactly the contrary!

Look. Either God is in control or he isn't. If the world is going to hell in a handbasket, that ain't nothing new. The way things used to be ain't as great as we like to pretend it was in our whitewashed memories. Human nature is human nature. It always has been. Mass sinfulness has always been with us; it's just the predominate kinds of sin that change with the passage of time.

Thankfully, God doesn't judge us by the political order and culture we live in; he judges us individually by what we as individuals think, say, and do. If God intended to set up a perfect political party or government, we'd have that. But we don't, and it's not our job to try to set it up.

What we do have is the Truth. What we have are the Sacraments. What we have is each other. Real people whom we are called to truly love, even if we don't agree with them. 

And don't tell me about "speaking the truth in love." Hogwash. The Truth is easily abused and can be wielded as effectively to drive people away from God as it can to guide them to Him. The Truth is also understood incompletely, by us. It is often miscommunicated, by us. It is also often misunderstood, and we are responsible to minimize that--we must be sensitive to where people are and adjust when and how we share the Gospel with them. 

And this extends beyond social media (it just seems exacerbated by it, as are most things online, where it's so easy to reduce people in your head to mere ideas and words, stripping them of the dignity and love they deserve from us). My own dear lay Dominicans were recently discussing a situation where one of them found out that someone they have do some handyman work is gay--who was "married" recently. Apparently this was the source of great anguish--should she keep paying him to do a job? What if he brings up his gayness?? "You have to share the truth [in love] with him," says someone. 

Really?!? Have we become so oversensitized to this issue that it becomes a major personal crisis to find out that someone you have hired to do a job that has absolutely zero to do with their sexuality is gay? Are we really obligated to foist our opinion of their life choices on them uninvited? Must we all shake our heads and tut tut about it? Would we have the same crisis if, say, we found out that they were a terrible gossip or an inveterate liar? Somehow I doubt it, especially if their sin was also one we personally struggle with.

And that's the crux of it. If this behavior is not the very definition of what Jesus was counseling against in Matthew 7, I don't know what is. All this outrage-inducing "socializing" does is keep our focus on others' sins and errors rather than our own, much less does it help us to share the Good News. I'd say the Devil is pretty pleased with the state of Catholic social media right now. Pretending for a moment that this is "New Evangelization" is utter self-deception.

Sharing the Gospel is the key. It's not good enough to say something is a sin. That's sharing the Truth incompletely. That, at its best, is ethics. Being a "good person" doesn't get anyone to heaven. What we really need to share is not "you are living in sin" but "Christ can transform your life, give you joy and give you peace." That's the message. That's the focus. Sin is just an opportunity for us to receive God's grace. We need to share that the mercy and grace of God is greater than all our sins put together. 

We need to stand with our fellow sinners, not so as to condone sin but rather in recognition that we are all sinners, that we all fail, that we all utterly need the grace of God. If we are not truly with them, then we are not truly loving them. Compassion is the word. Suffering with others. Us versus them is not authentic love. Pointing out sin is not authentic love. It is pride masquerading as love.

And, so, for myself, all this outrage-rich social media is a very near occasion to sin (not to mention a waste of time and talent), because I am repeatedly tempted to hold these brothers and sisters in disdain, because I myself become preoccupied with their sins rather than my own, and so, give into pride. 

Therefore, I am cutting off that aspect of my life rather than continuing to fall into sin. I have deleted circles. I have unliked pages on FB. I will continue to cull these things from my life as they come up. As I slowly rebuild my Catholic social connections, I will use this as a bar: Does this person refrain from fostering outrage and indulging in judging and condemning others? Does this person share things that build people up? Does this person appear to be truly concerned with sharing the Gospel and will they help me to? 

Hello, Lord Satan

Riffing on my post yesterday, and while on the way home tonight listening to the beginning of Johannes Cabal in which Johannes goes to visit "Lord Satan" in Hell, it struck me just how similar the presumption that we are worthy to judge God is to the sin of Lucifer, namely pride.

Isn't this the essence of our fundamental choice as creatures? Am I going to chose myself and exalt my self--my intellect, my perception, my judgment--over God?

God will honor the free will he has endowed me with and give me what I choose. If I choose to exalt myself over him, to sit in judgment over him and judge that he does not exist, to seek what I judge to be good, my own interests, my own pleasure, my own ego, then I get what I have chosen, which is exactly what Lucifer has--eternity on my own with myself, apart from God. On the other hand, if I humble myself, seek God first, and love him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, he will give me what I seek--participation in his Divine Trinitarian love for all eternity.

So You Got A Problem With God, Eh?

Lately I have been running into situations where people question God. Maybe they have a personal difficult situation. Maybe they look at some great injustice or evil in the world/history. Everybody seems to have a reason to put God on trial, and some also appoint themselves to be his judge, jury, and executioner.

The thing is, if God is who he says he is, and I mean the Christian understanding of God specifically, then he is infinitely Good, infinitely Just, and infinitely Loving. He is also the only necessary Being, upon which all of our beings are contingent. He is the prime mover, the first cause, the efficient cause. In him and through him all things have their being.

So, if this God does exist, that seems to trump all of the supposed evidence against him. It is perfectly logical, accepting the premise that God exists, to take the position that when we perceive evil, that there is a good reason for its existence, that, at the very least, God in his infinite nature allows it for a greater good. Put another way, we are finite beings and don't have the big picture (or sometimes even the right perception of the small picture); we just don't have the capacity to take it all in and understand how it truly is and how it is, all together, good. In short, we simply need to remind ourselves that we are not God.

But wait! I'm putting the chicken before the egg, some might say. To take this position, you must accept this understanding of God, but it's precisely this purported evidence against him that inclines me to not accept that. In a way, that's true.  But it is still an argument against that doubt, assuming that you are otherwise inclined to accept it. Because if such a God does exist, then this is true, and the problem lies with your judgment, not with God.

And in fact, we can even dial things back a bit, and just go by the purely natural, rational arguments for the Prime Mover, the Necessary Being, the Efficient Cause. You can consider the Ontological Argument, as well. Those arguments, as well, are not without objections, but nor are the objections themselves without objections. Such is the nature of reasoning (and why, again, we should be more inclined to doubt ourselves than God). In any case, it may be not as hard to accept such a God on a purely rational basis, but even so that Being is still the Being upon which yours is contingent. So again, putting yourself in the judge's seat is, well, a bit presumptuous to say the least, and our objections in such case are, at best, irrelevant.

Now I'm not saying that based on this line of thought that suddenly everything is okay and nobody has any doubts about God anymore. What fun would that be? If God wanted to remove all doubts about him, he could; obviously, that's not his thing. I'm just offering this as food for thought the next time you're tempted to put God on trial. How about starting with something for which it would be a little more believable to be in error, namely your own perception or thought processes, rather than the omnipotent, omniscient He Who Is?