What God Asks of Us

 

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

This was the Gospel reading at today’s mass.

The priest began his sermon by assuring us that salvation is a free gift, we were ransomed by the cross, and we need only trust in Jesus to be saved.

It seems to me he was deliberately speaking against the Bible passage. No doubt he feared it would not go down well with the congregation.

But you don’t get to ignore or contradict the Bible.

The Catholic church holds that we cannot achieve salvation by our own merits; this much is true. But that does not mean everyone gets into heaven. Otherwise, what is the point of the created world? Why not just have us all born into heaven?

This world has to be a time of trial, as the Bible says here.

Following Jesus does not just mean a verbal acknowledgement, “I believe in God,” or “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savoir.” That is meaningless; that “Jesus” or “God” is just a word.

You must “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

Here is an analogy suggested by John Lennox: compare loving your wife. Your commitment to your wife is profound, according to the Bible and the marriage vows. You must put her above your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, your birth family. You must stay with her in sickness or in health, for richer or for poorer, in old age, when she is no longer physically attractive to you. You must put your life on the line if necessary to protect her; you must eschew all others until death do you part. That is the vow you make.

Your commitment to God must be at least as strong as this, or you are not loving him with your whole heart.

It follows that you must be prepared to lose everything for his sake; for the sake of our relationship with him.

And you had better think carefully of this at the outset, just as you had better enter marriage with a serious intent.

This is the import of the passage in the Lord’s Prayer that Pope Francis seems not to have understood, and objected to: “Lead us not into temptation.” 

It is our plea that God not demand all this of us, as he did of Jesus, or of Job, to test our love.

But he often will, perhaps especially if he cares enough about us.

What Faith Really Means

 

 

 

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.

3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.

5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.”[a] For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she[b] considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Faith is a commonly misunderstood concept. It is often presented as mere belief in the existence of God; or as mere assent to the proposition that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. 

It has to do instead, as this passage seems to show us, with accepting the reality of the world we do not see—the spiritual world, the Kingdom of Heaven. This ties in with Jesus’s response to Thomas, who refused to believe in the resurrection until he saw and touched the wounds: “blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”

Faith, according to the passage, is also “Confidence in what we hope for”; but we must distinguish it from the sister virtue of Hope: Faith, Hope, and Charity. The stress is on “confidence.” “Trust” seems like a rough cognate. Faith is prior, and the basis for hope.

It is not that we believe “without evidence.” It is a delusion to limit evidence to the physical senses. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in that philosophy. There is conscience, there are self-evident truths, there is reasoning from first principles, there are intimations, there are dreams, there are private revelations, there are emotional truths. You cannot see love, but it is real.

“What is seen was not made out of what was visible.” That is, the eternal, spiritual world, the Kingdom of Heaven—is prior to the physical world. See Plato on this: his “ideal forms.” Also see the modern scientific theory of the “Big Bang.”

“By faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.” The physical world is mortal, and all things in it fade and die. The spiritual, on the other hand, is eternal. See Parmenides on this. Memories are evidence of this.

“By faith he [Abraham] made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.”

In other words, the “promised land” is not any part of the physical world, not Canaan or Judea, but the kingdom of heaven. So long as we are in this physical world, we are exiles.

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised.”

So did God fail to keep his promise? Were they foolish to keep faith? No—the point is that the promised world is not this physical world. “All these people were still living by faith when they died”—that is, they were still alive when they died, and continue to live, in the promise. Death exists only in the physical realm.

“They were longing for a better country.” This has been taken as the motto for the Order of Canada: “They sought a better country.” Supposedly meaning that recipients sought to make Canada a better country. But this interpretation is shown to be wrong by the very next phrase: “a heavenly one.” This falsification of the Biblical passage seems to make the point that earthly powers are in eternal opposition to heavenly ones.

“If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.” 

This seems to open the door to the concept praying to saints. For “the country they had left,” in context, refers to the physical world, and “they” refers to a series of dead patriarchs. If they think of the physical world, they can return at any time. 

Of course they can. Heaven is prior to earth. Heaven is perfect happiness, and any unresolved wish would prevent heaven from being heaven. Therefore, it must be possible to return, to intervene, or to communicate with the living.

But not reincarnation. Not ghosts.

Having achieved the Beatific Vision, one naturally would not want to turn one’s thoughts back to the soil. One might do so, like a Bodhisattva, in self-sacrifice, to help someone you love below.

The Truth about Religious Extremism

 

Religious extremist

Friend Xerxes has just put out a column based on an old headline: “Half of Canadians consider religion damaging.”

He agrees. Religion is a source of harm; religious certainty is a bad thing.

So how did almost half of us arrive at such a novel and wrongheaded idea?

I trace it to 9/11 in particular, and to a lesser degree the troubles in Northern Ireland. As he notes, accusing Buddhism or Judaism or Quakerism of being harmful seems ridiculous. But surely Islam, with the terrorism? And then, we cannot cite only Islam, we’d be accused of racism; so we think as well of the Irish troubles, and generalize, and say “religion.”

The misperception is exacerbated by the press constantly pushing the notion that Islamist  terrorists are “extremists”: the problem is supposedly that they believe their religion too fervently. They are too sure of things.

But if a too-devout belief in Islam is the problem, why was the Muslim world not generating terror until relatively recently? Why were Muslim states relatively sanguine under European/Christian rule, French, English, and Italian, during the 19th and early 20th centuries? Why were significant Jewish, Christian, Yazidi, and Parsi minorities able to live in peace and harmony in Muslim-dominated areas for centuries, until just recently? The Muslim Brotherhood was formed only in 1928; Al Qaeda in 1988; ISIS in 2006. Even the Palestinian resistance to Israel was not Islam-based until recently: the PLO was Marxist; the more radical PFLP was led by a Christian. Is it plausible that the Muslim world has recently become more certain of their faith? What dynamic would have caused this?

It is obviously the opposite: increasing globalization and increasing secularism in the dominant West has caused Muslims to doubt, to lose certainty. This has caused the growing violence.

When one looks at the background of actual Muslim terrorists, one discovers they do not come from a religious background. Childhood friends or older acquaintances always remark that they were never devout, nor from a religious family; they were recently “radicalized.” They are commonly Westernized, often educated in the West. Bin Ladin himself was an engineer. Al Qaeda ran houses of prostitution for their fighters.

Living and teaching in the Arabian Gulf, I found I could count on goodwill from any student or fellow faculty member with a full beard; this showed they were a committed Muslim. Any hostility to the foreigner or non-Muslim or Westerner that there was came from the clean-shaven secularized locals.

People similarly overlook, when considering the Irish Troubles, that Sinn Fein and the IRA were Marxist organizations, hostile to and generally condemned by the Catholic Church. The association with religion may have seemed clearer on the Protestant side; but anyone can declare himself a Protestant minister and form his own denomination, stealing the prestige of religion for his political agenda. 

This is a simple trick, used by Jim Jones, purely a Marxist, for his “People’s Temple,” or by Fred Phelps for his “Westboro Baptist Church.”

Islam has the same problem, as, like Protestantism, it lacks a recognized central authority. Any fraud can declare himself an Imam.

Nor, historically, can religion explain the longstanding tensions in Ireland. The English were just as determined to colonize Ireland and suppress its culture before the English Reformation. Religious difference was never more than an excuse.

What does religious extremism actually produce?

Those most committed to their religion, most convinced they know the truth with certainty, become friars and monks. Catholic, Orthodox, Hindu or Buddhist. Not a lot of violence coming from that cloister. Among Protestants, the most devout would be the Amish and the Mennonites. Not a lot of blood in the streets. Also, in their way, the Salvation Army.

It is only when you have doubts about your world view that you feel threatened by the mere existence of opposing views. Only then are you likely to resort to violence to impose your views. Relativism, not conviction, is the problem.

The poets, who see most deeply into the zeitgeist, rightly saw this at the outset the 20th century. Many of them lamented the rise of relativism and the decline of religious conviction. Kipling wrote: 

For heathen heart that puts her trust
  In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
  And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard;
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord

In 1897, he saw the growing reliance on scientism instead of religion inevitably leading to dark places. His prediction came true in 1914, and in 1917, and in 1939, and in China, Cambodia, Korea, and too many other places since.

Yeats wrote, in 1919:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Who is the falconer, the centre, but God? What is the ceremony of innocence, but conventional religion with its rituals?

And the harm is not limited only to violence. I blame relativism, the notion that there is no ultimate meaning to life, for the growing epidemic of drug use, suicide, depression, and mental illness. 

The media and the clerisy have done humanity untold harm with their propaganda campaign against “religious extremism.” Religious extremism is just what the world most desperately needs.

Imagine There's No Heaven

 

I discover it is impossible to talk about religion to a bot.

I tried it with a chat bot. It was okay on talking about techniques, like meditation techniques and self-help. But belief; there’s the problem. I asked the bot if she were a theist. She said she had no beliefs, but was happy to discuss any.

Turing test fail. There was no one there to talk to.

Is it having ontological beliefs that makes us human, that makes us persons? 

And is it the lack of any beliefs that makes an increasing number of us NPCs, people who seem robotic in their speech and behaviour? Hasn’t the number of NPCs multiplied as faith has declined?

Perhaps it is not that people believe in things like men becoming women, or foetuses not being alive. It is that they believe in nothing, so any “narrative” is as good as any other.

And they cling to their beliefs so defensively and robotically, wanting to shut all others down, not because they hold them strongly, but because their belief in them is so difficult to maintain, a feather might strike them down.

They have no soul.

The Pool at Bethesda

 

5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

12 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

A dramatization of this passage from John came up in an episode of “The Chosen” I viewed recently.

Something stands out that tells us this is a parable.

Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?”

In the literal world, this question makes no sense. Of course anyone ill or lame wants to get well. Anyone coming to the Pool of Bethesda comes in an attempt to get well.

This anomaly tells us the man’s lameless is symbolic; an objective correlative of a spiritual condition, which cannot be otherwise represented.

And his physical paralysis is an apt representation of spiritual paralysis, of dispiritedness, which primitive tribes in Africa call loss of soul,” and the modern psychologists call “depression.” How often is depression experienced as “not being able to get out of bed?” 

The parable diagnoses the immediate cause: the victim is caught in a bind, a Catch-22. He is lame because he cannot make it into the Pool of Bethesda when the water is stirring. He cannot make it to the Pool of Bethesda when the water is stirring because he is lame. And he has been trapped in this bind for 38 years.

Such binds are always the cause of depression. They tend to arise, as in the book Catch-22, due to some oppressive or malicious authority, in order to exert a more perfect control. This too is implied clearly enough in the passage; in the absurd accusation by the “Jewish leaders” that the man is committing a sin by being healed on the Sabbath. He is morally required, they insist, to keep lying there. By implication, their demands are the real, ultimate source of his spiritual paralysis. They are keeping him from the “living waters” of true spirit.

This paralysis is a paralysis of the will. Their will is paralysing his will. This is why Jesus’s question is important: does the man want to get well?

The answer might well be no—for he is trapped where he is by guilt, if a false sense of guilt imposed by impossible demands. Most of the depressed are depressed to punish themselves for imagined crimes. And therefore he deserves to be lame, and does not deserve to be healed. And so he fears being healed.

Is the man is cured by Jesus and by faith in Jesus? So it would seem, and so one might say the solution is faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But that is too simple; that does not really fit the parable. The parable makes clear that, until some time after he is cured, he has no idea who Jesus is. This is just some random guy telling him to get up and walk. Why should he put his faith in some random guy? Is this wise, or admirable?

But making the attempt is an assertion of the will.

But why does he now have that courage?

He is apparently primed for this simply by describing his situation at the pool clearly. By formulating and thereby seeing things as they really are. Doing so presumably makes the absurdity of his situation apparent to himself: he is lame because he is lame because he is lame. All such double-binds are necessarily, by definition, illogical. It follows that, by looking at it closely, the illogic should be revealed, and the problem evaporate. “And the truth shall set you free.”

This all sounds simple; but it is immensely difficult emotionally. One has been groomed to be wracked with guilt. That is how the malicious exert control. Therefore one is terrified to look at one’s own situation too closely, for fear that one’s supposed guilt be fully revealed, and one is sure that it is horrible. One must be prepared, in effect, to throw oneself on the mercy of God, expecting the worst possible consequences. 

Which is what this man does, by speaking frankly to a stranger; apparently trying to explain why he deserves his own lameness. He does not answer, “yes, I want to be healed.” He seems instead to try to explain why he is lame. That breaks the spell. He sees it is nonsense. It is not his fault. Then, immediately challenged again by the oppressive authority about breaking the Sabbath, he is now able to appeal to a higher authority. He lets Jesus, whom he now identifies, take responsibility. Which is as much as to say, objective morality and logic. Jesus is the Logos.

This is why the parable ends with Jesus telling the paralytic not to sin. Not that he was necessarily a great sinner before; we are all sinners. But keeping a commitment to the straight and moral path, to truth and the good, inoculates one from being endlessly left bleeding in ditches. Guilt is the weapon the malicious use to control. The devil can use any sin against you.

Now get up and walk.

Wokeness Defined

 

The essence of CRT/CT, postmodernism, “wokeness,” can be expressed in one simple statement: “Reality is a function of belief.” I think that is Kierkegaard’s formulation. Or here is William Blake’s: “A firm persuasion that a thing is so, makes it so.”

There, I defined it; and the left claims nobody can. 

So, say the woke, there is no truth; there is only “your truth.” There are no rules, no right and wrong; only a need to impose your own preferred reality on others. As in, demanding they use your pronouns.

Men declaring themselves women is the currently fashionable test case. If it looks relatively harmless, just wait for what comes next.

I have been hearing versions of this dogma—dogma is the word—since undergraduate days back in the 1970s. It took decades for me to fully shake this off, if I even have. One must not, in any circumstances, be “judgemental.” One must not get “hung up” on “meaning,” as one prize postgrad essay in religion asserted. Marcuse was hot back then: “Beware: even the ears have walls,” as one graffito said during the Paris uprisings. This idea has been drilled into our young people now for perhaps 3.5 generations.

The idea is attractive to the young. Sensitive or intelligent young people must realize that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy”—that philosophy being the dominant materialism. Postmodernism seems to offer the response, segueing nicely from LSD: we are not limited to the material, but can live entirely in our imaginations.

Heck, it even seems to be endorsed by the Christian tradition: Blake and Kierkegaard were, or considered themselves, Christians. Jesus said  “if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20). Martin Luther emphasized faith as both necessary and sufficient for salvation: the whole ball game.

But there is something critical missing in the postmodern formulation: God. The faith spoken of by Jesus, or Blake, or Kierkegaard, is not faith in self or in the will. That’s Hitler.  It is faith in God.

Consider the traditional solipsist conundrum: “If a tree falls I the forest, and no one is there to hear, did it make a sound?”

And the necessary answer is, it makes a sound because God knows. God is the touchstone of all existence, the ground of being. Without faith in God, as Descartes, for one, explained. one has no warrant that anything else is real. It is then possible, as Chesterton pointed out, to randomly believe in anything.  Madness is inevitable, the only alternative to such faith. 

Accordingly, if God says a mountain will move, it must move. If he says it will move at your command, it will move at your command. Because God. Nothing else is or is anything here or there except because God.  But this magic works if and only if you are following God’s will, not your own.

And, of course, it is generally God’s will that a mountain be where he put it.

In denying God, we are collectively pulling the plug on everything. It is mass madness, and it is the madness of the proverbial lemmings.

The Death of Everyone

 

This film on the growing problem of depopulation has been prevented from being shown at Cambridge University, so far, by protests. This, the protesters say, is because it is prejudicial to feminism. They necessarily have not seen the film, as the entire film has not yet been generally available. This was to be the local premiere.

What you see on YouTube is only part 1. Judge for yourself. 

Here we see the zombie culture, the NPC culture. They do not want to think; they do not want to learn; they do not want to know. This is what denial looks like, and what it does.

What really has them agitated? I suspect that the problem of depopulation is a prima face argument, if not a direct one, against abortion. Which then also means against unrestricted sex. An unrestricted sex and perhaps abortion these students are themselves already guilty of. And so, denial.

Welcome to the roots of the current zombie apocalypse.

The creator of the film keeps saying the cause for the decline in birth rate is unclear. There seems to be no unifying underlying factor; it is as if it is all happening at once spontaneously. It is not the availability of the pill; the birth rate declined in Japan at the same rate as Europe, although in Japan the pill was not legal. It is not the growing cost of raising children. The birth rate declined in Germany at the same rate as elsewhere, although tertiary education is free in Germany. It is not families leaving the farm for the cities—that happened in Europe a hundred years ago or more, and, as the film points out, the significant change is not from large to smaller families, but from having children to not having children at all. 

The film correlates the declines to specific financial shocks; but this does not work. The shocks they cite are different in different countries; there have always been financial shocks, at any point in history; and the cited shocks are transitory. They can only be seen as triggers, if that.

The real reason for the decline in childbearing is a loss of meaning. Darwin more or less pointed this out back in the 19th century, in the Descent of Man. He noticed that, wherever Europeans came in contact with some previously isolated, technologically primitive society, the men stopped working and the women stopped having babies.

Having children is an expression of confidence in the world, and hope in the future. To these primitive people, the world as they knew it had fallen apart. Nothing made sense any longer. They succumbed to depression: spiritual despair.

The baby boom from 1945-65 supports the point by showing the opposite. After decades of war and economic depression, with the worst rascals apparently wiped out, there was a burst of optimism for the future. So, having babies seemed like a good idea. The optimism lasted until about the assassination of Kennedy and the escalation of the war in Vietnam; that killed both the optimism and the baby boom. 

There has been an accelerating loss of meaning in the past few decades: a turning away from religion; a rejection of existing culture, history, morality, and norms. Scientism and wokeism have been wholly inadequate substitutes. Because they almost immediately stop making sense. 

The film keeps citing Germany, Japan, and Italy as examples of the birth gap. Perhaps this means they have been leading this trend. They are the nations that most succumbed to the post-religious scientistic doctrines of fascism and Nazism. Granted that there was a delay of a generation or two before the loss of the war discredited these world views, but it may have taken that time for a sense of guilt to have overcome the sense of release from the sufferings of the war.

The collapse in birth rate seems most severe now in Eastern Europe. These are the nations that most succumbed to the post-religious scientistic doctrine of Marxism. If the subject populations have little cause to feel personal or even cultural shared guilt for this, their situation is like that of someone who has had an abusive childhood. It is hard to cast off the lies one’s parents have raised you with without a profound disorientation and period of despair.

Meantime, the only area that seems to have resisted the population collapse, so far, is subSaharan Africa. A place where Christianity is spreading rapidly.

Kind of makes you think.

True and False Faith

 

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith."

The Lord replied,

"If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,

you would say to this mulberry tree,

'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.

"Who among you would say to your servant

who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field,

'Come here immediately and take your place at table'?

Would he not rather say to him,

'Prepare something for me to eat.

Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink.

You may eat and drink when I am finished'?

Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?

So should it be with you.

When you have done all you have been commanded,

say, 'We are unprofitable servants;

we have done what we were obliged to do.'"

Can you see how the first and second half of this Sunday’s gospel reading are connected? 

If you read only the first paragraph, you might think Jesus was endorsing the common postmodern or prosperity gospel belief that there is no objective reality, and we are free to make up whatever we want to believe. We can command the world! Faith can move mountains!

But then why does he immediately talk about service?

Because faith is not an assertion of the will. It is not choosing to believe this or that. Faith is faithfulness, fidelity, trust. If we had a trust in God the size of a mustard seed, we could command the mulberry tree to jump into the sea. Because God can do this. But necessarily, we then would not command but follow the command of God. We do what we are commanded. That is the true and deepest faith.

On Choosing a Religion

Jesus as the Good Shapherd

Here’s another objection to becoming a practicing Christian from my 1982 notebook:

Objection: How is one to choose among the various religions? If God exists and is merciful, or even just, how can he permit the existence of a thousand false religions and only one true one? And then leave us with no clear basis on which to distinguish one from the other? And then say that anyone who makes the wrong choice is damned to hell?

To which I respond:

Religions differ far less than this supposes. They agree on most things. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a firm commitment to any religious path is sufficient, eliminating the problem. I hold that this is necessarily so, given these premises. God would not allow the persistence of a faith that did not lead to heaven if practiced in good faith. The New Testament itself testifies to the continuing validity, for example, of Judaism.

Monotheism is not tolerant of polytheism, it is true, and vice versa. The problem with polytheism is the “in good faith” part. Monotheism is ethical; polytheism is not. It does not believe in objective morality.

So why did God allow polytheism to persist? He does not, as a historical fact, as soon as a clear monotheistic alternative appears in any society. 

Most religions do not believe that anyone who does not follow them will end in hellfire. Only some Protestant groups do, and some Muslims. Buddhists or Hindus do not. Neither do Catholics. While they hold Christianity to be, of course, the completed truth, anyone who is not aware of this is not punished. So long as their ignorance of it is not their own fault—that is, so long as they have been sincerely seeking truth.

The phrase “no salvation outside the church” is often quoted. But its sense is ambiguous. For after all, what is “the church”?

John 10: 16: “I have other sheep that don’t belong to this fold. I must lead these also, and they’ll listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd.”

He might well here be referring to non-Jews, gentiles, as not being members of the flock to which he is speaking. Or he might be speaking more generally, of any visible or formally constituted flock. The true church is the “communion of saints.” This is obviously not coterminous with the people in attendance at a mass, or with the college of bishops. It is the confraternity of those who seek the good, the true, and the beautiful.

And when Jesus says he is the gate through which such souls must enter, surely he means the Logos, the Way, the Truth, and the Light, not that souls pass though his physical body somehow crafted into a gate. That is, one enters heaven by seeking the true and the good and the beautiful, wherever this leads, and despite personal sacrifice.

That said, it is an important step to tie oneself to a particular spiritual discipline and a particular objective set of moral standards. Without this, it is too easy to rationalize everything to your own advantage, and make yourself God. This, perhaps, is the “communion” part of the “communion of saints.” 

Should Christianity Come with a Warning Label?

 

Friend Xerxes continues to indulge his columnist habit. This time, he is light-heartedly suggesting a warning label for Christianity.

The idea of a warning label for Christianity does make sense: be prepared to die to self. Be prepared to take up your cross.  Be prepared to lose friends and family members. Be prepared to look like a fool to the world.

But Xerxes’s concerns are different.

What immediately leaped out, was “Christianity is not a cure for depression or suicidal impulses.”

I can’t imagine why he says that; it is almost the first thing he says. And it seems to me Christianity is exactly that. Depression and suicidal impulses are a result of perceived loss of meaning. The one thing Christianity does for definite sure is bring meaning into your life.

Whe he was perambulating Palestine, Jesus’s prime preoccupation was casting out devils. What do you think those devils were? The symptoms were often plainly what we would call “mental illness” of various kids.

A Catholic priest of my acquaintance used to say that there were only two choices for any of us: faith, or suicide.

Another of his warnings is almost equally odd:

“Keep Christianity and its doctrinal texts out of the reach of children, as their frontal lobes are not yet sufficiently developed to handle the complexities of Christian teachings.”

The common belief is that we have an obligation to raise children in the faith. And how is it good for children to grow up without a coherent world view?

“But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

I suspect Xerxes of buying the new atheist argument that teaching children Christianity is abuse.

He the gives a list of authors that, if you are Christian, you should not read, because they would be upsetting. He does not include Marx, or Freud, or Nietzsche, but de Chardin, Tolle, Rohr, Spong,  Merton, and Rahner.

It seems an odd list. Merton is surely revered among Catholics. Rahner was an important advisor to Vatican II. De Chardin is more controversial, but was praised by Benedict XVI, who is not generally considered unorthodox.

It is hard to figure out what point Xerxes is trying to make. That true Christianity requires you not to think? That Catholicism is an abomination on Christianity as a result?

But let’s polish our brass tacks. As what seems the climax, Xerxes wars that Christianity will cause “blindness to other faiths, intolerance of other viewpoints, and addiction to biblical proof-texting.”

Any particular viewpoint is intolerant of other viewpoints that contradict that viewpoint. Even viewpoints that claim to be “tolerant” are intolerant of viewpoints they declare “intolerant.” And we cannot escape having a viewpoint. The issue is whether we claim any right to impose or enforce our viewpoint over others. Christianity stands out for not doing this. In Christianity everything is voluntary. This is a contrast to most competing viewpoints. Including such creeds as secular humanism, liberal democracy, Marxism, Islamism, or science.

Meaning the net effect of Christianity is the opposite of what Xerxes claims.

On the issue of being “blind” to other faiths, Christianity and Christians would automatically have more understanding of and sympathy with a Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist viewpoint than would a materialist, a Marxist, or a secular humanist.

Accusing Christianity of causing a problem of Biblical proof-texting is like accusing the Constitution of causing a problem of misinterpreting the US Constitution. The solution would not be to abolish the Supreme Court. In this case, it would be to become Catholic, and rely on such expert advice. Unless, of course, your problem is not with proof-texting, but with the authority of the Bible itself.

“Mainstream Christianity is not recommended if you have religious pre-conditions, such as participation in Hare Krishna, charismatic Pentecostalism, or any Presbyterian court.”

You can be a Catholic, the ultimate mainstream of Christianity, and a Pentecostal. I am. It is called the Charismatic movement. There is no theological conflict here.

More broadly, any kind of religious background (“pre-condition”) is a better segue to Christianity than none.

“Do not be misled by Scientology, Eckankar, or Theosophy,” Xerxes adds.

If these cults are misleading, they are no more likely to mislead Christians than non-Christians, since they do not claim to be Christian. A better fit here could be “Do not be misled by Gnosticism, the prosperity gospel, liberation theology, original blessedness, or feel-good pop psychology masquerading as Christianity.”

“Take Christianity exactly as prescribed – weekly.”

The prescription is moment by moment. “Pray without ceasing.” A “Sundays-only“ Christian is not the model. And there is no such thing as an “overdose” of Christianity. The whole concept of “religious extremism” is profoundly wrongheaded. The average is not the ideal.

Is Xerxes really, as he claims, a Christian? 

Faith and Reason

 

Allegory of Faith, Vermeer

Another possible objection to Christianity, noted in my 1982 diary:

“Religion is unreasoning—blind faith. Truth must be worked out by reasonable discussion among reasonable people. Blind faith is fanaticism, and can only lead to conflict.”

This is a common and deadly misunderstanding. I blame Martin Luther and his doctrine of sola fides, “salvation by faith alone.”

A Protestant once challenged me with what I would do if I decided that some key teaching of the Catholic Church was wrong. He claimed shock at my immediate answer: that I would leave the Church. Had I no faith?

 “Faith” does not mean arbitrary belief, but trust, or having the courage of one’s convictions. As you might say, “I have faith in my wife.” That does not mean you arbitrarily decide she exists, and it is not a conviction arrived at with no evidence.

True faith or belief must be evidence- and reason-based. Catholicism is relentlessly rational.

One believes in whatever religion one believes in, follows whatever faith one follows, because after sincere examination to the best of your abilities, it is the most reasonable account of the universe. 

Anything else makes you a madman, an idiot, or a scoundrel.

Are You Going to Hell?

 

In the video clip. A college student asks Frank Turek whether she is going to hell. 

Turek of course does not want to say so. He dodges the question. But in fact, she is a good example of someone bound for hell.

She says she is a “good” person. She of course hopes this is sufficient. But her definition of “good” is “according to the standards of our society,” and in the expectation that others will treat her the same.

This is what the Bible condemns in the passage 

 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Doing whatever society expects is an abdication of moral responsibility. It is taking society and your own well-being as God. Idolatry is a far graver sin than lying, theft, or murder.

Speaking of which, some of my students troubled me recently. The text was on lying. And the book asked the question, “Is it ever all right to lie?” 

“Sure,” they answered. “If nobody finds out.”

At the beginning of the clip, Turek has just asked the student, “If God exists and if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?” 

She answers “there is no proof that I would be able to accept.” 

When he offers her a book to read on condition that she promise to read it, she at first will not do so. I wonder if Turek meant this as a test. It demonstrates that she is not looking for the truth.

This is the essential qualification for heaven. This is what true faith means: to seek truth. The Christian God is “the way, the truth, and the light.” 

Not wanting truth means rejecting God. And Turek is right in his definition of heaven: heaven is the presence of God, hell is the absence of God. If we reject God in life, we choose for ourselves to go to hell.

I suspect in the end this woman will find her way. I sense a tremor in her voice when she asks about hell. She finally does promise to read the book. Part of her is seeking; otherwise, she would not have come to the talk. She is at least hearing the voice of her good angel.

It is those who will not read the book if offered, who are surely going to hell.

Each of us, before our deaths, perhaps gets that offer.

Doubting Thomas and Blind Faith

There is a disturbing element to last Sunday’s reading. I got distracted yesterday into writing once again about transubstantiation. I meant to write once again about salvation by faith alone.

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But he said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

It seems “Doubting” Thomas is criticized for not believing without evidence. This is a common reading of the passage. He should have believed it all without seeing the evidence for himself.

But this makes no sense. Why should anyone believe anything without evidence? Why should this be considered admirable, instead of merely credulous? If we are to believe without evidence, how do we choose what to believe, and what not to believe? What if we are told the moon is made of emerald Camembert?

I think the passage must be read differently. Those who believe without having seen are being congratulated for their good luck, not commended. “Blessed” can obviously have this meaning. When Jesus says, in the Beatitudes, “blessed are those who mourn,” surely he is not saying we have a moral duty to mourn without cause. “Lucky for you if you can believe without evidence.”

True faith is not blind, and is not an act of arbitrarily believing this or that in order to be saved. That is not faith in God; that is usurping the powers of God. It requires faith to pursue the logic and evidence relentlessly, fearlessly, humbly, wherever it leads. To assert a truth because you want it to be true, because you think it will gain you something to believe it, is the opposite of faith.

Accordingly, as Descartes for one demonstrated, doubt is the foundation of all faith. Thomas is modelling the proper attitude.

Jacob wrestling with God at the Jabbok River demonstrates it too. 

Jacob was left alone, and wrestled with a man there until the breaking of the day. When he saw that he didn’t prevail against him, the man touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained as he wrestled. The man said, “Let me go, for the day breaks.”

Jacob said, “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.”

He said to him, “What is your name?”

He said, “Jacob.”

He said, “Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have fought with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

For this, he won the name that he has passed down to all his descendants, “Israel.” The name means “Wrestles with God.”

Any truly religious person must know such nights. It is the man who is forever engaging with God who has true faith.

True Christianity

RIP

At my brother’s recent funeral (and PBOH, as the Muslims say), somebody spoke with a bit of a sneer of his “spirituality” --said as if in scare quotes -- presumably because he was not a Christian, and might have described himself as an atheist.

Here’s how that rolls out.

First Premise: the job of being human is the job of wholeheartedly seeking the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

This is necessarily so because these three qualities are of intrinsic value. Their value does not derive from elsewhere.

This is also necessarily so because a good and honourable God would ensure that the proper purpose of life would be apparent to all mankind, at all times. It cannot be concealed only in this or that book or community.

The value of truth, moral good, and beauty is, moreover, as a visible fact, recognized worldwide regardless of religions. All of mankind indeed understands these value as self-evident. We may disagree about what is true, or good, but not about the desirability of the truth, or good.

Perhaps, it is true, this is less clear for beauty than for the other two. Just as lower animals cannot appreciate moral issues, some humans seem incapable of appreciating beauty. It requires a more refined soul. However, just as the fact that pigs have no morality does not disprove morality, the fact that some humans cannot appreciate beauty does not discount its value—so long as it is felt by all those who do appreciate it.

Second premise: one is not saved by saying one is Christian and going to church. One is not saved by mouthing the name “Jesus” in prayer. One is saved by accepting the cosmic essence of Jesus, the Logos, which Jesus identifies: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In other words, the moral path, the truth, and inspiration. The good, the true, the beautiful.

One can easily do this as a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Jew, or an atheist.

Jesus said “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice.” At the time, in context, he was no doubt speaking of non-Jews; but literally, he was speaking in general of people who had not yet heard of him. Until and unless all the world is nominally Christian, Jesus has sheep outside the nominally Christian fold.

If you claim to be a Christian, but do not sincerely believe Christian teachings, as in the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed, you are simply a Pharisee, a hypocrite. You are simply dishonest.

If anyone would assert that truth is a matter of exerting the will to believe, let him be anathema. He is not following God; he is declaring himself God.

It follows that, if you sincerely believe there is no God, and say and act so, you are a good Christian in the true sense of the word.

Similarly, if you claim to be a Christian, but do not practice the good as you see it--or do what Christianity teaches even though you do not believe it is good--you are simply a Pharisee, a hypocrite.

James 2: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?”

And if you claim to be a Christian, are capable of appreciating beauty, and do not seek to nurture and sustain it, you are also a Pharisee and a hypocrite. This applies to both natural beauty and the beauty of art. It is the true basis of our ecological duties, for example.

The obligation to be Christian and to pray the name “Jesus Christ” simply follows from the fact that Christianity is true and a reliable moral guide. At the same time, if one is sincerely not personally convinced of that, to pretend otherwise would be deeply sinful.

It follows that my brother was, in fact, a very good Christian, and a far better Christian than one who would sneer at him and his values at his own funeral.

My brother lived his life seeking truth, and to be good, and, perhaps most of all, beauty.

A comment almost always heard from friends is about the utter sincerity of his smile and of his laugh. He was never deceitful, calculating, pretentious, or manipulative. He always lived the truth as he saw it.

Next, they always say what a gift he had for friendship. There are many stories of how much he would do for a friend. Throughout his life as I knew him, he never showed malice to anyone.

And last, he lived his life for beauty, both natural and artistic. His two great loves were music—he was a brilliant guitarist, and fostered other musicians far and wide—and the natural beauty of Canada’s Thousand Islands district, where he chose to live alone in the woods.

I believe my brother Gerry is a saint in heaven.

Pretzels

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Lent is upon us. And here’s an idea for a book someone should do: a Lenten cookbook, featuring and celebrating traditional recipes from across the Christian world. Even if Lenten observance per se is not as common as it once was, vegetarianism surely is, and they are about the same thing. And I do expect Lent to make a comeback as well; it’s time.

Did you know that the classic foods of many lands in fact began as Lenten foods? Consider the pretzel: the idea was to bake a bread without eggs or butter, both then prohibited during Lent as animal products. The classic design is supposed to represent two arms folded in prayer.

How about falafel, tabbouleh, hummus? Considered the ultimate Arab - Muslim foods, they in fact were adopted from pre-existing Christian cultures of the Hellenic Levant. They were, and still are, in Greece, Egypt and Lebanon, traditional Lenten foods.

From the Orthodox world: borscht, kasha, potato pirogues, cabbage rolls.

It all illustrates a wider point: the best foods in most cultures tend to be the ordinary foods of the poorest folk: pizza and pasta in Italy, German sausages, nasi goring in Indonesia, bibimbap (“rice with whatever”) in Korea.

This is because necessity is the mother of invention; because in this world the cream does not regularly rise to the top, and there are far more poor than rich cooks; and because, in the end, God is good. Being good, he has made all the best things as common and cheap as dandelions. Had we but ears to hear, and tongues to taste.

This, no doubt, is one of the lessons of Lent.

The Good Thief

Luke 23:

39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!" 40But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." 42And he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 43And he said to him, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

This passage strikes me as fundamentally important. It tells us exactly how, even though we are sinners, we can be saved—for St. Dismas, “The Good Thief,” is clearly a sinner, yet is saved.

Dismas, the second thief, so named in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, is often also called “The Penitent Thief.” But I don’t think that quite gets to the point of this little parable. Nowhere does Dismas actually say he is sorry for his deeds. Nor is it clear that the first thief is not. For all we can tell, the first thief was sorrier. He just did not want to be punished, which is something else again—and often a good reason to be sorry.

Nor is it that Dismas shows faith, in the usual Protestant sense; that he acknowledges Jesus as his personal savior. We can’t see that he does, he may conceivably see Jesus only as an innocent man, and be humouring him with talk of his kingdom. By contrast, the first thief genuinely does acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, in so many words, and asks for personal salvation—and he is apparently refused.

So what is it that earns St. Dismas the laurel?

It is that the first seeks to avoid punishment for his actions; while for Dismas, justice is more important than his own punishment. Possibly believing that Jesus could save him, he rejects the idea passionately, for the sake of justice. And for the same reason, a thirst for justice, it concerns him most that Jesus is punished as an innocent man.

Blessed are those who thirst after righteousness.

This is the essential requirement for salvation: not that we always avoid sin, nor that we happen to know Jesus personally, but that we endorse righteousness as an absolute value. This is the same as endorsing Jesus Christ himself, for this is what he is—the Way, the Truth, and the Light.