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Sunday, January 22, 2006
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: Glimmerings
I rise in the deep dark each morning. It's by habit, not preference; I've been getting up at 4 AM for so many years that my body has forgotten how to sleep any later than that. Rising so early has its good points -- an extended day, more time to get things done, avoidance of a lot of traffic when I commute -- but it can be a drag, too, for example when there's a television program I or the C.S.O. wants to see, but which doesn't end decently at 9 PM. (Fellow sports nuts will immediately agree: watching the game from tape after it's already happened is massively unsatisfactory, no substitute at all for the real-time event.)
One way or another, it's a habit I'm stuck with. But on Sundays, during the winter, it sometimes carries a side benefit: when I enter the church for Mass it's still dark, but when I emerge afterward, it's sunny and bright. It was like that today.
No, I'm not going to spin any unnecessary allegories around it. I just wanted to enjoy it for a moment more.
Michael Williams, that fiend, has tagged me with an Afterlife Meme: What five questions will you ask Jesus when you meet Him in heaven?
There are 23.17 gazillion (by actual count) dubious assumptions wrapped around that question, but for the sake of a bit of harmless levity, I'll let all of them pass:
- "You interpreted all those times I used Your Name for emphasis as compliments, right? Right?"
- "You didn't really mind that during religion class my thoughts were less about you than about Monica Farinetti, did you? I mean, what was I supposed to do? She sat right in front of me!"
- "That bit with the nuns and the Bolo paddles had nothing to do with You, did it? Please reassure me on that."
- "A few people have been invoking You as backing for their political preferences. Do You have anything...special planned for them? Can I have just a little peek?"
- "Lord, I know each of us has a part to play in Your Plan, but I'm having a really hard time imagining a niche for Howard Dean. How about a little help here?"
I hope to be allowed to continue the conversation beyond that, of course.
Regular readers of these Ruminations already know that I have a great dislike for the conflation of religion and politics. Well, as it happens, my parish publishes a weekly bulletin, to which we are directed for various items of information about parish needs and events. Today's bulletin concludes with a rather odious item, which begins thus:
Price tag for the Iraq warEstimated cost of the Iraq war to date: $226,682,051,319
Cost per U.S. citizen: $906
This bit of offal continues as one might expect: by mentioning all the "good things" the money might have been used to buy: Head Start programs, college scholarships, teachers for the government-run schools, et cetera. It concludes with an outright lie:
Iraqi civilians killed: 27,383 - 30,892
Christians who use their churches' organs of information to promulgate such statements are doing the faith a terrible disservice. Indeed, they're doing their political causes an equal disservice: Decent persons do not approve of attempts to fuse faith to public policy, and will turn against those who do so.
Perhaps they're hoping for the support of the indecent. One can never be sure. But to the unconvinced, please reflect on this: Christ did not exhort His followers to back a particular faction, in politically tumultuous Judea. He merely instructed them in how to live as individuals obedient to the will of God. When the chief priests finally had Him arrested, it was for preaching without their permission.
God is just. The day of reckoning for those who twist His faith to political ends will be terrible indeed.
As long as I'm breathing fire, allow me some heated words on the subject of persons who arrogate Divine authority in railing against things they dislike personally.
It's well known that for many centuries, Christian clerics of all degrees have exhorted the faithful to renounce the pleasures and comforts of this world -- often by surrendering them to those very clerics for their own use. The supposed rationale for this is Christ's own counsel to His Apostles to "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these." [Matthew 6:28-29]
As usual, to make their case, the renounce-the-world types omit the context. Christ was speaking specifically to those who would become His Lieutenants and fellow preachers to the world. Had the Apostles been required to toil for a living, they could not have taken up the Great Commission to teach all nations. They had to trust in Divine sustenance, mediated through the generosity of the peoples to whom they would preach.
The world is as it is because the laws written into its fabric have made it that way. They made Man a temporal creature, with a nature that seeks pleasure and comfort and strains to avoid pain and penury. A just God would not demand that any creature try to live in contradiction to its nature. Christ did not come to Man to take away, but to give:
- Freedom from the petty rules of the Levitical Covenant;
- Freedom from social and political bondage enforced by religious authority;
- Freedom from the classical cycle of sacrifice, in which men's temporal needs were subordinated to religious rituals;
- Freedom from the burden of sin, on the simple condition of repentance;
- Above all the rest, freedom from the sense, nurtured by oppressors of many kinds, that we are unworthy of God's love and acceptance.
Contrast this message of freedom with the dictates of every other religion that has ever existed. It becomes plain that of them all, Christianity -- true Christianity, founded on the two Great Commandments and the acceptance of Christ's mission to Man -- is the only one fit for human consumption.
So why have so many clergymen preached the "virtues" of renunciation and self-abnegation? Because to the extent that they can induce their followers to lower themselves, the clerics will be exalted: in prestige, in power, and in the worldly perquisites they urge their flocks to renounce.
It can make one a bit envious of those Christian sects that explicitly oppose the notion of a specific class of clergy, but they have their own problems, some of which are far worse. Well, we must do what we can.
One final musing for today. As I'm known as a "reconvert" -- I was raised Catholic, fell away for a long period, and returned recently with a much greater appreciation for and joy in the faith than I ever had as a youngster -- and a man of intellect, others who fancy themselves to have a little something between the ears often quiz me about my return to the church. Sometimes they're rather aggressive about it, for example: "How could someone as smart as you put any stock in all this mystical crap?" The unspoken "once you'd managed to shuck it" reverberates behind every such query.
Time was, I made the mistake of arguing for my beliefs. That's a definite wrong turning. Christianity is a premise. One cannot argue for a premise; one can only assert it. My questioners hold a contrary premise, and have evaluated mine as "irrational." There's simply no ground for an argument there.
But it would be wrong not to respond. So recently I've started going for the emotional jugular:
"When you unlearn your conviction of unworthiness, perhaps you'll put some stock in it, too. It's only the sense that we aren't worth loving that prevents us from accepting love. Be patient. You'll get there."
This might be slightly naughty of me, but it follows an insight from Dr. Eric Berne's classic Games People Play. Berne classified the positions from which we make our "plays" into Parent, Adult, and Child. The original "how can you believe in this crap" thrust is plainly a Parent-to-Child sally, whose speaker assumes a superior degree of wisdom and maturity. If one is determined not to play the game, whose object is almost always to confirm the superior wisdom and maturity of the initiator, one must "cross his wires" with a Parent-to-Child response. At any rate, it truncates a lot of irritating conversations that might otherwise drag on for hours.
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
Nice, thanks!
Posted by Michael Williams on 01/22/2006 at 01:32 PMThough by all (biblical) accounts, Christ is assumed to be a just and loving (Son of) God, in my case I don’t see the chance to offer up any questions. I imagine it to be a lot more of the *Yes Sir*....*Yes Sir*....*Your are absolutly right Sir*....my biggest hope is that he has one heck of a sense of humor...or I don’t stand a chance. You hit the ball outta the park with todays bits o wisdom...thanks for the great read.
Posted by Guy S. on 01/22/2006 at 01:52 PM"May God bless and keep you all.”
Thanks. I need all the help I can get.
I play that “what would you ask G-d” game in my head a lot. It helps me to be humble and remember
“As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”Isaiah 55:9
Posted by og on 01/22/2006 at 02:05 PMFaith is such a paradox. It can move mountains but can shatter like fine crystal.
Your words give me hope that faith can be reborn. Thank you.
Posted by on 01/23/2006 at 02:49 PM
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