my-incoherent-babbling

Reflections on Jany 12 readings

Sun, 05 Jan 2014 16:37:37 +0100

January 12, 2014

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
Lectionary: 21

Thus says the LORD:
Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,
upon whom I have put my spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations,
not crying out, not shouting,
not making his voice heard in the street.
a bruised reed he shall not break,
and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,
until he establishes justice on the earth;
the coastlands will wait for his teaching.

I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice,
I have grasped you by the hand;
I formed you, and set you
as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

Responsorial Psalm ps 29:1-2, 3-4, 3, 9-10

R/ (11b) The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Give to the LORD, you sons of God,
give to the LORD glory and praise,
Give to the LORD the glory due his name;
adore the LORD in holy attire.
R/ The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters,
the LORD, over vast waters.
The voice of the LORD is mighty;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
R/ The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The God of glory thunders,
and in his temple all say, “Glory!”
The LORD is enthroned above the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as king forever.
R/ The Lord will bless his people with peace.

reading 2 acts 10:34-38

Peter proceeded to speak to those gathered
in the house of Cornelius, saying:
“In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.
Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly
is acceptable to him.
You know the word that he sent to the Israelites
as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all,
what has happened all over Judea,
beginning in Galilee after the baptism
that John preached,
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Spirit and power.
He went about doing good
and healing all those oppressed by the devil,
for God was with him.”

Gospel mt 3:13-17

Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan
to be baptized by him.
John tried to prevent him, saying,
“I need to be baptized by you,
and yet you are coming to me?”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us
to fulfill all righteousness.”
Then he allowed him.
After Jesus was baptized,
he came up from the water and behold,
the heavens were opened for him,
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and coming upon him.
And a voice came from the heavens, saying,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

I would have to admit something to you - that may startle you. But God has not fulfilled my expectations. This may be a hard to hear, but I must be honest with you. God has not fulfilled my expectations. There, I said it! And if you were to be honest with yourselves, you would admit that God has not fulfilled your expectations. St. John the Baptist would admit this.

John was the cousin of Jesus, and no doubt that his mother, St Elizabeth, would have told him that Mary was the mother of their Lord. John probably met Jesus at family gatherings as they were growing up. This all motivated John to give up everything in the world in his adulthood and prepare for the time that Jesus would enter into His kingdom.

He became a celibate; he never married. This was a common practice in the Old Testament for prophets called by God. They renounced ever from being with a woman. All the prophets in the Old Testament were celibates. The only exception to this was the prophet Hosea. It was not that marriage was sinful. In fact, marriage is good. God has instituted marriage. It is one of the seven sacraments of the Church. But although marriage is good, celibacy is better. If one can handle celibacy, it can bring the person closer to God. And John wanted that closeness to God. He gave up all things that the world had to offer, and went to live in the wilderness. He wore a scratchy camel-hair shirt and lived on locusts and honey. This was an extreme form of mortification, which I would not recommend anyone to do today. But drastic measures are required for those drastic times. John knew that his cousin was the promised Messiah. Any day now he would announce his kingship to the Jews and destroy the Roman oppressors. There would be a kingdom of peace. This was St. John’s expectations. It was the expectations of all the Jews at that time.

Imagine the scene of St. John the Baptist, baptizing people at the River Jordan. St. John was preaching repentance, which is the turning away from their sins and turning back to God. The people would even confess their sins aloud. And John would then baptize them, which was a symbol of them turning away from their sins toward God. The baptism symbolized that their sins were washed away and their rising out of the water symbolized their newness of life with God. As St John baptized each person in line, his next one was his cousin Jesus. Ah, finally Jesus would reveal Himself to everyone in all His glory. He would announce that He is the Christ, the long-expected Messiah. But – wait a minute! No, this cannot be! He is not here to announce that He is the Messiah! He is here to be BAPTIZED! No, tell me that this is not true, Jesus! This is not what I expected of you! – so thought St John. I should be baptized by you, Lord! That is what I expected! But YOU baptized by ME! This cannot be!

What is that Lord? Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness? Very well, Lord! Have it your way, Lord. You are the potter and I am the clay! I don’t understand why you are doing this. I don’t understand why you are telling me to do this! I know you have no need to be baptized. You are sinless. You have no sins from which to repent. But I submit to your will, Lord.

After Jesus was baptized, the heavens opened. The Holy Spirit came as a dove and rested on Jesus. The Father spoke from heaven “This is my beloved Son, on whom I am well-pleased”. The other two Persons of the Trinity showed the approval on what Jesus had done. This was Jesus’ first public act of humility. Jesus was always humbly obedient to His heavenly father. And He was also humbly obedient to his parent’s, Joseph and Mary. But this was the first time that the public saw his humility and his obedience. There will be other times they will see it – culminated in Christ’s death on the cross. But this is the first time the public saw it.

By Jesus being baptized, this changed the role of baptism. His divine life touched the waters so that the waters touch us now with divine life. John baptized with water only. But now we are baptized with water and the Holy Spirit – so that the Spirit too will rest on us. John’s baptism was only a symbol of the newness of life. But our baptism now actually brings us the newness of life. It causes us to be born again into a new life in Christ.

As St. John had false expectations about the coming Messiah, so we must reflect in what ways we have false expectations of the Lord. Maybe we expect the Lord to protect us from any suffering. But Christ Himself suffered. And many of His saints have suffered, and even suffered martyrdom. Maybe we expect the Lord will tolerate any mortal sins we may be doing. Maybe we expect our Lord not to demand that we go to Confession to be forgiven. Maybe we expect our Lord to be more tolerant of sexual sins because our society is more tolerant of sexual sins. Maybe we expect that our Lord would honor divorce papers issued by a civil court and that an annulment from the Church is not necessary. In other words, we expect that God be just like us. We expect God to think like us, and treat us exactly the way we would treat us. But God is not us. His ways are not our ways. We must humble ourselves to God and allow Him to reveal Himself through his Church, and obey Him accordingly.

If we humbly obey God, then God will appear to us in judgment and say to us “This is my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased”. Place no expectations on God. Let God be God. Then at the end, God will meet more than what we could have possibly expected.

I could never have been a successful Protestant minister

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 17:37:28 +0100

When I was a Protestant minister, I thought that it was a matter of time that I would be a mega-church pastor.
But now I realize that would not be possible. Mega-church preachers give the people what they want, not what they need. They do this in two areas:

1. They preach that you can know for absolute certainty that you are saved and can never lose their salvation.

2. They preach that God will make you successful in this life - that may mean successful in your occupation, having a lot of money, have a successful marriage or being healthy (God healing you from a disease).

These two go hand-in-hand. If you are absolutely certain you are saved and you can never lose it, then why bother even going that mega-church? You might as well as stay home and watch football on Sundays. Well, that will not do, of course. So that motivation to still live for God and continue to go to church is that if you do not, God will punish you. He will not punish you for eternity, but He will punish in the here and now. So if you want to live the good life now, then you need to live for God. It does not mean you will never face any trial, but that is only for a season. Eventually, God will make your life happy now.

Does Science show that God is irrelevant?

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 16:59:26 +0100

Historically, there have been two views of how God interacted with the universe.

One view is that God is the direct cause of everything that happened. This view has been taught by Calvinism, Protestant Fundamentalism and Islam. For instance, the Muslim would say that if shoot an arrow into a bulls-eye, it had nothing to do with your marksmanship or the wind or the distance. It was merely Allah’s will. Calvinists would see that everything that happens is directly God’s will.

The other view is the Catholic view. St Thomas Aquinas taught that God is not the direct cause of everything. He is the ultimate cause, but there are secondary causes. Catholic thinker John Buridan interpreted Genesis chapters of God rested on the seventh day that God established the scientific laws of the first six days (the Catholic Church does not take a literal interpretation of “days”) and then lets the natural process work itself out. Now and then God may decide to intervene in the natural process, which is what we call a miracle. But most of the time, the world runs on scientific principles. It was this view that allowed science to get off the ground. The Catholic scientists in the Middle Ages laid the groundwork for modern science.

Any scientific discovery only refutes the first view – that God directly caused everything to happen. It only made the first view of God superfluous. But it has never refuted the Catholic view, which has been taught by the Church since the Middle Ages. Science has validated the Catholic view over against traditional Protestantism and Islam.

Protestantism EXPOSED

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:19:03 +0100

In my years as a Protestant Evangelical Christian, I sometimes taught classes at retreat. I remember in my college years I taught a retreat class on what it meant to be justified by faith alone. I argued that we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ. God will not deal with us according to our righteousness, but according to the righteousness of Christ. Christ lived the perfect life for us. We will be rewarded, not according to our deeds, but by the vicarious obedience of Christ. I taught that the implication of this is that we will all receive the same amount of rewards, because all our rewards were not based on anything we had done, but only what Christ had done. It is sort of like heavenly communism. We are all treated equally. It did not matter if you were a great man or woman of God, or if you were a carnal, lukewarm Christian. If you made it to glory through your faith in Christ, you would receive as much glory as the most saintly Christian.

After the class, a Moody Bible student came up to talk to me further. He accused me of teaching heresy! I was flabbergasted! Nobody ever accused of heresy before! I decided to ask the keynote speaker at the retreat. His name was Dr. Lloyd Perry, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I explained to him what I taught and asked him if I had taught heresy.

“Yep!”, he said. “That is heresy. There are differing rewards at the end depending on how we live now.”

“Well, could you show me in the Bible?” I asked.

“Well, eh, I cannot pop up a verse just like that!” But he gave it the good old college try. His Bible had a compact concordance in the back, so he quickly found a passage which he thought would settle the issue.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

2 Cor 5:10

But I had a problem with this verse. It says that we receive what is due to us “whether good or bad”. But if we are rewarded for our bad deeds, then that sounds very much like we Christians could experience some kind of punishment. So I asked Dr. Perry what that meant.

“Well, it seems reasonable to me, that a Christian who is saved by the grace, but did not really live for God, would experience some kind of pain for the way he lived.”

I could not believe he actually said that.

“That’s Purgatory!” I then exclaimed.

“NO! IT’S NOT!!!” Dr. Perry was then very mad of being accused of such a Catholic notion. This sort of ended our discussion, especially since our discussion was attracting fellow retreaters. He promised me that he would mail me a full explanation of the Biblical position of rewards, which he assured me was not purgatory, although he never explained how it was different. I gave him my address, but I never received anything from him.

Now, this is not just some ordinary evangelical Christian. This is a professor at one of the most respected evangelical seminaries in Protestantism, Trinity Evangelical Divinity Schools (TEDS) of Deerfield, which I myself attended later. It is well-known for its conservatism. And yet he believed that some Christians will experience pain and suffering after judgment. This, to me, sounds like purgatory. If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it is probably a duck.

I suspect that there are more Protestants than we think who believe in purgatory but just do not call it so.

Man! Was I Wrong!

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:20:47 +0100

Iwas totally wrong about Medjugorje. I have tried to take anything that had written up until now out of this web site. I now believe that the phenomenom at Medjugorje is either a hoax or diabolical - probably a mixture of both.

This is why I changed my mind on Medjugorje:

The last two bishops, Bishops Zanic and Previc, had said that these are not true apparitions of Mary. This is enough for me. The local bishop has full authority to rule on matters such as this. For instance, just a few months ago, we have our first Church-approved Marian apparition in the US, in Champion, Wisconsin. It was not approved by the pope but the local bishop of Champion. So if an apparition can be approved by the local bishop and then be considered Church-approved, then an alleged apparition rejected by the local bishop should be considered rejected by the Church. Of course, the pope can always overrule the bishop, but until that happens we should honor what is said by the bishop who has jurisdiction over the place where the apparition occurred. It does not matter if a bishop in another diocese approves of it – he does not have jurisdiction in another diocese.

In all the other Church-approved apparitions, Mary instructed the visionaries to be fully submissive to their bishop. But in Medjurgorje, the visionaries and the Franciscan priests have been in disobedience to the bishop. This is a grave sin! There is no way that the real Mary would be behind this! The bishop has commanded that the apparition be not promoted in any way, and the no one go to Medjugorje because of these alleged apparitions. But this has been ignored.

Another troubling thing is its theology. “Mary” told the visionaries that all religions are the same. This is heresy. Although there may me an element of truth in all religions, only in the Catholic Church do we have the fullness of truth. “Mary” also said that those in heaven are there in soul and body. This is false. We do not receive our resurrected bodies until the end when Christ returns. “Mary” said we can read The Poem of the Man-God (even the title is troubling – Jesus is God-Man, not Man-God). But the Catholic Church placed this book on the Index of Forbidden Books. “Mary” told the visionaries that after the pope she is second in the hierarchy of the Church. But she is not in the hierarchy at all!

One troubling incident is that there were allegations against one of the Franciscan priests, Fr. Vego, of having sex with a nun. The Pope himself took away all of Fr Vego’s priestly duties. But “Mary” told Fr. Vego through the missionaries to defy the Pope and continue on - since he was innocent. How could the real Mary ever tell someone to defy the pope? As it turned out, this nun became pregnant, and Fr.
Vego then left the priesthood and married her. Oops! I guess “Mary” was wrong; Fr Vego was guilty as charged!

What is also troubling is that the visionaries say that they can summon “Mary” at will, often during their speaking engagements. The Bible condemns us conjuring up the dead, but yet these visionaries can conjure up “Mary” whenever they want to – especially when there is an audience! But in Church-approved apparitions, Mary appears to the visionaries when she wants to (or actually when God wills). It is not based on when the visionaries want her to appear.

Whenever the visionaries were in a trance, they said that all they could see was Mary. But then during one trance, a skeptic took his two fingers and moved toward one of the visionaries as if to poke her eyes. The visionary jerked her head back. She later explained that she did not see these fingers coming towards her, but that Mary almost dropped the infant Jesus and she was trying to catch Him. But how could the Immaculate Mary drop her Son? And since Jesus is God, how could that affect Him anyway? And if she was trying to catch Jesus would she not have lunged forward and not backward?

Also, in the Church-approved apparitions, the visionaries never capitalized on their visions for their own profit. For instance, St Bernadette (Lourdes) and St Lucia (Fatima) became nuns. But the Medjugorje visionaries have expensive cars and homes because of all the money they made.

True, many people went to Medjugorje and became closer to God. But this does not prove the validity of Medjugorje anymore than Protestants who are close to God validates Protestantism. God is all merciful. If someone sincerely seeks God, even if it is based on some false premises, God will still have pity on such a soul and draw that person to Himself.

True, some rosaries miraculously changed color. And many saw the sun spinning. But the Bible says that the devil can masquarade as an angel of light. He can produce miracles, too! And although, many saw the sun spinning, there were some who permanently damaged their eyes by staring into the sun. Would the real Mary be part of that.

So what is the motivation behind this? For the visionaries, it is simple – money! For the Devil, it is also simple – disobedience and schism. I believe that eventually the Vatican will rule that this is false. And
I think that millions will disobey the pope and continue their devotions to Medjugorje. They may even start their own church – the Medjugorje Church. This is Satan’s plan.

Martha Church and Mary Church

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 09:35:50 +0100

Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house.

And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching.

But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me."

But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things;

one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her."

Luke 10:38 – 42

There are two kinds of churches – the Martha Church and the Mary Church.

The Martha Church has a lot of activities. The worship is very noisy (“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord”) and fast-paced. They have a lot of things going on: door-to evangelism, neighborhood Bible-Studies, children programs, etc. The commitment and spirituality of a Christian is judged by how involved he or she is in church activities.

The Mary Church is like Martha’s sister, Mary of Bethany (this is not to be confused with the Virgin Mary or Mary Magdalene). Mary just wanted to sit at the feet of Jesus. Martha did not understand this – there was work to be done. But Jesus said that Mary chose the good portion.

In my exposure to Protestant churches and the Catholic Church, this Bible passage helped me to understand the crucial difference between Protestant churches and the Catholic Church. Protestant churches tend to be the Martha churches – very big on organization and activity. The Catholic Church tends to be the Mary church. This does not mean that there is no activity in the Catholic Church, but that is not their emphasis.

I used to think that the Catholic Mass was dull. There were no shouts of joy. The priest did not pound on the pulpit and yell at us. No, instead it was so quiet at times that you could hear a pin drop. I still had the Martha mentality. I wanted noise. I wanted excitement. But Catholic Church was reflecting what God said in Psalm 4:10 – “Be still and know that I am God”. The most important activity the Catholic can do besides Mass is Eucharistic Adoration. That is sitting still in front of the Eucharist and just adoring Christ – just as Mary of Bethany sat at His feet and adored Him.

I have gone to Catholic retreats and Protestant retreats. At Protestant retreats, the time is filled up with activities, and getting to know others. But Catholic retreats are different. You are expected to stay silent through the whole retreat. It is a time of reflection and devotion to Christ.

This is why there is such a big rift between Protestants and Catholics about salvation. When a Protestant automatically hears from a Catholic that we are saved by faith and works, the Protestant automatically interprets that to mean that we are saved by doing busy activities. The Protestant thinks that the Catholic gospel is performing a checklist of rules. But this is not what we Catholics means when we say we are saved by our works as well as our faith. We agree with the Protestants that external observances of the law could never save us. The Catholics Church teaches that we are saved by faith apart from works of the law.But we are not saved by faith apart from works of love. Rather, we must have love working through faith. True, if we love God we will keep His commandments. But we can keep His commandments and still not have a love for God. And if this is the case, we are living by the letter of the law and not the spirit. The letter of the law kills, but the spirit gives life.

This is why Protestants have such a big problem with the Blessed Virgin Mary. They do not understand why she is exalted to Queen of heaven. After all, she did nothing that spectacular. She did not part the Red Sea as Moses did. She was not a great preacher like John the Baptist or Peter. She was not a great theologian like Paul. Even the Virgin Mary marveled that God regarded the low estate of His handmaid.

But just like Mary of Bethany, the Blessed Virgin was completely devoted to God. She pondered everything about her Son in her heart. Her attitude always was that she was the maid servant of the Lord, and let everything be done to her according to His word. She had a perfect devotion to her Son. She is not exalted because she did spectacular things. She was exalted because she was devoted to God.

When I was no longer a Protestant minister, I was very depressed that I would never do great things for God. I will never be a preacher again. But as a Catholic, I realized that God is not impressed by my doing spectacular things for Him. He is more pleased by my having a quiet, obedient, loving devotion to Him.

Dean Koontz

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:04:59 +0100

I just recently found out that best-selling author Dean Koontz is a devout Catholic who converted from Protestantism. I was reading an interview of his conversion, and he wrote something that hit home to me.

Catholicism permits a view of life that sees mystery and wonder in all things, which Protestantism does not easily allow. As a Catholic, I saw the world as being more mysterious, more organic and less mechanical than it had seemed to me previously, and I had a more direct connection with God.

http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/2013

I found this too be so true. Being a Catholic has opened to me an enchanted world, a world of mystery and wonder! For instance, the first Friday of every month, my church has 24-hour perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. People sign up for an hour throughout that period. The host is exposed in front of the chapel, and people quietly come into that chapel throughout that 24-hour period. Some people sit, some kneel in from of the Blessed Sacrament, some silently pray the Rosary, and some read a devotional book. But whatever they do, you can hear a pin drop. That is because we take Jesus at His word when He held up the bread and said “This is my body”. After the bread is consecrated by the priest, it is the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus in His divinity is everywhere. But Jesus in His humanity is not everywhere, just in special places. Jesus in His humanity is in heaven; He will also come again in His humanity in the end time. But now in the present with us His humanity is in the form of bread. This is so like Him to do this. 2,000 years ago He came to be with us by humbling Himself by giving up His throne for a while and being a mere man, just the son of carpenter and a poor peasant. Now He humbles Himself by coming to be us in a much lower form – by being in the form of inanimate bread!

We just had Christmas. I recall the story of the shepherds leaving the sheep and the wise men leaving their countries just to behold the greatest wonder of the world – God coming down as a newborn baby! They came to adore the Christ-child. O come let us adore Him! How much I used to wish that I could have been there! But as I knelt in front of the Eucharist, I realized I was experiencing something just as good, maybe even better. Just as shepherds gazed into the manger, so I can gaze into the Eucharist. In both cases, it shows Christ’s humility and desire to be with us. But when the shepherds peered into the manger, I do not think they understood that they were looking at God in the flesh. We Catholics have a better understanding of the great miracle that is happening right before us when we adore Christ in the Eucharist.

There are other wonders that we have. We have the Blessed Virgin Mary, with her appearances at Lourdes and at Fatima. We also have the communion of the saints. The saints pray for us, we pray for the holy souls in purgatory, and the souls in purgatory pray for us when they get to heaven. We Catholics even talk to our guardian angels. This all gives me more of the sense of an enchanted world.

This does not mean that we Catholics just believe in childish fairy tales! Koontz wrote of his conversion to Catholicism:

I did become engaged, more and more as the years went by, by the intellectual rigor that lies behind the Catholic Church. A lot of people will possibly laugh at that but if you know St. Thomas Aquinas and some of the other famous writers of the Church — or laymen who wrote brilliantly from a Catholic perspective like G.K. Chesterton — then you understand what I’m talking about. There is a deep intellectual basis behind it and that always appealed to me.

http://catholicexchange.com/2009/08/01/120925/

This also hit home with my conversion experience. Sometimes as an evangelical, I would wince at some of the anti-intellectual rants I heard from my fellow evangelicals. It would be embarrassing at times. But I found in Catholicism this deep intellectual foundation that Dean Koontz talked about. I found this intellectual tradition in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Henry New\man, G. K. Chesterton, etc.

Koontz went on the say at the same website:

The birth of science comes out of the Catholic Church. People always say, "No, no, Galileo." They don’t really know the history; they just know talking points. The reality is through various times in the Catholic Church; various sciences were founded and encouraged. There is no distance between (faith and science) except for what people try to make for political reasons.

Without the Catholic faith, we would never have had science. So even though the Catholic faith gives us the sense of mystery in the world, the Catholic faith gave us the tools needed to unlock some of those mysteries. The tools we needed was the faith that God created the world and we can expect law and order in the universe because of this. No other religion except the Judeo-Christian religion held onto that simple postulate. Paganism saw each individual aspect of the world was caused by the peculiar whim of a particular god. The Eastern religion did not see the world as an entity separate from God. In fact, the East would doubt that the physical world even existed. If atheism was around at that time, atheism would not have given man a workable belief system to do science. Atheism teaches that since there is no God, everything happened by chance. If everything happened by chance, then it would be pointless to do science. To ask why things happen the way they do implies an underlying purpose of why things happen as they do. Atheists no doubt protest to my appraisal of atheism. But the only reason atheists today accept modern science is because science has been proven to work. In the Middle Ages, they did not know yet that science would work; that came centuries later. All they had to hold onto was that God created the world with law and order in it. From this idea science became workable.

As it was for Dean Koontz, I re-gained my child-like wonder of the world and a strong intellectual foundation in the Catholic faith.

Am I the Lone Ranger in Catholicism?

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:08:27 +0100

I recently went to see some evangelical friends that I have not seen for twenty years. The last time they saw me I was a fellow evangelical Christian. They were absolutely shocked that I was now a Catholic. We had a very interesting discussion. Before we parted, one of my friends, an ex-Catholic, said “Paul, you are first Catholic I ever met who was on fire for God. All the other Catholics were not on fire for God at all! That is why I left.” I did not realize it at the time, but this was his last argument, to him the strongest argument, against Catholicism.

What he was saying was that I was an anomally, an exception to the rule which merely proves that rule. Catholicism to my friend is dead, dry legalism. That is what he saw in all the Catholics he experienced. He now sees me, who as a Catholic has a relationship with God. His argument is that I am not a typical example of what Catholicism is all about, since I am just one person. All the others truly reflect Catholicism. Is this a valid argument? Should we judge what Catholicism is by the majority of Catholics we see? I think not.

Evangelical Christians take up only a minor segment of Protestant Christianity. There are all kinds of Protestants – Lutheran, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, etc. Within any Protestant denomination there is, according to evangelical Christians, a small remnant of genuine “born-again” Christians. Most of Christianity is made up of merely professing Christians, not the “born-again” kind. I recall when Jimmy Carter ran for president, and said he was a born again. The media was all abuzz about this. What is this “born-again”? They never heard it before this.

But evangelical, born-again Christians do not consider themselves to be an anomally. Instead, they consider their brand of Christianity to be what Christianity is all about. To them, they have captured the essence of Christianity.

A wise Catholic friend once told me that there is a tendency to compare the best of Protestantism to the worst of Catholicism. They look at the worst of Catholicism (the Crusades, the Inquisition, the child-molestation scandal, the nominal Catholics who do not even bother to go to church) and they compare that to the best of Protestantism (the born-again Christians who are on fire for God). But that is an unfair criticism. We should compare the best of Catholicism (the Catholic saints throughout the ages, EWTN, Bishop Futon Sheen, Father John Corapi) to the best of Protestantism (John Wesley, Billy Graham, “born-again” Christians). Or we should compare the worst of Catholicism (already mentioned) to the worst of Protestantism (the Salem witch trials, slavery among Protestants before the Civil War and intense racism afterward in the Bible-belt South, the nominal Protestants who do not bother to go to church). If we compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, Catholicism comes up just as well as Protestantism, maybe even a little better.

Yes, my brand of Catholicism is not what a person typically sees among Catholics. And the brand of Christianity shown by born-again Christians is not what a person sees among mainstream Protestantism. There has been a strand of Catholics throughout the centuries that have shared my vision of what it means to be a Catholic. This vision has been maintain throughout history by most of the Church’s popes, bishops, and priests, by its religious orders who have remained faithful to the magisterium, by its saints, by EWTN, and by laypeople who are quietly serving God in His Church. So I am not alone.

The Thrill Of Adventure and Danger

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:12:43 +0100

We thrive on taking risks and to a certain extent experiencing danger.

People enjoy mountain-climbing, skiing, parachute-jumping, running with the bulls and bungee-jumping because there is a certain amount of danger in them. It is not that these people wish to die; it is just that they receive an exhilarating feeling of facing danger and surviving. To a much lower extent we seek this sense of danger when we go on a roller coaster. People enjoy gambling because of an element of risk.

We enjoy novels and movies where we can vicariously experience the dangers of the characters. This is why we love stories about horror and action. Imagine how boring it would be if all our books and movies involved no risk or danger to the characters! Imagine how it would be if every book had a happy ending!

Imagine how boring life would be without any risks! This is why a person who starts his own business enjoys going to work every morning more than the one who is stuck in a 9-to-5 job. The business could fail; there is a danger that the person may lose his business. But that is the adrenaline rush! It COULD fail, but that just makes it all the sweeter when it does not.

That is why communism failed. It offered its people total security. There was not the risk of losing their jobs or receiving less pay. There was no risk of failing and no reward in succeeding. But the lack of risk takes away our edge. We become complacent and bored.

This is another reason I appreciate my Catholic faith. The Catholic Church teaches that no one can be absolutely sure of their salvation. For many Protestants, they see this as a really depressing idea. But I see that as exciting!

Every day I face dangers far more than James Bond ever experienced fighting the bad guys. My life makes James Bond’s life look boring in comparison! Where James Bonds risks his life fighting international spies, I risk my very soul in fighting Satan and his demons. True, evangelical Protestants also see this life as a spiritual battle against the devil, but this is more like neighborhood kids playing war then an actual war. In an actual war, you could die. I view my spiritual war with the Devil where it is possible that I could lose my soul. Please do not misunderstand me. The fight we are fighting is a good fight. Through Christ we are more than conquerors! Greater is He who in us than he who is in the world. But still, there are casualties. There are individuals who have lost the faith and lost their souls, which is why we must be on guard and put on the whole armor of God.

Ever since I realized how I could possibly lose my soul to the devil, I see my life as a thrilling battle. Complacency breads boredom and mediocrity. If you are bored at church, ask yourself this thing. Do you see these spiritual dangers around you every day? If you are bored at work or at home, do you see that the devil is prowling around you seeking an opportunity to devour you? If you understand this, you will see life is filled with danger and intrigue. It is more than a matter of life and death. It is a matter of your every soul.

All this attraction we have with danger is because God has planted this within us. We have an innate desire that Frodo in The Lord of the Rings had when he left that village of complacency and security to fight enemies, realizing that danger is ever near him. We are all called to be Crusaders for the Kingdom of God. What is at stake is more than any danger we can experience in any other battle. What is at stake is the loss of our very souls. When we keep this in mind, our Christian lives can never be complacent and dull. The Christian life is a great adventure. But any adventure implies a certain amount of danger.

Sin That Leads To Death

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:13:27 +0100

If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that.

1 John 5:16

Not All Sins Are Equal

As a Protestant, this verse was always troubling to me. Protestantism rejects the Catholic view that there are two types of sins – mortal and venial. Protestantism teaches that a sin is a sin. All sin makes us equally culpable in the sight of God

But this does not make any sense at all. Think about it. If all sin is equally bad in the sight of God, then a serial killer is no worse than someone who has a problem with his temper. A man who molests children is no more evil that a person who has problem over-eating. Committing adultery is no more grave that telling a white lie. If our prison system was like this, we would treat a jay-walker the same way as we treat a murderer.

And that Protestant view does not make sense in view of the Bible. The Bible teaches in many places that not all sin is equal. Jesus said that the one who betrayed him committed the greater sin (John 19:11). Jesus accused the Pharisees of straining the gnat and swallowing the camel (Matthew 23:24), inferring that they concentrated more on the venial sins than on the grave ones. Jesus said God would be more lenient upon Sodom than on the religious leaders at His time(Luke 10:12), meaning that their sins were more grave . And Jesus said that he who sins ignorantly will receive a few whippings, but he who sins whippings.

All this shows that the Bible does teach that not all sins are equally bad to God. But this verse here makes that even more explicit. Here John writes that there are sins that lead to death, and there are other sins that do not. He also writes that a brother, obviously meaning a fellow brother in Christ, can commit a sin that leads to death. This is what we Catholics call mortal sin. It is mortal, because it leads to death.

My Protestant friends would argue that this sin that leads to death is not referring to spiritual death, but to physical death. They would point to 1 Corinthians, where Paul said that some became sick and died because of their sins. I have three responses: This does not fit what happens in real life, it does not fit the immediate context of John’s letter, and it does not fit the immediate context of this verse.

This does not fit real life. As the son goes, “Only the Good Die Young”. Many godly people get sick and die young, and many ungodly people stay healthy and live a long life. The Protestant interpretation falls right in the trap of the health and wealth gospel. If sin leads to physical death, then that must mean that anyone who dies young died as a punishment from God for his sin. But this goes against the teachings of Christ, who said that God gives the sun and rain on the just and the unjust. In reality, we all know Christians who have lived in sin and lived very long lives, and we have known some very godly Christians who have lived short lives.

This also does not fit the context of John’s letter or even his gospel. He rarely used the words “death” or “life” in terms of physical death or physical life. In his gospel, he wrote that God sent His Son so that we may have eternal life (John 3:16). He who believes in Christ has passed out of death and into life (John 5:24). If a man keeps Jesus’ word he shall not see death (John 5:22). John did write of the physical death of Jesus (John 21:19), but John overall concern for us is not with physical death spiritual and death. Christ died physically so that we may not die spiritually and eternally. He who eats His flesh and drink His blood shall never die, obviously meaning not that he will ever experience physical death, but that he will not be eternally separated from God. When Jesus talked about the physical death of Lazarus, He only called it sleeping (John 11:11). This is also shown his letter. We know we have passed from death to life, if we love the brethren (1John 3:14). This is obviously not referring to physical death.

It does not fit the immediate context of this verse. It says “If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life”. God giving someone life cannot be referring to physical life. It must mean that God has given him life spiritually. So if life is referring to spiritual life, then death must be referring to spiritual death.

For these three above reasons, I think that this passage is not saying that there certain sins that lead to an early physical death to a Christian, but that there are certain sin that lead to spiritual death, eternal separation from God.

In My Humble Opinion

There is one phrase in this passage I still find troubling. It says “There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that.” This seems troubling for both a Protestant and a Catholic. It just does not sound right that there are conditions where it would be pointless to pray for someone – that we do not have to pray for someone who committed a sin leading to death. This does not sit well with me. We should always pray for everyone. The more grave a sin a person commits, the more that person needs our prayers. As we pray in the Rosary, we say “Lead all souls into heaven, especially those who are most need of Thy mercy”. So how can John write this?

I am now giving my own private interpretation. Now, this may come as a shock to some Protestants, because I am using my own private interpretation of scripture. But this reaction would be a misunderstanding of the Catholic view. Catholics are encouraged to read the Bible for themselves. The Church does not tell us how to read each verse in the Bible. It is more like a huge fenced-in playground. We are free to romp and play, to use our own imaginations and reasoning, to experience the freedom in Christ, and read the Bible with the guidance of the Holy Spirit – as long as we stay within the boundaries of the fence constructed by the Church. So my interpretation of this verse is within the boundaries of the Church, but is not specifically taught by the Church. So what I present here is not Catholic teaching. It is only my opinion. If you disagree with me, that is fine. I admit that my interpretation could be wrong.

There is one thing that computer programming has taught me – never to assume anything. There are many times I assumed that a bug was because of certain problem, only to find out after many painstaking hours that the problem was somewhere else that I assumed was okay. From this experience, I learned to analyze what were my basic assumptions were. In this passage, I started to analyze that my assumption was that this sinner John is writing about is still alive. But what if that assumption was false? What if this sinner had already passed away? So let me paraphrase this passage assuming that John is writing about someone who passed away:

If anyone saw his brother was committing a sin that does not lead to death and that brother passed away, he should pray and God will give him heavenly life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that.

So if that is what John is writing, then that would mean that we can pray for a brother in Christ who is in purgatory that God would bring him into heaven. But it is pointless to pray for a brother who committed mortal sin, because he is condemned for all eternity.

This fits with the teachings of the Church. For instance, Pope Benedict XIV wrote of those who had committed mortal sin:

The sanctions and penalties provided for by your Albanian council and by Our letter mentioned above must be fully applied in their case: that is, they must be declared unfit to receive the Sacraments in their lifetime, and if they die unrepentant, to benefit from prayers after death.

On Christians using Mohhommaden Names

The Pope declared that those who die unrepentant of mortal sin are unfit to benefit from prayers after death. That coincides with John writing that he is not commanding us to pray for those die in mortal sin.

I admit that this interpretation is somewhat strained. After all, nowhere in the text does it say that this brother in Christ has passed away. But no matter how one interprets this passage, I think it would be strained. There is just not an easy way to interpret how in certain conditions we do not have pray for someone. Also, we do not know if John is responding to a question sent to him. For all we know, someone could have asked him “John, should we continue to pray for people after they die that they may enter the heavenly life no matter how sinful they may have lived?” If such a question was asked, then John may have not seen the need to explain this in fuller detail.

This of course is the problem with private interpretation of scripture. None
of us knows what was going on behind the scenes that prompted the Biblical writers to write what they wrote. This is why we need to be humble about our own interpretation of Holy Scripture, and humble ourselves to the teachings of Christ’s Church, of which Christ promised that the Holy Spirit would guide into all truth.

If my private interpretation seems nonsensical to you, you will find no argument from me. It is just my humble opinion on dealing with a difficult phrase in this passage.

Conclusion

One thing this passage definitely teaches. It teaches that there are sins that lead to death and sins that do not lead to death. Not all sins are equal.

Also, it is possible that this passage also hints at the existence purgatory. This passage could be saying that we should pray for others who have died unless we know they have committed sin that leads to death.