Hard Truths about Newtown

The truth about what really happened in Newtown Connecticut is hard.  To be completely honest I don't really think most of our country is really ready or willing to hear it, let alone accept it.  It is easier to just advocate gun control or blame video games then to face the truth. Regardless, I want to share with you the truth about the cause of the Newtown shooting, the truth about Christmas, and the truth about the human soul.

     One of the most surprising things about the Newtown shooting is how everyone seems so shocked that it actually happened. How could someone do such a terrible and cruel thing? For the love of all that is holy, they were just little kids.  They had their entire lives ahead of them, but those lives, hopes, dreams, and everything else were snuffed out in an instant by some sick killer who just didn't care.  Here is what else was strangely absent from the outraged news reports that came crashing in around the world during the hour of terror at Sandy Brook Elementary, the other 137 children who died. Do you know what the difference between the children at Sandy Brook Elementary School and the other 137 is? One word, wanted.  Nobody wanted the other 137, so it was ok to let a killer loose on them in some back alley abortion clinic.  Nobody wanted them, so their parents were encouraged to have them killed instead of putting them up for adoption. It tears my heart out and makes we want to scream I LOVE YOU!!! from the mountain tops, because those babies ARE wanted.  I think the problem actually lies even deeper than the murder of innocent children.  I think the problem lies in the fact that our society has forgotten how to truly love and instead just treats other human beings like they are just some kind of cheap imported commodity. If you are not wanted, go away and die.  When we protect this insensitive attitude and try to make it look hip and cool by calling it the right to choose, we have failed our families, our country, and ultimately our God. 

This idea of no one caring because you aren’t wanted isn’t just an abortion issue either.  How many young people were killed as a result of Gang violence in the streets of Chicago or New York or Los Angeles?  Was our nation outraged over their deaths or did we some how believe that they deserved to die because of the choices they made?  Did they deserve to die because they weren’t like us?  Do they deserve to die because they are not wanted in our society?

How about the young children (and adults) who die out in the desert trying to sneak across the border and build a better life for their families?   When they die from lack of food or water do they deserve it?  Do they deserve to be packed like sheep into the back of a truck with no sanitation and smuggled across the border?  When we hear about these things do we feel outrage, or do we treat them like they deserve it because they too are unwanted?

That’s the funny thing about human dignity, we don’t really get to pick who has it and who doesn’t.  It is a gift given by God based on who we are, not what we have done. It doesn't matter one bit what you can give to society. In the eyes of God and His Church, you are a human person and that is all that matters.  You are wanted.  Sometimes  it is easy to forget that we don’t get to pick and choose who is wanted and who isn’t in the eyes of God.  I think the Catechism put it best when it said in paragraph 457-458,  

 "Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it to be given back to us. Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior; prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator. Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state? 

     The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God's love: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him." "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” ”

When Christ took on our human nature, a lot of people thought he didn’t really have anything to offer either.  In fact, when it came to not being wanted He led the pack.  They even crucified Him because He wasn’t wanted by certain parts of society.  The Truth is, God wants us.  Not just some of us, but everyone single one of us.

This is the truth about Newtown.  This is the truth about human dignity. This is the Truth about Christmas.

Once Upon an Election

Over the past several days I have been giving a lot of thought to our recent elections and the voting process in general and I have come to a few conclusions that I wanted to throw out so that others could roll them around in their minds and discuss them on cool fall evenings over a cup of steaming hot cocoa.  The first is that presidential elections are in many ways very anti-Catholic.  Let me be clear that I do not mean this in a policy or legal way (though some have already stopped reading), but rather in a practical and spiritual way.  For example, over the last 2 months how many conversations have most of us had with friends and family members about something political, either a ballot measure or a candidate or the evils of of one political party vs. the other? Now compare it with how many conversations you have had and the amount of time you have spent talking to people, friends, and family members about your faith or about how God is working in your life?  How many billions of dollars and thousands of hours were spent on political campaigns that could have been spent spreading the Gospel?  How many of us were absolutely glued to our television/radio/computer for all three presidential debates, but have never bothered to tune in and watch a general audience from the Holy Father or even listen to Catholic radio?  How many Catholics put a sign in their yard or a sticker on their car proudly proclaiming their political allegiance, yet would never consider proclaiming their faith in any such way because someone might find it "offensive"?  My point is not that the political process is bad and that we shouldn't care, my point is simply one of priorities. When the first Commandment says that we should have no other gods before God, where do we really stand?  The amount of time, energy, and resources that we spend on politics reveals that many people in our world are still desperately hungry for a savior.  The problem is that they are looking to the wrong man.  The President of the United States is not our savior, and it doesn't matter if he is a Republican or a Democrat. Christ is our savior.  He transcends political, social, and racial boundaries.  Christ doesn't care if you are part of the 1% or the 99%, He cares if you are following Him. It may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, but how many people even know what these words of Christ even really mean? We have been commanded by our savior to go out and make disciples of ALL the nations.  The work of spreading the Gospel is not something reserved for the priests, youth ministers, and professional evangelists; it is the work of all of us, the faithful in the trenches of the world.  Now this isn’t to say that elections are not important.  After all, our president and elected leaders can either make it much easier to follow the will of God, or they can pass laws that directly attack Gods people and His Church.  In the end, however, God will triumph. Cardinal George remarked upon the election of Pope Benedict about where was the successor to the Roman emperors? 

Where was the successor to Julius Caesar or Marcus Aurelius?  They were long gone and no one really cares about them anymore, but the successor of Peter was standing right next to him.  Long after this election and all the others are over, the Church and Peter will endure.  Let’s keep our eyes and our hearts in that direction.

All Saints Day

Within the 2000 year history of the Catholic Church we have been privileged to have some absolutely amazing Saints.  There have been many who have gone to great lengths to lay down their lives and their bodies for their God and their Church.  With the exception of St. John, all of the other Apostles were martyred for their faith.  Their love for God and their fellow man was so great that no persecution was too great and no price was to high that they would not willingly and gladly pay it.  St. Peter was crucified upside down and St. Agatha was forced into a brothel and then had her breasts cut off.  St. Lucy gauged out her own eyes because men found them so attractive and she wanted to live her life for God alone and Saint Lawrence was grilled to death because Emperor Valerian demanded all the riches of the Church and Lawrence brought him the poor and the sick.  Saints Thomas More and John Fisher were accused of treason and killed for refusing to betray their Catholic faith and recognize the authority of the King of England as the head of the new English Church.  These are just some of the great men and women and women that we celebrate this week On All Saints Day.  One of the things that all of these Saints have in common is the way they put their faith in God above absolutely everything also in their lives.  While some of them had taken religious vows or were single when Thomas More went to the headsman he did so knowing that he was leaving behind his family to fend for  themselves. His wife would no longer have her husband and his daughter no longer her father, but he went anyway because of his love for God and his faith in the Catholic Church. I am inspired by the faith of these and so many other Saints who chose to live out their faith in the face of adversity.  One of the things that helped these Saints and all the other saints fight the good fight and make it to heaven was how they formed their conscience.  We hear a lot in the media these days about people who do whatever they want and justify it by saying that they were taught in Catholic school and the Catechism to always follow their conscience and do what they believe is right.  While this is true, it doesn’t tell the full story.  While we are supposed to follow our conscience, we are also obligated to make sure that our conscience is correctly formed to the will of God.  So if our conscience starts telling us to do something that God has asked us not to do, then we know there is a problem with our conscience and we need to work on it.  During the Year of Faith, which began this month, the Pope has asked all of us to please read and study the Catechism.  If we do this we will come to know God in a deeper way and it will help us to form our will to His, rather than asking him to form His will to ours. If we don’t form our Conscience to the will of God, then we will never have the strength to walk to the headsman’s block with Thomas More, be crucified with Peter, or gauge our eyes out like Lucy. We will be doomed to lives of quiet desperation, forever blown about by popular opinion and unjust laws.  Only with God and His Church can we stand strong and run the race to the finish.

The Entertainment and the Conscience

As most of my friends are aware, I am a gamer.  I make no effort to hide it and I am, in fact, quite proud of the fact.  I am not just a video gamer either; I have a decent collection of board games as well and enjoy playing them with whomever I can lure into donating a couple of hours to join me in amusement and camaraderie.  One of my favorite genera's of game is the RPG, or Roll Playing Game.  I enjoy these games because in many ways it is like making choices in a good book.  You take on the roll of the main character in  a story and play through the game making a variety of choices that can have an affect (both good and bad) on the overall outcome and ending.  I have noticed a growing trend among modern video game RPGs that in many ways I find rather disturbing, and that is the growing presence of evil choices.  I am not talking about the choice to save a random man who is drowning and who later turns out to be a mass murdering psychopath who slaughters an entire village.  No, I am talking about the conscious choice to become that mass murdering psychopath and go slaughter as many villages as you can and loot their possessions.  In the name of freedom and choice we offer the option to truly take on an evil persona and live it out to the end, often conquering the world or becoming a famous bandit, outlaw, or assassin.  Such choices are frequently rewarded with extremely powerful in game weapons or other rewards that are attainable no other way.for many of my fellow gamers this is not only not a problem, but a good thing.  They look at it as a chance to live out their darker fantasies and do things that in the real world would land them in prison at the very least.  For me, however, it is different.  I would never read a book glorifying evil for the sake of evil or where the main character was an evil person.  When I read a book I want to believe that I could make the same tough good choices that the main character makes.  I don't mind if the main character is unrealistically wholesome or a better person than I currently am. It inspires me onwards to keep my standards high in real life.  When it comes to playing an RPG it is even more true.  I don't want to practice making choices that hurt other people.  I don't want to build a fantasy world in my mind where I live an immoral lifestyle or am a truly evil person.  A big part of this is because it can never truly be completely contained in a fantasy world.  When we condition our minds and hearts to be ok with evil in a fantasy world, we shouldn't be surprised when we quickly start to become ok with evil in the real world.  I know it can be easy to write this whole thing off as the rankings of a crazy gamer, but any English or Literature major (and most liberal arts majors as well) can tell you that books and magazines can have an equally, if not more potent effect on the culture.  

While I realize that most people are not gamers, the majority of us do read books and magazines at least on occasion.  When you look at some of the recent books to hit the New York Times best sellers list, there have recently been some very disturbing pieces. For example 50 Shades of Gray is not really a morally uplifting piece of literature.  In fact it is quite the opposite.  Many people have even put it on the same level as pornography, just without the pictures and designed more to entice women rather than men.  Regardless, the point is still the same or at the very least remarkably similar the effect of making an evil or immoral character in a video game.  You escape to a fantasy world where you can live out a dark fantasy that you would be ashamed of or find unacceptable in real life.  Our leisure time helps to form the innermost core and has a major effect on our soul.  I am sure that just about everyone has heard the saying to “practice what you preach” but in the long run we will all end up preaching what we practice.  If we chose to throw ourselves into pornography, we should not be surprised to find that we struggle with appreciating true feminine and tend to see women as mere objects rather than children of God.  If we choose to live in a fantasy world where instead of fighting for truth and justice we instead choose to relish hurting or killing the innocent and taking what we want from who we want, we shouldn’t be surprised if we find ourselves increasingly desensitized to the plight of our fellow man and simply see them as “too weak.”  I don’t see anything wrong with enjoying fiction or fantasy literature, or even playing RPGs.  What I see as dangerous is feeding dark and sinful passions within ourselves and not even realizing that we are doing it.  Our Catholic faith doesn’t take a break when we sit down and play games or read a book. It keeps right on going.  We are called to live our entire lives for Christ, not just when we are at Church or out in public.  There are video games that I have gotten rid of or refused to play, even though I really enjoyed them because they were supporting and promoting a lifestyle or a choice that was contrary to my faith. As a friend once told me, “you are who you are when no one is watching.”  When no one is watching or when we think it doesn’t affect anyone else, do we still live for Christ?

A new pantheon for a new era: 6 new gods for post-Christian America

Saint Augustine once famously said, "You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." In all actuality he said it in Latin, but his point remains the same no matter what language it is spoken in. We will find our true meaning only in God. God is our creator and He is constantly drawing us back to Himself, no matter how far we wander astray.  Unfortunately it has become increasingly difficult to hear the voice of God calling us back to himself.  In today's post Christian world, we have been presented with a pantheon of new, secular gods that demand our attention, loyalty, and in some cases worship if we are to fit in with society.  Here are the top six that I have met and am forced to wrestle with on a daily basis.  They are Money, Power, Science, Sex, Sports, and humor.  Now some of these may come as no surprise at all, and others may be causing some head scratching around the kitchen table. I want to go into each of the new gods in some detail later, but for right now I want to do just a brief overview on why I think these 6 qualify as our modern deities. The first and foremost reason is this. You are not allowed to question money, power, science, sex, sports or humor.  To questions them, or their inherent goodness is to commit modern day blasphemy and lose your job, social standing, friends, or even find yourself in a lawsuit. Our world is convinced that these six gods hold not only the meaning to life, but the essence of happiness as well.   

     We are all told how if we want to be happy we need to grow up and go to college so we can have a good job and gain lots of money and power. This also results in lots of late nights at the office and frequently working weekends as well. If you question it, you are a slacker and a lazy no-good bum.

     If you question how science is supposed to save the world by killing babies to harvest their stem cells, then you obviously hate all the sick people who MIGHT one day be cured through that research. 

     If you question sex or bring up any kind of old fashioned ideas like “purity” or “chastity” than you are labeled a puritan and a freak. If you say that you want to save sex for marriage everyone smiles and nods, but in the back of their minds most think that you are insane, especially if you are a guy.   

     With sports it is a little easier to see.  If you ask the average American how much time they spent playing or watching sports versus the amount of time they spent praying to God in any given week there would barely be a contest. People even skip Mass to watch the pre-game of the Super Bowl. Humor is the final deity of the new pantheon and in many ways still the most insecure amongst hi brethren.   

     Humor could be lumped in with entertainment in general, but I prefer to leave it out on its own for now. The problem with humor is how we use it to rationalize sin or create a smokescreen for bad behavior. We watch movies filled that mock the things we hold as sacred and important, but instead of becoming outraged we just say “yeah, but it was funny.”  If you dare to criticize a movie for this sort of comedy, your friends will frequently (and usually violently) tell you how wrong you are.  These six new deities are now where mankind seeks to find its meaning, and the restlessness of our hearts goes on.

Was Same-Sex marriage a Christian Rite?

If you have been lurking around on the internet recently, you may have come across a link to an article titled When Same-Sex marriage was a Christian Rite. The article is based on the research of the late Prof. John Boswell of Yale University on Adelphopoiesis and the icon of two 4^th century martyrs, Sts. Sergius and Bacchus. Later documents talk of the love between Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, which has led many to believe that these Saints were married under an ancient liturgical rite of same-sex unions called Adelphopoiesis. The article is reasonably convincing and throws around enough big words and acronyms to make the reader think that this is sound scholarship and begin to suspect some sort of conspiracy on the part of Rome to cover it up and ruin people’s lives.  It of course isn’t a giant conspiracy, nor is it even particularly fine (or even unbiased and honest) scholarship.  The first thing to take into account is our use of the word “love.”  As modern day Americans our culture is absolutely saturated with sex and the idea that love and sex are somehow interchangeable words.  If two people go “make love” there is no doubt in our minds what is actually going on. The writings in question, however, are not modern. They are from hundreds of years ago and they are Church writings. Church writings frequently use the word “love” to mean something completely different from mere carnal union (sex). The idea that two Saints must be gay just because they were best friends seems to be a bit of a stretch. This is where an appropriate and accurate understanding of the word Adelphopoiesis is so important.  Prof. Boswell chose to translate the rite of Adelphopoiesis as the Rite of Same-Sex Union.  Adelphopoiesis is a compound of two other Greek words, Adelphos, meaning “brother” and Poiein meaning “to make.”  So rather than being a Rite of Same-Sex Union, it is really a Rite of Brother Making.  The Rite itself even states that the union is spiritual, not carnal. To insist otherwise is completely dishonest.  Interestingly enough this Rite is still used by some Christians in parts of the Middle East. It is something more like the idea of becoming blood brothers than anything sexual.  Even when Prof. Boswell wrote his book promoting his view of the translation of Adelphopoiesis back in the early 1990’s, it received very unfavorable reviews from his peers for its poor scholarship. All in all this article serves as a warning for us to be careful about what we read and believe on the internet. Just because someone with the letters PHD after their name said something, that doesn’t make it true.  The Church has never had some super-secret Rite of Same-Sex Unions, and it never will. We have always believed that God made marriage to be between one man and one woman. Above all, we are all called to chastity, no matter who we are attracted to.  Jesus commanded us to “love one another as I have loved you” and we all know he wasn’t talking about sex.

Jimmy Akin has a video interview here where he does an excellent job of breaking down the whole debate

Lent and Freedom

As  we continue our march through the desert of what frequently feels (at least to me) like the longest liturgical season known to mankind, I am reminded to look back to the book of Exodus and to remember what this whole thing is all about.  In many ways it is about religious freedom. When Moses went to Pharaoh he didn't ask him to let the Israelites move out of Egypt. No, he asked that the Israelites be allowed to go out into the desert and worship God the way God had asked them to.  I couldn’t help but notice some of the similarities to the way things are currently steering in our modern world, even here in the United States. In Europe studies have shown that 85% of hate crimes are directed towards Christians, here in the US we are increasingly told that our Catholic ideas and beliefs are outdated or unattainable and should therefore be “modernized.”  When I say “unattainable” I am referring in general to the area of chastity and purity.  In one internet forum that I was on last week someone was making fun of the idea that any Catholic man could enter into the Sacrament of marriage as a virgin.  The person online made it sound like having such a standard was the dumbest and most ridiculous idea anyone could ever have.  

When people say that we need to “modernize our beliefs” what they really mean is we need a new god.  We need to throw out the God of the Bible and embrace the secular gods of sex, money, and power.  Laws are being written, and have already been approved that will make this ideal increasingly difficult to resist.  Laws that require Catholics to go against their religion and begin start financially supporting practices that we have held for over 2000 years to be sinful. We will be required to support the secular worship of sexual pleasure. Catholics will be required to pay for men to mutilate their bodies and for a woman to take drugs that halt her natural functions or kill her unborn child.  Good, God fearing men and women across the country who believe this is morally reprehensible behavior will be forced against their will to fund these actions with their hard earned money.  They will not be free to say no. They will be in bondage to a culture of death, supporting the worship of gods they do not know and do not want. 

As I read the Exodus account in scripture this year I do so with a new level of understanding and empathy towards God’s chosen people.  I do not know what it means to be a physical slave.  I do not know what it is like to have my body beaten and my will broken by a whip in the hot desert sun. I do, however, know what it is like to be told that I may not worship the God of my Father’s in the way He has commanded me.  I do not know what it is like to have the government (Pharaoh) tell me to kill all my sons, because the population of slaves is getting out of hand. I do know what it is like to be told that no one cares if I am against abortion; I am still going to be forced to pay for the drugs that will help a mother kill her child.  I know what it is like when I tell people I plan to have 7 or 8 kids (true story) and they look at me like I am an idiot (let alone the sneers they offer my wife for going along with me). I know what it is like to live in a culture that hates children and tries to kill them.

I hate it when people tell me that what my Catholic faith calls holiness is unattainable and that I need to lower my standards and have some fun.  Those people are wrong. What our faith asks is NOT unattainable. It is not some impossible task or trick.  It merely requires faith and love. It requires that we believe in a God who loves us so much that He died a gruesome and humiliating death on a cross for our sins. Why would He die for an unattainable ideal?  I do not think so.  My wife and I were both virgins when we got married and she had never even kissed another man.  I shared her first kiss on the altar on our wedding day.  It was far from easy, but it was even further from unattainable.

Our God has not abandoned us, He never does.  He has given us priests, bishops and our Pope as a Moses to lead us out of slavery and into the Promised Land.  Will it be an easy journey? I doubt it, a journey of faith never is.  Did Pharaoh let Moses and the Israelites go the first time they asked, not hardly; but in the end he did let them go.  Remember that next time someone tells you that you are trying to live up to an impossible standard or that you believe in an old and outdated belief system. Take comfort in knowing that the reason our beliefs are so old is because the key to happiness has not changed.  We are all still broken and still trying to do our best to figure it all out.  I would rather have a high standard that I know is based on truth than a low standard that constantly shifts and changes because it is based on other people.  Lent is about freedom and the cost of that freedom.  We need look no further than the Cross to know that.

The Unsung Heroes

     I recently read a fun book titled The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp. It was about Alfred Kropp (imagine that) who in general is a pretty normal 15 year old. He is average at everything and lives with his uncle until his uncle is killed. The long and the short of the story is that Alfred and his uncle are paid to steal Excalibur, King Arthur's legendary sword without knowing what it really is.  Alfred then joins up with the descendants of the Knights of the Round Table in an effort to get it back from the bad guys before they take over the world.  Throughout the whole book I kept waiting for the author to reveal some sort of secret about Alfred.  This is a pretty standard practice in books and I have come to expect it as a general rule. The mediocre hero suddenly discovers that he is good at the one thing which happens to be the bad guy’s weakness.  Suddenly the hero isn't mediocre, he is amazing.  He (or she) defeats the bad guy, gets the girl (or guy) and lives happily ever after. Alfred Kropp was different, very different. He never discovers some secret hidden power deep within himself, he doesn’t get the girl, and most of his friends are dead before the end of the book.  Alfred really is just a normal guy.  I think that is why I like him so much.  Sure the book is fiction and the story gets a little bit carried away at times, but Alfred never does.  Those around him may be larger than life and wielding swords and bows and arrows against guys on motorcycles armed with shotguns, but not Alfred.  He is just normal and average.  He steals the sword at the beginning of the book and then spends the rest of the book trying to get it back because he knows he has done something wrong and he wants to help fix it.  One of my favorite lines from the book is where Alfred has agreed to take up the sword of the last Knight of the Round table if he falls in battle. Alfred is feeling pretty mediocre and Bennacio (the Knight) tells him, “As for being a hero-who can say what valor dwells in the soul unless some test comes?  A hero lives in every heart, Alfred, waiting for the dragon to come out.”  

     I personally believe this is true with all my heart.  A hero lives in every heart, waiting for the dragon to come out.  Every man can be a hero if he wants to be, and most are.  The real heroes are the ones that never make the headlines. Man Returns Home After Another Day at Work Providing for his Family wouldn't sell many news papers, nor would Stay at Home Mother of Five and All Children Survive Another Winter Day Inside Without Killing Each Other.  These are the real heroes; the average people who live out their average lives with great courage.  They are the husband and wife who work through their problems instead of getting a divorce. They are the wife of the drunk who sticks with him and prays for him in spite of all his faults. They are the husband who gives up buying a new TV because he knows what his family really needs is a new washer and dryer. They are the people who work 10 hour days at minimum wage to put food on the table or their kids through college. They face the temptation to quit and give up but instead they slay the dragon. When they fall they realize that the important thing is to get back up and keep going.  If they get punished for making the right choice, they make it anyway. These are the heroes that make our world great. These are the unsung heroes of holiness. The Saints who will never be canonized because the miracles they performed were so frequent that they became seen as mundane and normal. These are the heroes that can be you and me.

The Hunger Games and me

I always seem to be one step behind the rest of the world in reading whatever is popular. I attribute this problem to several factors. 

1)What I think qualifies as a good book and what the rest of the world thinks qualifies as a good book differs, sometimes vastly.  Reading the Twilight saga only confirmed this theory.

2)My reading list is already quite long. I am perfectly comfortable reading something that was written over 1000 years ago and understanding that it is extremely relevant to my life today (and I am not referring to the Bible in this particular case) Human nature hasn’t really changed a whole lot and I doubt that it ever will.

3)I don’t really get a whole lot of time to sit down and read. It is unhealthy both for me and my family if I am reading a book that is so good that I just can’t put it down, because I won’t.

These are just three reasons that I have put off reading the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. However, since I picked up a bit of a cold at our lock in last weekend and needed a sick day to recover I decided to give it a go. I don’t really know what to say other than it was one of the most disturbing things I have ever read.  To be honest I never really liked the main character, which may influence why I doubt I will ever reread the series. Most of all I found the whole concept of the society where the book takes place to be horrible, gruesome, and far too close to our own.  The basic premise of the story line is that you have the Capitol and 13 outlying districts. The 13 districts provide everything for the Capitol and in return are kept in conditions little better than slaves. This led to a revolution roughly 75 years before the first book. The revolution was put down, one district (13) was bombed off the face of the earth, and the Hunger Games were instituted. The Hunger Games are basically a giant gladiator match in huge arena that are televised throughout the whole country. Winning the Games makes you wealthy and famous and is about the only way to escape poverty. The contestants, however, are all children between the ages of 12 and 18 and there are 2 from each district, a boy and a girl. They are most commonly chosen, though you can volunteer. They are taken by the government to go and kill each other for the amusement of those in the Capitol, though everyone is required to watch. The message to the districts is clear, we can even take your children and there is nothing you can do to stop us. We will make you watch as your children kill each other, and we will make it a national holiday.   

It is disgusting beyond belief and as I read the books I could only wonder where it all began. At what point did people give up their freedoms so completely that the culture was able to be reduced to this level?  Was it when the government started telling them that they had no right to a conscience? When the government became the soul arbiter or right and wrong, good and evil. Or maybe it was the point where human life had so little value that was ok to murder children while others made huge profits off of their deaths? Maybe it was the point where keeping people in bondage little better than slavery was ok; as long as they produced cheap goods and the wealthy didn't have to see them starve? The books never say, but it is an interesting thought to ponder.

Rewriting the Bible: How to make God in our image

There is an interesting passage that one can find in the book of Genesis chapter 1 verse 27.  In the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible it reads as follows, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”  This is one of the most theologically and anthropologically  deep passages in all of Scripture, it is also one of the most debated. What does it mean for man (in this context it means mankind) to be created in the image of God?  Does it mean that God has a physical body with two legs and two arms, a head and a torso (many would say yes; what else could the word image mean)?  Does it mean that God has a soul just like ours or that God knows the difference between good and evil like we do? Maybe it means that God has freewill and is not governed merely by instinct like animals and plants (yes, I believe plants have instincts). 

Regardless of the actual meaning of this passage I think we would all be much better off if we edited it out of our Bibles and our lives. After all, if we are all created in the image of God and called to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (MT 5:48 may also need some editing) wouldn’t that just turn us all into a bunch of mindless I love Jesus zombies without any sort of personality or will of our own?  Does this idea of Catholicism, nay Christianity in general not rob us of our freedom?  As free men and women are we not obliged to demand a rewriting of scripture and say that we the people of the United States in order to demand a more perfect union with god and each other, establish relativism, and wipe away individual consciences, do hereby declare that god is actually created in the image of man? 

If we are successful then there can be as many images of man as there are people on the face of the planet. Such gods would never be displeased with us because they are our reflection and we are the ultimate reality.  We would never have to worry about going against our consciences again because we would be able to rewrite God to always be on our side.  We would eliminate all prejudices against sinful behavior because with god created in our image we know that we will be right, no matter what we choose. Those with the political clout can make new laws determining morality for everyone and be perfectly justified in doing so. After all, god is created in their image just as much as he is created in yours. The next leaders can do the same. Right and wrong, good and evil lose all meaning and become merely synonyms for legal and illegal.  Anyone who said anything different would be locked up or sent to a re-education camp. Religions who preached against being forced to violate their consciences and participate in actions that for over 2000 years they have held to be intrinsically evil would be ignored. If they persisted they would be fined huge sums of money and their leaders would be imprisoned. Sound Orwellian? Watch your back; the government is already knocking at our doors.

I recently read a poem titled The Hangman which I personally think sums up the whole situation with the new HHS mandate requiring the Catholic Church to provide contraception (including abortifacients), sterilizations, etc. The Catholic Church is the biggest dog on the block so to speak and if the government is able to push around and force us to violate our consciences there will be no one else to stop them.  If you haven't contacted your representatives yet you should so soon.

The Issue of Morality: Do laws really decide right and wrong?

Chesterton once wrote that “art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.” I would agree with him, but I would also say that that both art and morality are alike in another fashion. In order to be considered “good” we have to know precisely where to draw the line. I can give my 6 month old a pen and a piece of blank paper and he will draw some lines. This doesn’t make it good art (though it may still be refrigerator worthy). In the same way drawing a moral line wherever we like it doesn’t constitute “good” morality. Saying that rape and murder are the only offenses worthy of being banned by law and claiming that you are a moral person is the equivalent of comparing the drawing of my 6 month old to a Monet or a Picasso; it simply doesn’t work. 

Shawn cannot create good art, and to insist that he can is foolish. Yet with morality we spend enormous amounts of time and effort trying to convince each other that wrong is right and right is intolerant and therefore wrong. We do so not in a desire to live in an evil fashion, but rather to live happily. I think the problem lies in trying to understand just exactly what the true purpose of morality is. For many it has become merely a social construct that is shaped and molded by human laws and efforts. If the law says it is legal, than it must be morally acceptable. By changing laws and legislation we can change what is right and wrong. Unfortunately we know that in all reality this cannot actually be true. If slavery was legal it would still be morally unacceptable.  The same logic applies for murder, rape, stealing, etc. Merely legalizing an act has very little to do with its true moral value.

What, then, is morality? Ultimately, the task of human morality is to match our ideas of good and evil to those of God.  If we truly believe that God is completely good (which He is), then we can only be “good” when we are acting the way He wants us to act. It all goes back to the book of Genesis and being created in the image and likeness of God. If we think of our actions as a portrait that we are painting, and the person we are painting is God, then our morality is either good or bad depending on how closely it resembles God.  When we grapple with difficult moral decisions like abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality we must be careful not to try and paint a portrait of God that makes us feel good and then demand that He change to fit our picture. Morality, like art, is about expressing truth.  Absolute truth never changes, no matter what laws we pass.  We are only truly good when we live our lives the way that God (who is ultimate goodness) has asked us to.