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crimes are directed towards Christians, here in the US we are increasingly told that our Catholic ideas and beliefs are outdated or unattainable and should therefore be “modernized.”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.

Sitting in the silence

I love winter time, especially here in Wenatchee. I am a big fan of the snow and Wenatchee usually gets just enough to keep me wanting more rather than making me live in terror of needing to go to the store on icy roads. Last week when it snowed my son and I went out and gathered snow from a parking lot in order to improve our sledding hill. It was a lot of fun and he learned that sometimes you have to work hard for something, even a good sledding hill.  My favorite part of winter, however, is the silence.  I have always loved to sit outside when it is snowing and be immersed in the weather and the silence. It can only really happen in the winter. In the spring it is damp and rainy. The rain makes noise and soaks through your clothing in about 5 minutes. In the summer and fall the weather is so beautiful that everyone is outside enjoying it. Kids are running around playing and families are barbequing and picnicking. It is a great time to be outside, but it is rarely silent. In the winter, especially in the evenings everything is quiet and peaceful. The snow is cold as it falls around you, but with a good coat and maybe a sweatshirt underneath it really isn’t that big a deal. You can sit or stand outside and watch the snow fall in almost complete silence. In our modern culture of radio, television, hand held video games, and portable music players. We have become a culture that is in many ways afraid of silence. We have a desire to fill our ears and our minds with some sort of entertainment. While I don’t think it is bad to listen to music or watch TV (I do a fair amount myself) we also need to learn how to appreciate the silence. When God spoke to the prophet Elijah in the Old Testament in was in a still small voice, not over booming speakers or a rushing wind. As we examine our prayer lives and think about ways we can do better, I think silence is an important factor. Sitting in silence is an act of listening. It can be challenging to hear the voice of God in our lives if we never try to unplug from all the other noise that is around us. When I go outside and sit in the silent snowfall, it isn’t necessarily to pray the Rosary or any other kind of formalized prayer. It is usually just to sit outside  with a hot cup of coffee or tea and just appreciate all the wonderful things God has given me or done in my life. Sometimes it is good to just sit in the silence and take in the world that God has created for us. Even though it may seem like we are doing nothing, listening to God is the most productive thing we can do in our lives. Since it hasn’t snowed a whole lot yet this winter, it is my hope that there are still plenty of good afternoons and evenings out there to sit and meditate on the wonders of God in the silence.

Life lessons from the Tardis

“Wish I had never met you Doctor, I was much better off as a coward.” These words were spoken by Captain Jack as he went to face his death.  For those unfamiliar with what I am talking about, this scene occurred at the end of season 1 (of the new seasons) of a show called Dr. Who. The Doctor (that is his name) and his associate Rose travel through time and space encountering aliens and solving problems.  The above scene occurs as the Doctor’s mortal enemies, the Daleks are about conquer the earth and then go on to attempt to destroy the universe.  Jack dies trying to give the Doctor enough time to save everyone. The Doctor has a plan, but in order to destroy the Daleks, he would have to destroy every living thing on earth as well. The human race would still survive since there are human colonies on other planets, but billions of innocent lives would still be lost. Does he save the universe at the cost of a few billion lives? No. In the end he can’t do it.  The biggest reason is that the Doctor loves the human race (he isn’t human).  In spite of all the knuckle headed decisions we make, he still believes in us. He has seen all of human history with his time machine and knows that it will turn out good in the end. He believes in humanity’s ability to overcome any obstacle and bounce back.  In the end he would rather die than become a killer himself. It is not unlike God’s view of humanity.  I laugh at Jack’s parting line, because at times it has seemed so applicable in my life towards God. I can see myself saying “I wish I had never met you Lord, I was much better off as a coward.” I wouldn’t really mean it any more than Jack did. When Jack met the Doctor, he was a con artist. The Doctor ended up saving his life and invited Jack to join him on his journey through space and time. Jack turned from being a selfish con artist into a valuable member of the team due to the Doctor’s influence in his life. The Doctor has that effect on people throughout the series. When he shows up people change for the better.  Again, not unlike Christ. A constant story of salvation and change.  When we meet the Lord, and I mean really meet Him, our lives are changed forever. We can be like certain characters and try to pretend that nothing ever happened, but we can only lie to ourselves for so long. In the end we are forced to come to grips with the fact that we are no longer who we were before. If we choose to embrace what Christ offers we may one day wonder if we were, in fact, better off as cowards.  As we run forward to lay down our lives for a cause greater than ourselves we will know that that is not really true. To live a noble and virtuous life is not always easy, but it is always worth it. This Gaudete Sunday don’t forget to rejoice. Christ not only loves you, but He believes in you. He knows that each one of us has what it takes if we will only trust in Him. We are never alone, even in death.