Poor Preaching

I've always enjoyed watching the Little League World Series. But the coach of the Lake Mary team from Florida was off base in his speech urging his team on in the bottom of the Sixth Inning of yesterday's championship game, the standard last inning at that level of play. He told the kids that the outcome was already written, that God had told him they would rally and win (they were down 1-0) so all they had to do was finish the job.

That was wrong of him. It sends a very bad message. Two, in fact. The future is never preordained, and the Almighty doesn't take sides in kid's games, if indeed in any sports at all.

I get it: he wanted to inspire his charges, to help them relax. Yet it gives the wrong expectation about God. If the Florida boys lose (the game is in extra innings as I write) what are they supposed to think about their coach's words? Did God toy with them? Did their coach and mentor? It’s simply not right.

If they win, what might they think? That God thought more of them than a corollary set of kids from Chinese Taipei, who, like the Floridians, were simply playing a game they loved? I would hope not. But the invitation is certainly there. And what are those Chinese youngsters supposed to think should they ever hear that speech?

The whole thing invites cynicism and/or arrogance. Neither is good.

Holy Assurance

Today's Gospel ends with perhaps the most famous and significant promise of Christ: "Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age", St. Mark tells us. Jesus then ascends into Heaven before the confused Apostles.

If there is a greater assurance that God loves us I can't imagine it. He's always here, He will always look out for us. We forget that when all is well and, myself included, wonder where He really is in times of trouble. We're only human. When we're happy and content it seems as though that's the way it ought to be. When difficulties arise, we question everything. 

There's no need to question. We don't understand - we can't, at least not fully, understand - anything of the world. But He is with us. It'll be all right in the end. 

What the Future Brings

Too many people don't want to have a God around. The main reason for that so far as I can tell is that they don't want to be told what to do with their lives. But what's the only other option? Getting ordered about by other people.

Granted, on Earth that's how things are done because there's little way around it. We need a boss on a job, parents in a home, presidents and congresses in government. 

Such is life. My issue is, you're willing to be sent hither and yon by other folks just like you, who are no better than you and will make tremendous mistakes, who you trust as experts merely because they assure you they are, who will make you do things which you do not and of right should not have to do, yet this is seen as a better system than a belief in and reliance on God.

I don't know about you, but if the future depends on humanity doing the right thing, calling our prospects bleak is the most optimistic I can be.

God and Government

One of the typical criticisms of a belief in God is that, what, you just have to do what you're told because He's God? That's a great oversimplification of course, but I won't address that just now. What I will instead address though is what that attitude means within the purely human world.

When the government of the United States dictates something, what do we generally hear? This: you have to do what you're told because, well, democracy. And an awful lot of people won't think beyond that. You opposition folks just have to do it, on the raw authority of those in power.

There's a certain hypocrisy involved there, don't you think? And also a rather profound error.

At least a kind and loving God merits a following. Government, indeed any human construction, being obviously flawed by virtue of their very humanity, doesn't rise to that level. It is subject to make a great many wrong decisions, and it does. Yet we're to treat it as a god. Go figure.

Because It's True

I have occasionally been asked why I'm Catholic. The short answer, stripped of all the very real and obvious background noise, is because Catholicism is true.

Yet how can we know that? Isn't all that 'belief in God' stuff based on faith? Indeed; but not faith alone. Even faith must be rational. We can test through reason whether our faith is logical.

With the Church, one test lies in the idea that God loves us. Since He loves us, he wants what's best for us, for actual love is wanting what's good for the other person. So Perfect Love would want the good for us.

But it would also understand that we can't attain that good ourselves. So He sends His Son, a part of Him, to offer us the help we need to attain Heaven. A good and loving God would never simply leave us to our own druthers.

It may be faith which tells that Jesus is Lord. Still, that faith is in no way irrational, because it simply makes sense that God is Love, and Love helps us. Any moral way it can. 

Subtle God

A Subtle Armageddon is a well-written and highly imaginative page-turner that provides readers with an interesting and insightful examination of a dystopian future. The book's main character, despite his emotions being neutralized, learns from the natural world around him the real meaning of existence. The book is tense and emotional, thought-provoking, and has well-developed characters that readers will enjoy. It is also a spiritual and optimistic book that offers unexpected twists and learning moments.

Above is another review of my first book, A Subtle Armageddon. I've mentioned before that I worry the book is obscure, that the point may be difficult to grasp. Indeed, I have had at least two reviews from readers who, in their own words, gave up on the book because, again by their own admittance, they couldn't figure it out.

Then I read commentaries like this one and feel, hope, anyway, that just maybe I've gotten the point across well.

God is everywhere. We cannot hide from Him. He is woven all through nature; this should not surprise as nature is His creation after all. But one of the ideas I was trying to put forth in ASA is that no matter what humanity tries, they can't replace Him. We cannot hide Him; we cannot obscure Him, we cannot relegate Him to past history, as me Grandpa Joe might say. Try as we might, He will be there. Right in front of us.

That's the essential point of A Subtle Armageddon.

Sterilizing God

Does God Judge? Folks often tell us, when arguing with someone over a difficult question (typically a question which violates long accepted, ahem, judgments about right and wrong) that we cannot judge. They attempt to reinforce this idea by judging - sorry, arguing - that God tells us not to judge. Indeed, they assert, a loving God would never judge. My issue at that point is that God clearly judges. Good judgments, yes, often, but doesn't He also make what are profoundly negative judgments?

Obviously He does. The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, has three straight parables where the foolish or sinful are condemned, ending with Christ's explanation about the sheep and the goats being separated (on Judgment Day, as it were). He calls the Pharisees a 'Brood of Vipers'. He expels the moneychangers from the Temple. He cursed a fig tree, for crying out loud, causing it to shrivel and die. God judges, and sometimes in the negative. It's a simple as that. Why bother with any parables, or those pesky Commandments, if He wasn't meaning to hold us to a standard?

To assert that God doesn't judge is to sterilize Him. If He can't call something bad, I don't see where He might call anything good. There's no worthwhile reason to honor such an impotent being.

A Less Gracious God

Walking about Woodbridge yesterday morning a tad before six, I found myself marveling at the rising dawn. The sky was somewhat deep blue still, the yellow-orange of the creeping Sun yet just below the eastern horizon. Smiling, I felt graced by its beauty. I feel similarly impressed by the array of stars in the darkest night.

There's an old idea that we human beings are flukes, accidents of nature in an ever expanding universe. I don't believe that. Sure, we are comparatively tiny in that context. But we shouldn't read much into it.

For me, the expanse of creation is simply awe inspiring. What's even more inspiring is that we were created to not only experience it but to actively participate, to work with our Creator in bringing more out of His work. That's not meaningless or insignificant. It's dignity itself.

A less gracious God would not have given us such opportunities. He would not have given us glorious mornings or sublime starry nights. He would not have allowed us the power to reflect on them. He would not have given us the ability to be one with Him as we interact with creation. 

I am glad for my physical smallness that I may more greatly appreciate the spectacular universe around me. We are not specks of nothingness in an enormous universe. By the grace of God, we are so much more. Our smallness offers us that unique and powerful perspective.

Is Church attendance all that odd these days?

I'm not sure that I should write this post, let alone publish it. I don't want to appear holier than thou, and on this subject one can slip easily into that mode. Neither do I wish to put down any of many friends, many of whom will know who they are if they read it. Further, though I don't think that I hide my religious beliefs I'm not comfortable waving them from the rafters either. They Holy Father is right: our actions should speak for our religion. Yet I find that I am bugged to write it anyway and let the chips fall where they will, and hope that readers understand my point.

I spend last weekend at a curling tournament. Before I left, I did a web search for Catholic Churches in the area where it took place. It's an easy thing to do in this internet age. I found four within an easy drive from the hotel where I stayed and wrote down all their Mass times; not knowing when my team would be playing until the tournament played out, I knew I would need options. As it were, we had to play at 9AM Sunday, and a Church just down the road had a Mass at 7:30. So that's where I went. I didn't even make it a point to tell anyone what I was doing. But when asked where I was going I answered honestly, because I'm not hiding the fact either.

The response ran the gamut from respect to humor. The humor I get: Marty goes to Church? It was friendly enough and I accept it on that level. Yet much of it was an odd amalgam of incredulity, embarrassment, and even excuse mongering, though I don't believe I had intentionally laid a guilt trip on anybody. But it was at times somehow admiring (So you went to Church, eh? Good for you) laced with pity (I could almost hear the unsaid question: why did you waste your time with that?) to shy excuse making (though I never asked anyone for the reasons they did not go). I suppose what got me most was the number of people, at least a dozen on Sunday and even a few more during my Monday night curling league who somehow got wind of my churchgoing, who, it seemed, almost felt they had to come to me and say something about it.

I know that Church attendance and belief in God is down. But I never thought that it was all that unusual these days. The only time I felt similarly to last weekend was back in 1989 when my daughter was born. She is our third child. My wife and I felt on display at the hospital. We actually heard the nurses whispering: See them? They're here having their third child. Together. And they've been married the whole time!

To the point, I find myself dismayed by it all. It just sounds very sad. Yet I don't see what I did to provoke it except to do what I always do: go to Church on Sunday. I simply don't know what to make of it.