Pain and Darkness

For the first time since her mother died, my wife is spending time alone. And with the alone time comes the sadness. I have no experience with the death of someone close, but I have experienced the pain of loss. A few times my strange ways have lost me friends (thank God, I sometimes got them back). My situation was very different, and not something most people would even recognize as comparable, but I think perhaps the pain, the feeling of loss, was the same.

Think of what it is to lose even a little thing, like in the example our Lord gave about the woman with ten coins who lost one. When we lose something it becomes the most important thing in the world to us. Perhaps this lasts for just a moment when it's something small, but it can last for weeks or years if it is a family member or a friend.

The sadness of a lost loved one is a terribly lonely thing. Other people can help ease the pain, but each person who is important to us fills a unique role, holds a unique place in our heart, and nobody else can fill it entirely. So the pain of waiting for our loved one to come back to us, or waiting until we join them in Heaven, is ultimately between us, God, and the one we lost.

In this lonely time a shadow descends upon our lives. The emotional pain becomes tangible, like a stabbing in the heart. And while we may have prayed all along, now we call out desperately, knowing only God can comfort us. But where is he?

We need to see him. We need to hear him. But when does Jesus come down, and give us a hug? When does he speak up to us, and tell us our loved one is fine? When does he show us we will not be alone, and the hole will be filled?

The miracles of God are so hard to see. How can we find any peace in this life? Where is the joy we are promised? Is there a joy even in our sorrow? Can we find in our sadness the seeds of true love? The loved one we lost reminds us how precious our loved ones are... but can't God show us this truth a different way?

I do not begin to understand God's plan for suffering. I keep hope that he will one day answer me more clearly, and show me a love and a light that is more tangible than the pain and the darkness.

For now, in the shadow of death, I can only cry out in prayer:

Oh Lord, shine your light into this darkness. We know you are there, but we feel so alone. Help us find peace in our sadness. Help us to hear your voice. Help us to feel your invisible arms. Lord, comfort your broken children, and help us to comfort one another.

Hidden Bodies

My wife, Stephanie, is currently dealing with the death of her mother, and the subsequent plans of her family to scatter her ashes from a pier. This brings into focus the difference between Catholic and non-Catholic views of the body, and the resultant burial rituals. Following from this Stephanie had some insights on the value people place on a body's appearance.

When a dead body is whole, we treat it with a certain respect. We wouldn't just dump it off a pier or cut it in half to bury in two separate places (unless we were in the Mafia). But a cremated body no longer looks like a body, so we do all kinds of odd things with it.

Likewise, the Eucharist does not have the appearance of a body, which is part of why it is so easily disrespected, mistreated or forgotten. The Eucharist is not something I begin to understand, but it is a wonderful invisible gift.

But I suppose even potentially viewable living bodies are forgotten if they are hard enough to see. People hidden by distance or within the womb are not given the same value as those easier for us to see. Which makes me wonder if I am worth less to people, being so skinny you can't see me when I turn sideways?

I don't know... nor do I know how to rely less on what I see myself, and how to care more for what is invisible.

Let's pray that God might help us to treat lives and the bodies of all people with respect, especially the holy body of our Lord. And that we might focus less on the visible to better see the invisible things we do easily forget.

Hearing Voices

Every week I heard Stephanie's phone ring once or twice. It was Stephanie's mother, almost without fail. She has some friends that text top keep in touch, but the one person who called on the phone to hear her voice, the voice God gave us to share with our loved ones, was her mother. Now I hear Stephanie's ringtone, and my first thought is still that Sandy is on the phone. But it will never be her again, and that is sad and strange.

Now, I love my text messages, and I'm not going to stop using them (much to my friends' chagrin), but I wonder if I'm turning to them too quickly. I wonder if I should rediscover the telephone. And when I can manage it, even if I don't have much time to spare, I should go a little out of my way to quickly (or not so quickly) stop by and see my friends and family at work or at home.

I have friends living just a mile or two away that I email or text, but hardly see in person. What great difference might it make if I just stopped by for five minutes here or there? I might find myself at least a little closer to the dream my wife and I have of living in a close-knit Catholic community (something I'll have to go into more later).

The Best in People

While it does go against my belief that the joy of complaining is why God lets us suffer in life, I've been engaged in an interesting thought experiment.

What if we could look at our family and friends, and only see the good memories, and let go of all the bad?

I pick good family and close friends, so it's not like there's anything huge ruining our relationships, but it seems most every relationship has little annoyances or dark spots.

Yeah, I said I pick good family. "That makes no sense," you say? Well you're just saying that because you picked such a lame family.

Anyway, to clarify this idea about forgetting the problems, I'm not saying that if your lunatic brother threatens to kill you the next time he sees you, you should forget it, and invite yourself over for tea. I'm talking a bit more about issues that are clearly in the past or more minor issues in the present, like if someone forgot your birthday, they complain about your cooking (can you blame them?), they don't answer your emails, they don't show interest in some of your favorite things, or things like that.

If something is solidly in the past it could be a big issue, and you can still forget it, like the time your brother lit your hamster on fire (how could he do that?!?). Let it go. Also you can forget things on your own side. Forget the worries about being misunderstood, forget the embarrassing moments of the past, and don't worry about how much they like you.

Doing this, focusing on the kindness, the fun, the beauty of the person and your relationship with them, and removing the dark spots from the picture, I think you can find a greater happiness in your relationships, and love your friends and family more fully.

I even wonder if we might discover some hidden treasures this way. Maybe we'll see the people who might not have been the easiest or most exciting friends, and realize how much love they showed us while we weren't paying attention.

As for my actual experience, so far my results are mixed. I kind of do this by default with my wife. Next, I find it easier with my family and close friends, where there are lots of good memories and displays of love to draw upon. I've had moments of realization that friends were not just good friends, but great and wonderful friends. Other friends and acquaintances I'm finding that the kindness-to-difficulty ratio is still a more major factor.

But even if we still have difficulty loving, it doesn't hurt to prayerfully work with God to look at people with greater love. Remember, just as our love for God helps us love people, our love for people also helps us to love God.

This is part of why most of us are not called to be hermits. Most of us are supposed to be spending time enjoying the company of our family and friends, as well as touching the lives of others beyond our circle.

And if we are doing this with greater focus on what is right with the person, perhaps we'll love them a bit more, and we will all grow a little closer to God just being near each other.

Too Organized Too

"I don't believe in organized religion."

Really, is it that you don't believe in organized religion, or is it that you don't like organized religion?

If you don't believe in God, the supernatural, a world we cannot see, you could identify as an atheist of one sort or another.

If you don't believe truth is knowable, then I suppose you'd be a kind of agnostic.

If, however, you believe that there is something real beyond what we can detect with our senses, and there are potentially knowable truths about that unseen world, we would expect people to study the unseen world, and as they come to conclusions, we would expect them to organize into camps of sorts.

And if that unseen world had made itself known to man we would definitely expect those men to organize and pass down what they had learned, even if they were not instructed to do so.

If we look at the Bible, and find that it is an account of the contact between man and the supernatural, man and God, we see that God indeed established two organized religions. First God established Judaism, which was first more loosely organized, but eventually God gave his people specific rules, rites of worship, a formal priesthood, etc. Later, Jesus came and fulfilled the prophecies of Judaism and established the new Christian Church. We then see in Acts and the Epistles as Jesus Christ's chosen Apostles begin to expand the Church and formalize its hierarchy, rules, and rites.

In the end, if religion deals with truth, organized religion is a given, just as organized dentistry is a given. And whether we like organized religion or not has no more bearing on its validity than whether we enjoy root canals or not.

So, does God love us? Does he love us enough to share the truth with us? Does he love us enough to come down and die for us? That is what we need to know. And if he loves us that much, of course religion is organized.

Too Organized

I don't like organization.

I don't believe in organized medicine. Don't get me wrong, I'm very health-minded, but a special class of highly paid doctors, anatomy charts, medical journals, lab tested drugs, the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next... I don't know, I don't know, that's just not my thing.

If you don't get what I'm saying, look at the medical bills, the hassle of check ups and vaccinations. I just think a person's health should be dealt with in the home.

If you still have your doubts, look at the history of medicine. They used to treat people with leeches. You're always hearing about new lawsuits over dangerous medications. And doctors are sent to jail for all kinds of crimes.

Also, why can't I just drive without organized traffic laws?

Even worse, organized libraries, with the cataloging systems and shelves. What about the librarian's feelings, her ability to creatively express herself?

But enough with the satire. Let's go back to medicine. Religion is much like medicine. The medical field deals with the health of the body, while religion deals with the health of the soul.

It is true that just by having lived with a body I gain a certain degree of medical knowledge, but really the majority of what I know was handed to me by others. And most of this was handed to us by those specialized in medicine.

Without organization, a quack would seem as reliable as a real doctor. A shot could contain a lifesaving vaccine or a deadly poison. Even if one man did make a medical breakthrough it could only be spread in a haphazard way, eventually being lost to time.

If there are ANY religious truths, and if there is any chance that these truths have bearing on an immortal soul, does it not make sense that those who know these truths must organize, so that they can protect these truths, build upon them, and share them?

Oh, but seriously, I'm against organized sports. I'm all for running around with balls and sticks, but what's with the rules, funny uniforms, expensive stadiums, and teams?

For a less satirical response try Too Organized Too.

I Think You Spilled... Nevermind

While I was planning to write about how Obama is the worst President ever, or finally get back to writing my post about how "religion" was a God given element of our relationship with him, I've decided to write about something far more serious. Zombie apocalypse serious. You guessed it: Tattoos [prepare for ridiculous exaggeration].

I used to want a tattoo. I thought they were a healthy part of being an awesome guy. Not that I wanted to be part of the "cool crowd," but I wanted to know for myself that I was marked with awesomeness. Now, I've begun to see tattoos a bit differently. So, here are my current reasons why I wouldn't get a tattoo:

1) From far away most tattoos look like horrible birthmarks.

2) From close up most tattoos look like intentional horrible birthmarks.

3) I don't want any identifying marks if I ever have to flee half-naked from a crime scene.

4) People get weird diseases from tattoo parlors. Sure, most of them are pretty sterile these days, but I knew a guy who got a tattoo and a few days later he was a zombie! I tried to tell everyone, and I got responses like, "Carl's always been slack-jawed and glassy eyed," and, "Carl was biting everyone long before he got the tattoo." What?! This meant I had to take matters into my own hands. Luckily I had no identifying marks when I fled half-naked from the crime scene.

I won't go into any of the other stuff, like what the Church position on tattoos is (I think it's something like: They are permissible, but must be done for appropriate reasons... The human body is created by God, and is beautiful... You know, stuff like that). I think the reasons above should be good enough.

The Impossibility of Choosing a Church

When you're Catholic, you generally go to the Catholic church closest to your home. It might not be a perfect church in every sense, and you might go to other Catholic churches in your area when it's convenient, but there isn't often a difficult process involved in choosing a church.

For a Protestant things are very different. Now, there are some people who will say, "Christian is Christian," and pick either the closest church, the church with the most inspiring speaker, the church with the comfiest seats, or the church with the best music. I have to say right out that this is wrong. There are very different things taught in different churches, but since illustrating that sounds like another topic to me, let's assume for now that I'm right: Different things are taught in different churches. You will get a different set of "do's" and a different set of "don't do's." You will be taught different things about who Jesus is, and different things about what he wants from us. You will be presented with different parts of the grace that God offers.

The point is that it matters what a church teaches, and not just how it teaches. If two churches teach equal amounts of truth, go ahead and choose one based on location or music style. Accordingly, from this point, when I say "church," I will generally mean either an independent non-denominational church or an entire collection of churches (or denomination) with a single authoritative body.

So the real problem is, how do I pick a church that teaches the right thing? Of course prayer plays a part, but prayer doesn't happen in a vacuum. We have internal and external influences of all kinds. Thus, I've known many people who have prayerfully considered which church to attend, yet they all ended up in churches that were quite different in their beliefs, from "non-denominational" (which I think of as micro-denominational), to Wesleyan denominational, to liberal Episcopalian, to Seventh Day Adventist.

To illustrate the crux of the problem: Someone I know changed churches because he felt his Pastor had been telling him he had to vote Republican. Just as easily, someone might leave a church for telling them to tithe 10%, or to avoid homosexual acts, or to give up wine and dancing. Some of these people might be right in disagreeing with their Pastor, and others might be wrong. The thing is that ultimately, the Pastor has no authority, and the individual church-goer has all authority. You see, every Pastor is voted into place by either a literal vote of the congregation or by a vote of attendance.

If we think about this it ultimately means that each person is a denomination unto themselves, and must serve as Biblical scholar, arbiter of conflicts, guardian of sacred tradition, etc.

Let's see how this matches up with the Bible. In Acts 15 we can see the Council of Jerusalem, where a binding decision is made by the Church leaders, and it is promulgated throughout the Church. This only works in an authoritative unified Church.

What happens if I looked around and finally found Last Church of Mesa, where everything seemed right, but then all of a sudden the Pastor tells us the church leaders have made a decision? Now we are no longer allowed to drink beer! I know the Bible doesn't tell me I can't have a cold one while enjoying my televised sports program, so I go across the street to Hip Fellows' Fellowship, where I'm pleased to find out about the Beer and Televised Sports Ministry.

Similarly, let's remember what Matthew 18 tells us that Jesus said regarding church discipline. First the individual confronts the one in need of correction, then a small group, and if he still hasn't listened he is brought before the church. If he will not heed the church, he is to be shunned (or excommunicated). Once again, this only works in an authoritative unified Church.

So, what happens when I go back to the Last Church of Mesa (because they do have softer seats), and I start receiving negative remarks regarding my Beer & Sports t-shirt. If I get wind of them even thinking of bringing me before the church, I'll be back in the hard (yet hip) folding chairs at Hip Fellows' before they can even blink.

If we recognize this reality, it means that churches become clubs of like-minded people, and not places where we can go to really have our minds changed, and bring our hearts more in line with the ways of God.

This is why it is in fact impossible to choose a church. If we choose a church we are granting the church authority, and what we have given, we can take away, so the choice is by its nature impermanent. Also, we have no ground, no authority from which to really grant a church authority in the first place. And if we assume we do have authority to go so far as to choose a church, we have indeed become a church unto ourselves.

If we cannot choose a church, a church must be chosen for us. Who has authority to give us a church? Only God. Our choice would then be whether to accept what God has offered us. It must be a Church from God not from men. Certainly it will contain a lot of crazy people, but nonetheless, it did spring from a seed planted by Christ, and its roots still draw upon that source.

What would such a God-given Church look like? As I pointed out above, it should be unified and authoritative. Besides this, it must have history that can be traced to the time of Christ if it is the Church of the Apostles in Acts 15. It should show at least a little semblance of the temple-centered Jewish culture it separated from in the time of the Apostles. It would hopefully still have a strong presence in the Mediterranean, where the Apostles first spread the faith. It would probably be widely available around the world, so we could find it if we looked.

Now it would just be the icing on the cake if it were the largest unified Christian body in the world, if it had figurehead who personified its unity, if it were centered in a city mentioned in the Bible (and it would be ironic if this city was the seat of the fallen empire which once executed our Lord), if it had a Christian hall of fame and centuries of theological work to draw upon for guidance and inspiration, if it were responsible for the original evangelization of most of the Christian world, if it had decided upon the books of the Bible, and if it had painstakingly hand-copied the Scriptures for 1500 years before the printing press (and before all the little denominations which claim the Bible as their base).

If we recognized something incredible like this had happened, what right would we have to choose a church? We could only come to the conclusion that God had given us all a big shiny obvious Church as a gift, and all we could do is accept it.

Spiritual Fitness

I've been working out a bit more recently, and I thought I'd mention the following minor insight, while I continue work on a more scripture-centered post on "religion."

A person's internal health does not necessarily correspond with their current external behaviors. A fitness instructor who just switched to a sedentary lifestyle will still be in better shape than a couch potato who just started exercising. Also a man who appears in equal health to another might secretly be dying of cancer. But the externals do nonetheless have great impact on direction toward better health or toward degradation. So it is with religion.

I won't go into everything that this relates to, but I'll bring up a few points. One, there could obviously be someone who talks about eating healthy (or talks about church), but dines solely on Crisco (or doesn't even try to live a loving life). There could be someone who runs past your window, but then sits wheezing around the corner on his phone, ordering a pizza. Or someone might go to the gym just to drink protein shakes and take a nap in the sauna. But usually, someone making some effort to run or go to the gym is doing something good for their body, not just putting on a show. Similarly, the externals of religion are usually connected at least to some extent to a real desire for spiritual growth, and are a "part of a healthy spiritual lifestyle."

I do mean this to relate to charges of hypocrisy, complaints of  imperfect Christians, and maybe some things I can't remember, but my main point is that the internal relationship with Jesus does relate to externally visible religious practices, just as internal health relates to externally visible exercise and eating habits, and that in many cases a casual observer cannot gather enough information to really make any kind of judgements.

On the other hand, there are still many actions which can be judged themselves to be unhealthy. If you see someone smoking a pack a day, gaining a hundred pounds in the last year, or losing a limb, these tend to be signs of poor or declining health. Similarly, boasting of sexual exploits, treating everyone as an idiot, or sacrificing children to Moloch tend to be signs of poor or declining spiritual health.

Jesus Hates Deep Fried Snickers

Photo from candyaddict.com

Apparently there's been a popular video on YouTube, saying Jesus hates religion. It's not hard to see this guy is reading what he wants into the Bible. It's really a common problem. People latch onto a small collection of verses, and harden themselves against the rest of the scriptures instead of openly listening to the entirety of what Jesus says, and what the Holy Spirit revealed to the apostles. I've done it myself. The link above also contains a rebuttal by a priest.

I did address the religion vs. relationship issue, and addressed how the marriage-like relationship we are meant to have with Christ is expressed in our religious beliefs and practices.

Let me just examine this topic briefly from another angle, and hopefully show just how off base any claim "Jesus hates Religion" must be. Now there is an extent to which "religion" is quite hard to define, and part of the problem here is probably that the man opposed to religion means something a little different when he says the word, and because of this, I might be defending something different from what is attacking. Let's try then to at least get a sense of the word, even if we cannot define it exactly. According to Peter Kreeft, in the Handbook of Christian Apologetics, religion is hard to define, but each religion has three characteristics: "creed, code and cult," or, "beliefs, morality, and liturgy," or "words, works, and worship." Does Jesus place himself against any of these three characteristics, the defining aspects of religion? Simply, no. In fact Jesus preaches all three (And to be clear, we're using the classical definition of "cult" not the modern definition, so don't freak out on me).

Jesus gave us the root of our beliefs, his identity as God become man. If we reject the beliefs of religion we must obviously reject the scriptures in which those beliefs are grounded. Imagine if Jesus did reject beliefs. How can we begin to have a relationship with Christ without being able to even form an element of an idea of him within our mind, since that would constitute a belief, and Jesus banned belief?

Jesus consistently taught morality. He did not attack the Pharisees for "religion" but for immorality and related hypocrisy. He consistently forgave sins of the outcasts, but he also consistently exhorted, "sin no more." And he clearly taught obedience to the Commandments. It is clear then that Jesus gave us both beliefs and a code.

Then is worship the one problem? Off the bat this sounds unlikely. Can our method of worship be so outlandishly cumbersome that it is somehow standing in opposition to relationship with Christ? But that hardly matters as to the point, since we should find that Jesus has an opposition to all forms of worship, or else it will turn out he is opposed to none of the three aspects of religion. But, we quickly see that Jesus in fact teaches methods of worship! He sets the example of baptism, and the Bible teaches us to baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Jesus institutes Communion, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body." Jesus teaches how to pray with the Lord's Prayer.

We see Jesus building upon and establishing a set of beliefs, upholding and elaborating upon the code of the Ten Commandments, and giving the Church its sacraments as the fulfillment of Old Testament worship.

One final thing. Who gave Moses the Ten Commandments? Who gave us Leviticus, with its collection of code and cult? Who told Solomon to build a glorious temple full of marble and gold and beautiful imagery? Come on, who inspired the Scriptures in general, which are chock full of beliefs, morality, and liturgy? God, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! I can't imagine Jesus hating something he himself inspired.

Get serious. Tell me Jesus wants a relationship. Tell me Jesus hates hypocrisy. Tell me Jesus hates sin. Tell me Jesus isn't happy if we give him an hour a week, but shut him out of the rest of our lives. I'll agree to all that. Heck, tell me Jesus hates deep fried snickers. But don't tell me Jesus hates religion.