The less depth a belief system has, the greater the fervency with which its adherents embrace it. The most vociferous, the most fanatical are those whose cobbled faith is founded on the shakiest grounds.”
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
What’s Changed? How Do We Change?
“When social forces
press for the rejection of age old Truth, then those who reject it will seek
meaning in their own truth. These truths
will rarely be Truth at all; they will only be collections of personal preferences
and prejudices.
The less depth a belief system has, the greater the fervency with which its adherents embrace it. The most vociferous, the most fanatical are those whose cobbled faith is founded on the shakiest grounds.”
The less depth a belief system has, the greater the fervency with which its adherents embrace it. The most vociferous, the most fanatical are those whose cobbled faith is founded on the shakiest grounds.”
The quote from Odd Thomas, repeated above, hung with me for a
few days, and took my thoughts deeper.
I think many of my liberal friends do not understand the true
depths of faith and do not possess a heartfelt love of Truth. It is all tempered relative to the impact on
themselves, their conveniences, what they want, and what they (not the Church)
proclaim as important. Therefore, where
we might equate the loss of the abortion issue or abuse of the sacrament of
Marriage as we might the loss of a child, they would look at our sorrow and not
understand, being more concerned --- with deep fervency --- with other issues, and
so as friends they might speak to us innocently: “So you’ve lost a child. I understand.
But look at the nice ice cream cone I bought for your other kids.” (Remember the post where I wrote how
self-centered they are, and any life that is not their own is of much less
importance?)
That they would ask innocently and naively about our
concerns, I do accept, but it is not with the innocence or lack of
understanding of a child, but rather like that of drunk drivers who have killed
someone. In their drunken state, they
don’t understand what they have done, yet they are still at fault.
So, how do we deal with our “innocent” neighbor, who does
not understand our sadness (nor our anger)?
And how do we deal with our faith, which says to forgive him, and to
love him? Over many years they have
evolved to their shallow belief system, so how do we change to deal with these
people, our friends and neighbors, who are not the same people as they once
were, as we fondly remember them?
If we ignore the commands of our faith, and choose to direct
our sadness and anger AT them, are we not, in effect, killing the drunk driver
in retaliation for his error, and expecting him to understand the justice of
it? And then, regarding our faith, would
we be any closer to God than he?
No, we can yell at and curse at and beat up the drunk driver
all we wish --- and he may indeed feel some pain --- but he still wouldn’t
understand. For him to understand, time
needs to pass; he needs to be cold sober; he needs to see the pain and damages
he has caused us, and then HE must will to change his life, and help with
reparations, if he can, none of which will happen with our continued
confronting of him.
So what do we do? Do
we just pray? I don’t think so.
If we hear of the drunk driver who killed someone, or the Englishman
who killed someone because he didn’t know you drive on the right side of the
road in America, or the robber who stole everything from the neighbor down the
street --- what do we do? If we could do
nothing ourselves to impact the evil perpetrators, there still are at least two
things we can and should do which indirectly (or with God’s grace) will impact
them. First, we should comfort those who
suffered as a result of their actions, and perhaps ourselves mourn, and second,
we should ensure that we ourselves are not future victims of such evils --- or
perpetrators. This means putting locks
on our doors and windows against the robber, and making sure we are modest
drinkers and safe drivers, and know the rules of the road.
Relative to matters of our country’s moral degeneration,
this means that our responsibility is to ensure that we know the rules of
morality, that we know and understand the Truth, and practice virtue in our
lives. Both entail learning and deeply
understanding what our faith teaches --- AND WHY, and taking that
understanding, with grace, to the depths of wisdom and Truth.
Wisdom of God, be with me, always at work in me.
As our country heads not off a fiscal cliff, but down a
moral toilet, let us not be ones contributing to the mess being flushed. First order of business: pay attention to what our Church, God’s Church,
teaches. This is the Year of Faith, a
call to self-evangelize first. Follow
the lead of our shepherds. Do something! Read the catechism and read the Bible. Go to talks and classes at your parish and in
your diocese. Spend time in adoration. Make the time!! Don’t assume you already know how everything
is, assume you don’t know in your heart WHY everything is. If you don’t understand the importance of a
child, like it was your child, then if you see a child seriously injured on the
street your reaction will be: “Tsk, tsk.
Oh well, there goes another one.”
That is the liberal, relativistic reaction: it doesn’t impact me, so it’s not that important. Someone else
should do something about it.
Your faith, your relationship with it, is more important
than any child, even your own. On your
faith and knowing the Truth, depends YOUR eternal life. Even if you don’t care about any other life,
care about your own! Build a fire in
your heart for your faith, to prevent yourself from being the drunk driver who
doesn’t understand, or the robbed homeowner who opens the door and asks in
confusion: “What happened?”
If you want to change moral direction of our country, it
starts not with our government or someone else’s actions, it starts with
you. You need to change. There is a battle over moral truth in our
country; you can’t fight unless you arm yourself with the Truth.
The first step in growing your faith is: knowing the wisdom
of the Truth. Gaining that wisdom may
seem a huge, inconvenient job. It is. But remember my fictional review of the movie
2026, it’s the moral relativists who choose the easy path. And remember too, that although this first
step, knowing the Truth, may seem hard, the reward is great.
And at least in the beginning, try not to think about the
second step. The first step in growing
your faith asks if you are willing to know the Truth. The second step asks if you are willing to
die for it. We had a great Teacher once,
Who knew that second step perfectly. But
it’s enough, for now, to learn what He told us about that first step.
He called us to change our lives, to be examples for others
--- and we may think we are doing that, but until we are willing to consider
that second step, we really don’t know the first. And it’s about time we did. Considering how we’ve lived our life thus
far, how we’ve seen our country sink into moral decline, it’s about time we
take that first step.
This morning’s Second Reading in the Liturgy of the Hours
has some good, and encouraging, words:
If we are zealous in doing good, we shall have peace, but there is no
peace for those who, governed by human respect, prefer present enjoyment to the
future promises. They realize neither
the torment that is laid up for them on account of these momentary pleasures,
nor the joy of the promises to come. And
indeed it could be endured if their conduct affected only themselves, but as it
is, they persist in corrupting the innocent, unaware that they incur a double
condemnation, for themselves and their disciples.
Therefore, my
brothers, in order to obtain the reward, we must endure in hope with unwavering
faith. … We should blot out our past sins by being truly sorry for them, and
then we shall be saved. We must have no
desire to curry favor with men, nor should we think only of making ourselves
acceptable to our fellow Christians. We
should live upright lives in order to win the respect of non-Christians as
well.
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Excellent quote! Excellent post! CONCUR! Which book did the opening quote come from?
ReplyDeleteThe opening quote comes from the book Forever Odd, by Dean Koontz. I have read the first four books of this series by Mr. Koontz (a Catholic writer) and am deeply impressed. Not only are the stories interesting, but he has wound in depths of Christian belief into the story in a way in which I have seen in few other books. To me, it is not preachy, but rather fits with the thoughts of the book's lead character, Odd Thomas (so-named because his parents didn't notice the first letter of his name, Todd, was left off his birth certificate).
ReplyDeleteI look forward to reading the last of the series(so far), recently released in hardcover. Interviewed on the Raymond Arroyo EWTN show, Koontz indicated he plans seven books in the series.