With all that is going on in politics and my family, I’m not even sure what proclaiming to be a Christian even means anymore. What does sincere faith “look like”?
On Thanksgiving, over pie & coffee, my sister threw down the gauntlet and told both of my parents that she doesn’t believe in Jesus anymore. They both gasp and tears were shed. Some heated words of disbelief and disappointment were spoken, but eventually the pie called us back to our senses and we talked and listened to one another.
My parents’ primary concern was whether my sister would “make it to heaven.” Her individual salvation was what they saw as the real danger. But my sister and I thought more like Fr. Tomas Halik who writes “I can’t help thinking that God doesn’t particularly care whether we believe in him or not. What really does matter to God, however (as Jesus said in Matt 25), is whether we love. Or more precisely: God doesn’t care about our faith in the sense of that the term is often used, namely, that to believe in God is to be convinced of God’s existence. I don’t think our salvation depends on our religious opinions, notions, and convictions…What can we truly ‘know’ about God except that God radically transcends all our knowledge?
What really matters to God are not our opinions but the nature and degree of our love...Faith without love is hollow; indeed, it is often no more than a projection of our wishes and fears, and in that respect many atheist critics of religion are right…I know no better translation of the statement ‘God exists’ than the phrase ‘love makes sense’” In other words, being a Christian is not about whether we believe that God exists or not, but rather if we believe “God is Love” and participate to the best of our ability in that mystery. As Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner once said “The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with their mouths and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.”
What we celebrate on this feast of Christmas is the mystery of the incarnation; the deep, abiding conviction that God is somehow “with us” in this messy experience we call life – to be found most readily in the concrete acts of love between us. Jesus made the outcasts of society — women, poor people, tax collectors, those who were physically or mentally ill — the very cornerstone of his message about God’s Kingdom. When asked what brings eternal life, Jesus said love God and love your neighbor as yourself. When we love someone we are not indifferent to their struggle, right? It becomes our own. We carry their pain. We hurt too. By caring for one another in our suffering, we give each other hope. This togetherness is our greatest remedy for suffering. Jesus said when you do this for the least of these, you do it for me, so when we care for one another we are both loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Jesus’ violent end was the price he paid for living a life of love, because we have fashioned a world in which it is dangerous and sometimes even fatal to be a compassionate, courageous and loving person. The fact that Jesus never broke, never became bitter, never gave up or gave in to the violence he suffered; his endurance in this love, even as we were nailing him to the cross, is what saves us and continues to show us the way.
Seeing all the suffering in the world, the man prayed, “Great God, how is it that a loving Creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?” And out of the long silence, God said, “I did do something. I made you.”
Visit www.crazycatholicquestions.blogspot.com to review past articles or send your question/comment to Lisa Brown at dre@ctredeemer.org.
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