If we are going to commit to the proposition that Jesus welcomes sinners, losers, oddballs, factory rejects, deeply broken people, addicts, failures, and the like, then we are going to also have to stop being shocked by Christians who sin and disappoint us. There’s a reason the very earliest letters in the Church are not brochures saying, “So! You’ve been made perfect! What’s next?” and are, instead, exhortations to bear with one another in love and to forgive one another, coupled with fierce demands for the faithful to bend over backward on behalf of the least of these coupled with terrifying threats of judgment against the powerful and wealthy who refuse that demand.. The sheer radical audacity of the gospel project–to transform, by the free cooperation of our wills, a species of brutal fallen primates into creatures totally conformed to the image and likeness of the Son of God–is still only barely begun after 2000 years. We are driven by the Spirit to demand constant improvement and that is good. But he also constantly reminds us that we are just flesh and blood. Cut yourself and, above all, your neighbor some slack.
The paradox of this is that it is often the people most certain that Hell is impossible and that God’s love will most assuredly conquer all who are quickest to bail on the Church when her members sin grievously, while it is the ones who take seriously the possibility of damnation who refuse to break with the Church even when the Church’s members break their hearts. I don’t understand that paradox. I merely note it.
Another thing I note is that the prophetic impatience of Christians and cultures into which the gospel has been kneaded like yeast can result in both wonderful fruits (the abolition of slavery, the labor movement, civil right movements, feminism, Social Security, a thousand networks of aid and comfort for the stranger, the orphan, and the widow) as well as a disastrous utopianism that can and has attempted to immanentize the eschaton in systems of earthly power that never fail to murder huge number of people in their attempt to establish a secular messianic Heaven on Earth.
This is what the current mania for a Christian Nationalist Amerika is about to try again for the umpteenth time in human history,
So: just a little reminder about the real shape of human history. If any of it seems eerily familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before and will be here again. I still don’t think Trump is The Antichrist. But that he is an antichrist is beyond question to me. Antichrists are a dime a dozen throughout history. They do not puke pea soup, have magic mirrors, or black cats as familiars. They just promise you Heaven on Earth if you will do evil that good may come of it. He embodies the seven deadly sins and his seduction of many in the Church seems to me to check all the boxes for “diabolical”.
From the Catechism:
675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. the supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement. the Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.
677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgement after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.
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7 Responses
Thanks for this, Mark.
Regarding your paradox: I think there’s a number of common tendencies in each group.
Within the “remain no matter what” tribe, one tendency is an image of God as the unforgiving taskmaster who expects the checklist complete upon judgement, and the first checkbox on the list is membership in the Church. Also often present is over-emphasis on the spiritual aspects of the Church and priesthood that often explains away or refuses to see things like abuse, (or blames it on the media exaggerations, or enemies of the faith, or the devil, etc).
If the other tribe is convinced a loving God wouldn’t send someone to hell, I’m pretty sure they’re less worried about church membership and attendance. Also there’s a tendency to minimize the vertical dimension of the Church in this tribe, emphasizing the horizontal dimension, so a failure like abuse will be seen more readily, and not explained away as quickly.
My thought on heaven and hell is that we preexist in a combination of both before we die, and continue into the next life in that state. The caveat is that at death we are granted a profound clarity that helps us to understand the truth about our soul. Our reaction to that truth will dictate how we feel.
It makes sense to me that the company we will see and commune with according to that state will either have a glorifying effect on our souls–or a purgative one. (Similar to our earthly existence, but a passive state.)
My husband told me something interesting a while ago when we were dealing with a child that has panic attacks. He says that you can’t feel gratitude and hopelessness at the same time–that it is psychologically impossible. Our daughter has a really sensitive stomach,and fear of feeling sick becomes a feedback loop. What breaks her out of her little hell is what we call the gratitude litany. “I am grateful for God, I am grateful for those who love me, I am grateful for my home, I am grateful for my comfortable bed, I am grateful for Skeeter (her cat), I am grateful for beautiful trees, I am grateful for the beauty of earth…” Later, we talk about offering things up.
The part that is really hard to grasp are the good and bad forces (entities?) trying to affect the way we think and feel. It is difficult to accept that such a war is being fought –but at times it can be so palpable! Sometimes I’m going about my day and situations and events are not going the way I want them to. I will try to distract myself with something entertaining that gets my mind off of what is distressing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Negative thoughts start populating my mind–but it’s subtle. Other times I stop dead in my tracks, recognizing that dark, persuading voice. (I’m so dumb half of the time when I dialogue with it!) –I recognize that I’ve been entertaining, and say, “Ha! I am a child of God, and a daughter of the Church!” –What is causing me pain and worry is indeed a weapon, but I turn it around so it becomes a canon pointed at the enemy. It never fails to make me chuckle a little. But I need to stop being so gullible, and put it to better use.
“My thought on heaven and hell is that we preexist in a combination of both before we die…”
Thanks for what you said, Taco…, and I agree with it. I just wanted to say I got a bit of a giggle out of how you expressed it above. It sounds like quantum theory stuff, in which the state of a particle is an overlay of states until it is observed. 🙂
Thanks John 🙂
Hmmmm. Quantum theory is mildly upsetting to my little brain. I was once at a talk and the presenter told us that science still hasn’t explained why matter stays together. Nothing is solid –you, me, the desk, the computer I’m writing on…I dunno. Fascinating stuff for those without undiagnosed adult ADHD. Haha. Quantum anything triggers my fight or flight instinct.
The part about our souls that is still so shrouded in mystery for me, is how the sins of the parents are visited upon their children. How does God even the scales when an innocent child is dealt a really bad hand? I have a sort of friend that I’ve known for years, who is a psychiatrist at San Quentin. I don’t think I could handle the things that poor, mild mannered (Catholic) man has heard, but there’s this side to me that really wants to interrogate him. His wife is also a psychiatrist in a psych ward. (I wonder if they had to strike a deal about not bringing work home.) Once, after binge watching a series on Ted Bundy I confessed to her that I’d watched the whole series in a single night. She got this wry little smile on her face and said something like “1 in 100” –that’s actually not the statistic for psychopaths in society, but it so upset me that my brain refuses to remember the number she told me. If I Google it, I’ll be tempted to read about it until I ruin my evening.
I always think it’s not good to brood about quantum theory too much. I might end up doubting my existence and just disappear
Thankfully I don’t think about my existence at that level, but I think about it more than my husband. He gets annoyed by my need to try to figure out what makes people tick.
St. Therese is a comfort to my latent scrupulosity. Her style of writing is a bit exasperating but I love her supreme confidence. She bats away the people who would turn every good deed into an indulgence or partial one, that can be quantified and applied toward a guarantee of heaven.
My favorite (loose) quote in her memoir:
” Jesus, I’m not going to climb up the mountain, I’m taking the elevator. Heck, I’m no even walking into the elevator. You’re gonna carry me.”
So audacious.
An eastern orthodox mystic whose name escapes me (I think he was Russian, perhaps?) postulated that Heaven and Hell are actually the same “place.” Not physically of course, because neither are a literal place so much as a state of being. But his reasoning as best I can remember was:
There is no place God is not. And that includes Hell. If a soul is pure and in tune with the grace of God, then at death the veil is ripped away and being in the presence of God is Heaven. The beatific vision. Ultimate Paradise. But if a soul has spent its entire life being selfish or cruel or even downright evil, then at death the veil is ripped away and when a selfish soul finds itself in the presence of Ultimate Love and Selflessness and Goodness … well, it burns. Like Hell. Agony.
Was he right? I don’t know. But it definitely made me think.