Because I write frequently on matters of faith and the spirit, I occasionally get questions about – drum roll, please – how to lead others to Christ. Such questions make me want to run and hide. I’m no master evangelist. I’m just a thinker and writer. But the questions arrive anyway.
The greatest Christian apologist of the Twentieth Century, Clive Staples Lewis, once wrote that “God does all things for each.” I sense that to be true. Yes, each of us was given free will, but that doesn’t mean we’ll never need a little help. We cannot predict the timing, nor the form, of that help. That makes it important to stay alert, attentive… and humble.
I wrote the following in 2005. It first appeared at the late, lamented Eternity Road site. I’ve amended it slightly, to make it conform to events since then. If you’re a Christian of any denomination who hopes to become more effective at spreading the Faith, perhaps it will speak to you.
Timing, they say, is everything. And while we all have our little disagreements with "they," I think on this matter they're more right than wrong. This being Sunday, my focus is, as usual, on matters of faith and the spirit.
In recent years there's been a resurgence of interest in Christianity, a great part of which has gone to the Catholic Church and its Deposit of Faith. Many "cradle Catholics" who fell away when they became teenagers or young adults, as I did, have returned to the communion, oftentimes with wild expressions of astonishment and joy. I can only delight in this trend, not only because I love the Church and think it to have the best grip on eternal truth of all human institutions, but also because the great falling-away of the Baby Boom generation coincided with the rising of many social pathologies. The relation was more than a coincidence.
But what does it mean? Are the returnees and recent converts flocking through the Church's ancient doors because they've had a spiritual awakening? Because they seek to change their lives? Because an hour a week with a psychiatrist has become prohibitive? For many persons have involved themselves with a church for reasons quite distinct from a true attachment to its mission and teachings.
The Church, particularly the Church in America, has changed greatly. Fifty years ago, its presence on this continent was marked by an unpleasant degree of authoritarianism. Its priests and nuns seemed to want to declare everything either compulsory or forbidden, on God's Authority. They gave little or no explanation for their dicta; the subtext was always "It's this way or Hell." And one lesson we who attended parochial schools learned early and deeply, often from the business end of a Bolo paddle, was that you don't argue with a nun or a priest.
The past half-century has seen a softening of the clerical attitudes that evoked the greatest resistance. Characteristic of the contemporary approach are these passages from What It Means To Be Catholic, by Father Joseph M. Champlin:
The Church attempts to say something about [a wide range of contemporary issues with moral overtones.] Nevertheless, while it can clearly state the commandments, and almost as strongly teach certain general principles based upon the commandments, the further away the Church moves from the commandments and the more specific the issue at hand, the less authoritative the Church becomes. The Church on such points proposes its teachings more as tentative probings and studied insights designed to help Catholics resolve these delicate conscience questions....Catholics believe that an individual's conscience is the ultimate determinant of what is wrong or right for that individual. Moreover, God will judge us according to the fidelity with which we have followed our conscience. Nevertheless, this conscience needs to be formed by objective standards of moral conduct. The Church provides us with just that -- moral norms based on Jesus's teachings, the inspired scriptures, centuries of tradition and the laws of nature.
In taking this position, the Church demonstrates not only its commitment to its Founder and the Deposit of Faith He left us, but also a quality to which all of us are advised to recur, especially at times when we're unsure of our ground and might well be spouting personal preference rather than sound reasoning based in eternal verities: humility. It's no less important in a two-thousand-year-old institution than in an individual man.
All religious questions ultimately reduce to two:
- What is eternally true?
- What does God want from me?
Historically, children who've undergone early religious indoctrination were seldom confronted with those questions in their fundamental form. Instead, they were drilled to repeat certain approved answers to certain questions, to do this and not that, and above all not to quibble with the hierarchy. Despite the obvious, long-established superiority of religiously based education to secular forms, especially to State-run schools, this is a significant error. Fundamentals should come first; no one of any age should ever be told of a compulsion or a prohibition without being given a clear explanation for it. To do otherwise is authoritarianism, especially if the person wielding the authority is not only unwilling but also unable to justify his dictates.
Many young Catholics of my generation distanced themselves from the Church for precisely that reason. Their experiences conveyed bad lessons to others who might have become communicants. Contemporary priests and Catholic teachers are slowly coming to realize how great, and how greatly negative, the impact has been.
In a comment to this essay, Father Ethan McCarthy of Easton, Massachusetts circled the matter in a particularly poignant way:
As a priest, it is very hard to preach to my generation (I am 31) because they are not at church (I'm not that charismatic). Nevertheless, I try to go out around town and meet some of them. I think your insights are very interesting and similar to what I have seen.In the area I work, the cost and standard of living is very high. I could not believe my eyes and ears, but there is a standard to which everyone tries to live, often above their means. It was a very different lifestyle than I have ever experienced growing up and a lifestyle I would never want.
To get to the crux of my comment, women in my generation want a career, good looks, and a good man. Men want a good job, money, a good car, and a good woman. Neither really wants to get married or have children, but they will if they think they can benefit from a marriage. And they are not getting married in the Church, but on a nice beach or resort.
I usually come into the picture after their second child is born. For whatever reason, having a second baby is a crisis, I think, because they realize that they have no supernatural wisdom to hand down to their children. I "bless" their marriage and baptize their children. Sometimes they will come to see me when one of them (usually the man) has lost a job. I try to tell them to receive the sacraments (confession & Mass) and build up their domestic church by reading the Bible, praying together, staying away from sin, etc. Internet porn is a huge problem among married men. Past abortion(s) is a problem among women. But, I can never keep them around long enough for them to change their lives. As soon as they find a job, grandma moves away, a new ski house in NH, they are back to just dropping off their kids at CCD.
I think the biggest problem is the lack of God in their lives. They never stop and think that everything I have will one day be dust. I will be dead and all of these things will not be with me on the other side. It will all be over someday. What they need to do is ask, "What does God want me to do?"
Father McCarthy is himself young, and so cannot be held responsible for the defaults and missteps of those who instructed, or ought to have instructed, his sort-of-parishioners when they were younger. But the question he wants his parishioners to ask themselves is critical. If they truly believe in God, and in a Divine Plan that embraces all who live, why haven't they asked it?
Perhaps because it's not time yet.
No one on Earth knows the Divine Plan. God has not granted any man the power to read His mind. He speaks to individuals concerning His missions for them, but He has not deigned to sketch out the whole of His grand scheme for anyone. What He has done, and quite elegantly (if I may say so), is to write the laws of nature, particularly human nature, in a form legible to human eyes. What He has done is to send His Son into the world to reinforce those laws with the authoritative Word, and to suffer and die horribly as an ultimate testimony to their truth. What He has done is to promise that no man shall be tempted beyond his strength.
That is all, but it is infinitely more than enough.
Still, one must look in order to see. Many decline to look, or deliberately look away. Why?
It's not because the Word is burdensome. Indeed, the great contrast between the simplicity of Christ's teachings, their negation of the complex and onerous Levitical Covenant, and the lightness of the yoke He asked His followers to accept is why the Pharisees and priestly caste of classical Judea regarded Him as a supreme enemy. Simplicity and clarity are the things arbitrary authority has always hated most. Ask any bureaucrat -- and judge not by the specifics of his answer, but by whether you can understand it.
It happens that the central thrust of the Gospel passage for today, Matthew 25:1-13, is that we should be ready at all times to meet our fates, for "you know not the day nor the hour:"
Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.
And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.
Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.
All true, but He knows -- and dare we say that the information is of no use, to Him if not to us?
The resurgence of faith in our day could well be a matter of timing. Father McCarthy, quoted above, might burn with urgency over getting God and faith into his parishioners' lives, but his efforts, however anxious, must defer to the Divine Plan for each individual he approaches. Perhaps Smith, whom the good father has earnestly but vainly entreated, isn't ready yet because God doesn't yet want him to be ready. Perhaps Smith, like an alcoholic still mired in his addiction, must "bottom out" in some indefinable way before he can will himself to look, and so truly see. Or perhaps he, like your humble servant, was brutalized by a hyper-authoritarian indoctrination as a boy, and needs more time for the bruises to heal. The desires and efforts of men, even the holiest and most ardent of men, must be subservient to the will of God -- a will whose barest outlines are only dimly visible, except as He has already sketched them in the laws that govern the universe.
A great and underappreciated aspect of faith is the willingness to trust that, at the proper time and in the proper proportions, God will provide. Granted, beyond a certain point it's up to us as individuals to embrace our opportunities and move forward on our own, but it should never be a matter of anguish to a Christian, or a Christian cleric, that there are others who have not yet seen.
God will do all things for each of us, at the time of His choosing. To wait serenely for that time is part of faith.
"What should I have told him?"Father Schliemann grinned ruefully. "Do you seriously think I'd have done better than you did?"
Tony winced. "I'd hope so. All I had in me was a platitude."
The older priest's eyes were kind. "Sometimes that's all you're going to have, Tony. Don't flog yourself over it. Counseling Louis is likely to be difficult no matter what the occasion."
Tony had expected the pastor to disapprove of what he'd said, to have an elaborate alternative ready for use that Tony would feel an idiot for not seeing. Louis's visit and sudden departure had left him off balance. Schliemann's attempt to soothe him detached him part way from reality.
The rectory kitchen seemed to have filled with a faint haze. It glittered at the edge of perception in the light from the overhead fixture. Tony balled his hands on the table before him and tried to compose himself.
"I can see some of the reasons, I guess. But I wasn't ready for it, and I thought I ought to have been. Does it get easier as you...gain experience, Father?"
Schliemann grinned again. "You meant 'as you get older,' didn't you? In some ways, it does. In others, quite the reverse." The pastor of Onteora parish reached across the table, gently pried the younger man's hands apart, and folded them between his own.
"We are the vicars of Christ, Tony. Not Christ Himself. We struggle with the lightest of our duties, because He who defined them for us set a far higher standard than mere mortals could ever meet. But mere mortals are all we have. The Church must make do until the Second Coming."
A sheen formed on the eyes of the man who had defined the priesthood for Tony Baldaserra.
"Louis is unlike other men. You should know that, you've known him almost as long as I have. When his sister died, he was only fourteen years old, and he was already the brightest, most mature individual I knew. Today...Tony, he's challenged every notion I ever had about human limitations. I don't know what purpose God has in mind for someone so potent, but I do know that, whatever it is, it's something I could never fulfill. If you had to be more intelligent and more responsible than he is to advise him, who in the world could do it?
"We who do God's work can't afford to compare ourselves to our brothers in Christ. Our ability to help them doesn't depend on our being brighter than they are, or more worldly wise, or even more moral. It depends on remaining humble, on holding fast to the eternal truths we've made the core of our lives, and reminding them of those truths when they lose their way. We have nothing else to offer, except love."
The old priest squeezed the young one's hands. "And that you have in full measure, Tony. I've known it since you were a boy. Believe me, Louis knows it too. No matter what you said to him, if it had your love in it, it had to be alright."
Tony bowed his head.
[From Chosen One.]
The most effective preacher does not preach; he ministers. He lives his religion where others can see it in action. He stands true to his convictions against all opposition and despite all inducements to betray them. He is, in other words, an exemplar.
Leonard E. Reed, who founded the Foundation for Economic Education in Westchester, NY, was gifted at conveying the power of the exemplar to others. His basic demonstration was to light a candle in a well-lit room, to stand a little apart from it talking of other things, and to have a confederate slowly dim the lights. When the room lights had been extinguished, he would note that his audience's eyes had all been drawn to the candle's light, as they had not been while there was other illumination. It was his way of encouraging his students to "be a light in the darkness" to those who lacked conviction or guidance.
A Christian of any denomination, lay or clerical, who wants to see Christianity spread would do well to follow Dr. Reed's advice. Ours is a code of love, hope, and joy. Therefore, love well, live hopefully, and be joyous, and when asked, be ready to explain how and why. You know not the day nor the hour! There's no need to collar "sinners" in the street and drag them to church; anyway, what good would it do? Their eyes will be drawn to your light, or your Christian brother's light, at the proper time. At God's chosen time.
May God bless and keep you all.
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