So I guess that this book by Fr. Neuhaus gets into my brain even when I don't have a chance to open the pages, because I'm pretty sure that where I ended up in my thoughts were close to an idea he expresses in the pages I'm reading. But getting there was a quick and interesting thought trip.
Yesterday on the way home from Cincinnati we passed the Solid Rock Church adjacent to I-75. This church is semi-famous for a pair of massive statues that it has erected facing the highway. The first, the King of Kings statue, was locally referred to as Touchdown Jesus (not to be confused by the mosaic at The University of Notre Dame in South Bend), and was destroyed by a fire resulting from a lightning strike drawn to its iron framework. I knew it probably wasn't an original thought when I told my wife that the new statue that has replaced it has taken the church from Touchdown Jesus to Five-Dollar Foot-long Jesus. Turns out I'm not the first to see it that way.
I immediately realized I was being a bit irreverent, and decided not to post this smart-alecked observation on Facebook. I know quite a few people who'd be amused by it, but that isn't the point. I also know quite a few friends who are already biased against organized religion, and for all that my fellow Christians rightly point out that Christianity is about a relationship with a person rather than a set of religious observances, this distinction rings hollow to the people I have in mind. Many of these folks balk at the idea that we need to be saved in the first place, let alone that Jesus saves us, and this expression of humor would be more likely to reinforce their preconception rather than overcome it.
But this got me considering why we rebel against the gift that God offers us. Why do so many of us conclude that we don't need a Savior? It's a complex question with many answers, but I found myself thinking primarily about one of them, and that's where my re-reading of Death on Friday Afternoon comes in. This is also likely to invoke some of my favorite thoughts by Fr. Spitzer.
It's pretty simple, really. We estimate our sin wrongly. We insist on evaluating ourselves by comparison. "I'm a pretty good person," most of us think. And we're right. Most of us are not murderers, thieves, abusers or felons, so there is a high degree of truth in our evaluation. Those of us who are murderers, thieves, abusers or felons either continue to reach the same conclusion by shifting our comparison pool, or reach the opposite one. Some folks who should be able to think that they're pretty good people also find themselves locked into the same thought process that grips many of those who fall into this other category: "I'm not a good person. If you knew the truth about me, you'd want nothing to do with me."
And the thing is, there is enough truth underlying this thought that, once again, we're right. If we're living by comparison, our lives encompass enough areas that we will always find people against whom we compare favorably and unfavorably. This is why comparison doesn't really work as a standard for judging ourselves.
There is a standard for us to live up to, if we are going to try to live well enough to gain admission to heaven for ourselves. Jesus gave it to us, right there in the Sermon on the Mount, where everyone likes to point for "the New Testament version of the Ten Commandments." How we love the Beatitudes, but because there is so much in them we often fail to read the rest of this sermon along with them. Next Jesus spoke of things like being salt and light, of his fulfilling of the law rather than abolishing it. Ahh, now we're getting close. Do we judge ourselves in comparison to others? We're not murderers? We're not adulterers? Most of us have been scorners and lust-ers, though. He goes on to talk about how to respond to evil done upon us, a lesson which he would demonstrate to its ultimate extreme. Finally he puts a bow on the entire chapter: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
We had a great homily a few weeks ago reminding us that this perfection is not about performance, but about how we love. Even so, we fail to live up to it, and I am convinced that Jesus' purpose in delivering this sermon was not to provide another standard which we have no hope of ever achieving. Nor was his dying intended to show us that it could be done, so get to it! After all, it was impossible to keep all of the laws already established, and even getting rid of the Pharisaic interpretations wouldn't make that exactly manageable. So why could Jesus have given us such a truly impossible standard?
Could it have been for no other reason than so that we would understand that every human being is equally dependent on God's grace and mercy, so that we might appreciate the gift we have been given so much that we wish to offer it to everyone else?
And perhaps the biggest obstacle, then, standing between us and Christ, is our unwillingness to stop looking down on others so that we might feel better about ourselves.
Okay, this is probably incoherent and wandering, and I lack the time or ability to make it any better, so I just offer it to you Jesus, as I do myself, to use as you will.
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