Working out my salvation one gloppy mess at a time

This is an article developed from one I originally wrote a couple of years ago. I'm delighted that it was recently published by Aleteia.org!

For a long time after reverting to Catholicism I would trip up over the idea of “duty”. Over and over again I’d read about discerning the will of God, and I’d consider that whatever God’s will for one’s life, it always included a sense of vocational duty.

But I had a stubborn resistance to being told what to do. In my mind I associated duty with oppression, or at least with unfortunate, toilsome obligation. Wasn’t this what the Protestants were always charging Catholics with: thinking we had to work for our salvation?

I came to realize that I had been thinking of my duty – within my vocation as a mother, for instance — as what I begrudgingly needed do in order to repay God for ....  

To read the rest of the article, please follow the link to the Aleteia website.

Why You Should Read "Why I Am Catholic (and you should be too)" by Brandon Vogt

I was given the chance to receive a complimentary copy of Brandon Vogt's new book "Why I am Catholic (and you should be too)" in exchange for an honest review.  So, thank you, Ave Maria Press for that opportunity.

Brandon Vogt has written a great summary of the basic arguments for Catholicism, and that in itself comprises an exhaustive list.  His work, while concise, covers so much ground. It truly is impressive and would stand out among other introductory apologetic works for that reason alone.   This is clearly a well-planned, and deliberately executed book.  I get the sense no detail was left to chance.  

I know Brandon has done extensive research into the 'none' phenomena and has written about and developed evangelical tools to that end previously. Brandon is an expert apologist and evangelist, no doubt.  However, the rigidity of the structure kind of got to me: Twice in the book he states something akin to wishing he had more space to elaborate.  Personally, that irks me.  "It's YOUR book!" I feel like shouting at the page, "Who's stopping you from writing what you want to write if it's that important to you?"  At points like that I feel like I can see a bit too much of the behind-the-scenes, planning and that is a bit off-putting, but really, this is the only criticism I have of this entire book.  

But, since it's so well-structured, let's look at that, because really, I think it was brilliant and was what really made this such a great book, that exceeded my expectations.  The book begins and ends with a provocative appeal to the 'nones' to seriously consider Catholicism as the last true rebellion.  Sandwiched between the introduction and conclusion, Brandon categorizes his arguments.  Each chapter is entitled with a direct and concise answer to the question "Why I Am Catholic". These chapters are organized under what he calls the three Transcendentals: truth, goodness, and beauty, and herein the book soars.  More about that in a minute.

As someone who is already Catholic, I think this book, thanks in large part to its clear and thoughtful organization, makes for a great reference book to have on hand for me to "always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope" (1 Peter 3:15).  

But this book isn't really written for Catholics. Brandon has written this book for "nones" -- those who have either never experienced religion, or who effectively rejected the religious tradition of their parents by the time they reached young adulthood.  This is the group of people who claim no religious affiliation.  This is not exactly the same as atheism or agnosticism, as many 'nones' have not necessarily ever pursued that line of thought -- rather it seems that many have either just passively arrived at adulthood with no religious conviction, or having rejected some element of their childhood faith tradition, left it and never filled that void, at least not with God.

I was baptized as a ten-day old and raised by my Catholic mom and my 'none' dad. I went to Catholic school, was quite involved in my parish, and considered Catholicism to be an important part of my identity.  However, as a sinful young person, my desire to justify my appetite for sinful behaviour led me down the road of twisting the truth, picking and choosing Church teachings, embracing subjective truth, and basically fabricating a set of beliefs that I wrongly felt suited my (stunted) self. Before long, and without noticing, the deity I worshiped was replaced by the god of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  I no longer knew or believed in God the Creator; God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the Word made flesh who dwelt among us.    Having married a 'none' myself, being only nominally concerned with my faith at that time, I slowly began to tire of coming up with convoluted, wishy-washy answers to my husband's questions about Catholic teaching that allowed me to have my cake and eat it too.  Finally, I rejected this god I had constructed as weak, distant, and unconcerned with life on Earth, and I embraced the 'none' label myself.  Looking back I see this as a very good thing, as I wasn't rejecting God, but an idol, and He would use that void to draw me back to Himself.  But at that time, I would have none of it and I sought to reconstruct my understanding of the world and actively undo all the silly, quaint, beliefs of my youth.

Now back to the Transcendentals.

Brandon has organized his arguments into three categories: evidence that speaks to truth; evidence that speaks to goodness; and evidence that speaks to beauty.  Each of these three transcendentals have the ability to lead us to that point where all of our natural, empirical explanations hit a wall, but with enough force, these transcendentals carry us through that wall, as though it were the back side of the Narnian wardrobe, and we find ourselves bewildered, lost in wonderment, and often falling to our knees in the sudden, staggering awareness that life and has just exploded out of the tidy, natural confines of the physical box we believed to contain the totality of the universe.  In a moment you believe there is something so much more than this paltry, earthly, physical existence.  You can sense the supernatural layer that infuses every aspect of reality, coating the world as with a blanket of love.   For the first time in your life, you have truly tasted reality and you can never go back.

This transcendence isn't analogous to anything material I can think of to use as a worthwhile example.   Suffice to say, if you aren't sure you've experienced it, you probably haven't.  

It is the Holy Spirit, God Himself, who alone is capable of converting people.  But I believe that the witnesses of the faithful, mounting piles of evidence, thoughtful reasoning, heroic demonstrations of goodness and charity, and breathtaking beauty are all tools He uses; His cooperation with His creation, to rouse and prompt the soul to conversion.

I think that what Brandon rightly intuits is that when faced with an avalanche of truth, goodness, or beauty, we will ultimately be carried on a wave through that back wardrobe wall.  For myself, it was the truth that first got me. One evening I started googling for evidence to either support or reject a claim that a Christian friend had presented me with.  By the end of that night, the truth I found had surmounted to slay all my resistance in a single moment. In a heartbeat I knew. God was real. More real to me than my own hand.  He was the Creator of all things. And He was the Trinitarian God of the Bible.   As Brandon says in his book, citing Socrates, just because something is true, doesn't make it comfortable, but we need to follow it wherever it leads, despite the discomfort or unpopularity. In that instant I knew I was a lost sinner, I knew I needed to repent, and I knew I needed to cling to God.  
Sure, I had a lot to learn and a long way to go, but something had changed, my path was set, there could be no turning back.
  
For others, I know that it has been goodness or beauty that caused them to recognize God and upend their lives for love of Him.  In Les Misérables, it is an incredible encounter with a merciful priest that radically transformed the escaped, hardened convict Jean Valjean into a heroic, model of charity.  In a word, he was confronted and overwhelmed by goodness.  For Dorothy Day, I would say it was beauty that caught her: in her memoir The Long Loneliness, Day writes of the indescribable gratitude for her newborn daughter and the longing to give thanks, and the realization that there must be something greater, beyond the simply natural world, to whom she owes this thanks.  The beauty of new life turned her mind to thoughts beyond this plain.  

For most armchair theologian-Catholics, many of the arguments that Brandon presents will be familiar ones, but he still manages to give them an air of freshness and he is always very clear.  But some of the arguments were ones I don't remember explicitly coming across previously and I was truly impressed. His chapters, "Because it Offers Forgiveness" and "Because of Heroic Charity" both made my heart surge with love.  "Because it Lifts us Up" is a remarkable discussion of the teleology of life in Christ that you don't often encounter in the Western Church.  Finally, "Because We Need Religion" is a convincing response to the spiritual-but-not-religious mantra of the current age.

Brandon has commendably provided ample materials for the avalanche. But will the 'nones' respond to this book? 

Here is the really exciting part that all you Catholics reading this, thinking about your lost loved ones really want to hear:  is there any chance this book will actually touch the heart and mind of your beloved unbeliever?  This is where I am thrilled to offer up the following test case: my husband.  My husband was never baptized, never raised in any kind of faith tradition.  Although we've known each other for over nineteen years, God, Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular are still foreign and weird to him.  And this is a guy who goes to Mass every Sunday for love of his family.  Still, to him, Mass might as well be a standing date with any club. To this day, he has always claimed unbelief.

So, knowing I had to write this review I asked if he would at least read the introduction to give me his thoughts. As I said above, the introduction really provokes the 'none' to stick with the rest of the book.  My husband is not a man who reads for fun.  But he obliged me.  And here is what he said of the introduction:
"It's intriguing. I definitely felt compelled to read more. It's better than any of the other books like this that you've given me. It's smarter."  That was promising!
So today he made some time to read the first chapter: "Because God Exists".   His thoughts:
"I'm really impressed with the Kalam argument; I had never heard that."
"Hey," I interjected, my pride bruised, "I've said that to you before and all those other books did too!"
"Well, how it's written is really clear and makes a lot of sense."

He came back to me a bit later and said, "That book! It's really good. It's really making me think. It's poking holes in all my arguments."  And he's only on the first chapter!

I can't give a better testimony to the quality of the book than that!

Duty is gift

I wrote this post a couple years ago and just looked it up as I put together my talk for the next session in our Lenten Series.  This "duty is gift" idea has really transformed how I understand vocation and the sacrament of the present moment. It has greatly increased my ability to discover joy in ordinary time. I hope it will be a blessing!

***

"Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are the work of your hand."  Isaiah 64:8

I have been tripping up over the idea of "duty". This stubborn resistance to being told what to do. I have this association with oppression (okay, that's extreme) or unfortunate, toilsome obligation.  Mainly I suddenly recognized that I have been thinking of the execution of duty as something that I must begrudgingly do to repay God for all His providential goodness or in hopes of meriting a future reward. And though I don't like a lot of the things I am supposed to do, mostly because I don't feel very adept at doing them, I do them and hopefully can motivate myself enough with the thought of who will be benefited and how (ho-hum) it will please God, so boo-hoo, sigh and get on with it. 

It's like, I strongly want to love God with all I've got, I want to love others 'til my heart bursts and doing my duties is some burden I must carry out begrudgingly to fulfill those two commandments.

Except I'm totally wrong.

1) I am nothing. I have nothing but the gifts that God gives me out of love for me. From the air I breathe, the heart that pumps blood through my arteries, for those arteries themselves, to the family in my care, the roof over my head, the rivers and mountains that fill my scenery. Existence itself, awareness itself, nothing apart from Him

2) I can do nothing in my own power. I can not fulfil any of these duties by my own ability. If I am "good" at something, it is because He has given me this talent. If I am "bad" at something, well, I guess He's lovingly withholding that ability from me right now. Maybe He's giving me the gift of an opportunity to patiently develop some perseverance in learning a new skill or fumbling through. Lovingly calling me to accept the challenge of improvement. Maybe He's teaching me humility in reminding me of my nothingness. Doesn't matter why. I just trust that He is all and I am naught.

3)  God is love. If we are chosen to follow Him it is only that He can use us to co-labour with His plan of love for others.

4) That we are chosen is a gift.  Thus, that we are invited to co-labour is a gift. 

Thus, every ordinary duty  from flossing my kids' teeth, to scrubbing the toilet, to making dinner, to picking up dirty tissues for the zillionth time that day is  actually the gift of God giving me the freedom to choose to co-labour with Him in giving of myself in that little task. Every word of encouragement of act of compassion or duty I perform is not counted as some good I've done, merited to me, but yet another gift from God, merited to His glory: the grace to participate in His labour of love. My good-deeds magnify Him, not me.

So wait, do good works then and obedience have a role in salvation?

Of course.

Because isn't salvation to abide with Him? To be free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight? To be in His presence, eternally loving and praising Him?  And  because I'm guessing salvation is not linear temporally - Heaven after death, but beyond space and time, then every YES to some ordinary duty is His gift to us to enter into His will. Every duty I freely assent to co-labour in is an immersion in his merciful love for me, salvation.

So, with that I will joyfully, and with great thanksgiving embrace my housework, my kids' squabbles, and all the other beautiful opportunities to love Him and lose myself. 

"It is our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere, to give Him thanks."