How can God demand obligatory love?

This is one of the questions asked by Hitchens in his arguments against the morality of Christianity, and it was recently asked me by one of the youth I work with.  But the nature of the question shows that the very understanding of God and the love he 'demands' is skewed.

The first place where there is an error is the idea that God rewards or punishes us based on our performance, with Heaven or Hell.  This is not exactly accurate.  The most accurate analogy for God's love, and the one most frequently used in the Bible, is the love that a spouse has for another.  Being in Heaven is simply being married to God-  united with Him forever.  Being in Hell is being in no relationship with God.

So take the perception people have of how to please God and extend it to the concept of marriage.  Supposing my wife were to say to me "I demand that you love me at a satisfactory level, or I will divorce you."  Fair enough, in a sense.  If I don't love her, I cannot be in a relationship with her.  So in a sense love for her is obligatory.   But it would still be a rather demanding and unloving attitude she had toward me to say such a thing.

Instead, in order to be married to her, I had to choose to love her in the first place.  I had to make a commitment to her that said "I promise to be faithful to you, yada yada yada."  (Turns out the words yada yada yada are not precisely in the Catholic ritual, but you get my meaning.)   In other words, I had to choose to commit to love her!

I consider it a duty to love my wife, and to love my children, and to love my God.  Is this what is meant by obligatory love?  Am I obligated to love my kids?

Part of this too is confusion over the term love.  To a Christian, 'luv is a verb' (classic DC Talk), as well as a virtue, a commitment, the nature of God.... the emotion of love comes pretty far down the ladder. Though I doubt many Christians would deny the existence of the emotion.  if love is reduced to being merely an emotion, how could you demand it of anyone?  Contrariwise, how could you commit to it when you get married?

So the long and the short of it is that Heaven is not exactly a reward for being good-  it is the logical end of someone pursuing a relationship with God and therefore being with Him for all time.  Neither is Hell a punishment, but it is no relationship with God, the natural consequence of rejecting His offer of a relationship.  This is also what is meant by the way when people say that God does not send you to Hell, you choose it. You may not fully realize what you are choosing when you reject God, but it is what you are choosing!

Here's the troubling thing.  Hitchens debated all kinds of Christians in his lifetime.... how come no one told him this?  I suspect that they did.  I suspect he knew it even before he raised the question the first time.  I suspect that he was deliberately misleading when he misrepresented Christianity in his statements.  I know that most people are ignorant about what Christianity really teaches.  Most people have a concept of Christianity that they developed by the time they were 12, and they expect that true Christianity has no more meaning or maturity behind it than their 12 year old interpretation.   But I think Hitchens must have known better, and Dawkins must, and so when they refute the Christianity of 12 year olds, I think they are being deliberately disingenuous.

Why is it that when a culture get's more educated they reject Christianity?

I think the implied answer to that is obvious- that Christianity is just medieval superstition that does not stand up to the scrutiny of reason.  I think "The Thinking Atheist" said it best-  "You pray for me, I'll think for you."

However, obviously I am not going to draw that conclusion.  Truth is that while educated cultures do seem to move away from faith, they do not do so at nearly the speed that was anticipated 100 years ago. Atheists continue to lament that they cannot understand how people who are otherwise so intelligent in the world of business, economics, politics, and yes, even science, can continue to hold to religions. America is said to be the most advanced country in the world, while at the same time the most religious. How can this be?

Of course, I don't think religion is stupid.  Honestly, I think Catholicism is the intelligent answer to the big questions.  Unlike some other religions, Catholics welcome the scrutiny of reason because they believe that both faith and reason can lead to truth, and truth cannot contradict truth. I will not in this post defend why I think Catholicism is the intelligent answer-  I have done so at length elsewhere.  But I will take on the title question.

So, if the rejection of Catholicism by educated cultures is not indicative of Catholicism's foolishness, what is it?  We could go the root of "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." (1 Cor 1:27) because even in Biblical times teaching people that Jesus rose from the dead sounded foolish.  But I think there are other reasons yet.

One is that there are certain assumptions made by some academics, which are used as the framework within which discussions can be had.  For example, for natural Science to explain the origins of the universe, they need to construct a system that is only dependent on natural science, they cannot bring in a super natural or metaphysical source-  say God.  They succeed in explaining the universe, for the most part, without God and this is taken as a proof that God does not exist.  Anthropologists apply a similar framework when they study the origin of religions-  they assume that the religion must have been invented over time, and do not include the possibility that God actually did reveal elements of the religion. 

You see manifestations of this all the time.  When Hitchen's and Blair debated whether religion was good for the world, at no point did they ask the question 'Is it true?'.  The debate assumed the proposition that religion was a man made construct, and went from there.  I wish Blair would have noticed that.

What I am saying is that often in academic circles the question of religion does not even include the possibility that it is true-  it is necessarily excluded for the purpose of the science.

However, I would like to suggest that there is a bigger reason why Catholicism is rejected among educated cultures.  Furthermore, I would like to suggest that Jesus predicted this.

As a culture gets educated, the importance of money increases.  In fact our whole western culture and system is dependent on consumerism, and consumerism has become the assumption that is unchallenged by Christians.  never mind verses like "The love of money is the root of all evil." or "You cannot serve both God and money."   I would like to suggest that the reason our culture is rejecting God is because they are so wholeheartedly embracing the service of money. 

Jesus pointed to this in his parable about the sower in the field.  In that parable, some of the seed falls into the thorns, where it sprouts up, meaning cares for the word and embraces it, but the thorns choke it.  Jesus says the thorns are 'the deceitfulness of riches and the lust for other things.'

So according to Jesus, when we get too concerned about worldly things, the faith is choked in us and does not bear fruit.

It is interesting how the phenomenon of development works anyway.  Along with development (I will not enter the debate of causality) comes the sexual revolution.  As our values shift to seeking personal comfort and the elimination of suffering, so we choose to have smaller families, or no families at all.  But we still want sex. So we begin to value sex for it's physical and emotional pleasure that it gives, but divorce it from it's original meaning.  And the further we go down this path, the more our sexual values challenge that of Christianity.  40 years ago the Church's teaching on contraception was for many the biggest to accepting the validity of the faith.  Now I suspect it is becoming increasing the teaching on homosexuality.

So as we become educated our values shift more and more from those presupposed by Christianity.  And I think that even we Christians begin to make assumptions that are not in keeping with Christianity, and based on those assumptions we lose faith in Christianity.

I don't know about you but that last paragraph made my brain tired.

I have also found that when I personally am outside the state of grace due to some sin, by faith suffers as a result.  I think that our over attachment to money is sinful, and so as a culture our faith will suffer!

So in conclusion-  I do not deny that there are very intelligent reasons to doubt the faith.  But I think there are intelligent reasons to keep the faith as well.  I suspect that what is tipping the scales is not education but the values that come with it!

Is the Shroud of Turin real?



At the schools where I work I have a talk series called “unsolved mysteries” wherein I investigate 

Front view of the Shroud of Turin

some of the miracles or apparent miracles that seem to confirm the truth of Catholicism. If you have been following my blog, you will see that I regard these remarkable phenomena as evidence for Catholicism- and to me each one is so convincing that even looking at one of them should produce real credence in the claims of Catholicism in the mind of a skeptic.  Here is a bit about my favorite one, the Shroud of Turin.  I decided to write about this based on what I know and from having done some investigating online.  I will try to represent the facts as accurately as possible, but please don’t hold me to the high standards expected of professional journalists or investigators!  If I am wrong about something, I will gladly admit it and amend my article. If you want a more precise article, I suggest Wikipedia.  I have every intention of presenting a biased account, while not being misleading!

The Shroud is believed to be the one that Jesus was wrapped in when he was crucified. The theory goes that when he rose his image was left on it, and so the shroud is a long piece of linen which had the brownish imprint of an apparently crucified man. The first thing that you need to know about the Shroud of Turin is that no one knows if it is real.   The Catholic Church has not made a claim one way or the other.  This is important, because even if the Shroud were proven to be false, this would not disprove Catholicism.  In my mind some of the other miracles would!  If Padre Pio’s Stigmata, or Our Lady of Guadalupe were proven false, this would have massive implications because the Church has declared Padre Pio and Juan Diego (who gave us the Our Lady picture) to be saints.  If they turn out to be charlatans, this calls into question the whole authority of the Church to teach on matters of faith and morals, and it could even be reasonable concluded that the Church knew they were fraudulent and was in on the hoax.  None the less, it should be stated that while the Church has not made a formal statement on the matter, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI clearly seemed to believe in it themselves.

The shroud first appears in undisputed history in France in 1390.  Immediately we should be suspicious of this, since this is an era where relics and faked relics are turning up all over Europe, as people cling to the hope found in Christ while the black plague takes its toll.  Add to that the fact that the Bishop of the region declared the thing a fake and says the forger confessed, and we should really have a closed case.  But none the less, the thing survived and was revered, burned in a fire, damaged by water, repaired by nuns, and analyzed by 20^th century science.   Notably in 1988 it was subjected to  carbon dating, wherein a sample was taken and sent to 3 separate labs, all of whom concluded that the shroud was created in 1260-1390AD.  At this point of course many people declared the shroud a fake- but the intrigue goes on.  While the accuracy of the science goes largely unchallenged, the theory is that there was a ‘sampling error’- that they took a piece of the cloth that was not from the original cloth, possibly from a patch.  One of the scientists who worked on STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) even published an article in 2005 saying that "The worst possible sample for carbon dating was taken.”

It should be noted that since that time, a nuymber of other mechanical and chemical tests have been performed on the Shroud, dating it to between 280 BC and 220 AD, according to CNN.

Whatever the case, it seems that much the evidence presented so far is against the shroud, and indicates that it is a fake or at least a likely fake, and not really good evidence for Christianity.  A part of me would like to say that the Carbon Dating was so conclusive that whatever else, the thing is not real. But when I started looking into this I found the evidence to be overwhelmingly in favor of considering the thing to be real-  so much so that I could not so easily dismiss it, and began to take seriously the sampling error argument!

There’s a lot of evidence that I am not particularly interested in, although they support the argument;

·         The linen was of a type consistent with 1^st century Jerusalem.

·         The chemical signatures of dirt found on the cloth are identical to those in 1^st century limestone tombs in Jerusalem.

·         There is pollen and a flower imprint on the shroud consistent with springtime in Jerusalem- and some consistent with Edessa and Constantinople, where the shroud is believed to have travelled before going to France.

·         In 1902 the image was declared “anatomically flawless”, and while since then there have been arguments both in support and against this, most people, even skeptics, agree that this is the case and therefore the image must have been created using a real human body.

·         NASA scientists detected impressions of 1^st century Palestine coins on the eyes.

And so on.  But what fascinates me the most is the way the image was created!  If you do your homework you will discover that the image has been, to some degree, duplicated- by painting a man in olive oil and wrapping a linen shroud around him and baking the shroud in the oven for several days.  So it could have been faked- but consider the following;

In 1898 the shroud was photographed for the first time by a man named Secondo Pia.  While developing his photos, Secondo Pia made an astonishing discovery- The shroud was a negative!  For those of you too young to remember film cameras, when a camera would take a picture, it would appear on the film with all of the colours reversed- light would become dark, yellow would become blue, etc.  You may have an app on your smart phone that allows you to do this even now.  Take a negative of a negative, and you get a positive.  Here’s the question that bothers me- why would some hoaxer in the 14^th century make his image a negative when technology to discover that will not be invented for 500 years?  Granted, it could be done, with the whole olive oil and oven thing- but why bother?  How would you even think of that in the first place?  Why not just paint the thing?

On the other hand, if it was real, it makes sense that at the moment Jesus rose he emitted some super powerful light that left the imprint on the cloth just as happens on film in a camera.  Even then no one knows quite how it was done, but it is believed that the high resolution indicates that the light source lasted only for hundredths of a second.  (There are some who propose that Leonardo Da Vinci created the hoax himself, using an Arab photographic technology.  The fact that we have a clear historic record going back to 1390, well before was born, does not appear to be an issue. In my opinion theories like that do more to hurt the skeptic’s case than help it!)

The implications of Secondo Pia’s discovery were such that he was accused himself of fraud, until he was vindicated in the 1930’s.  In 1978, STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) was created to conduct scientific tests on the shroud.  As is consistent with other miracle investigations in the church, scientists were selected who were unbiased, many of them not even holding that Jesus rose.  I once heard a fascinating testimony by a Jewish photography expert asked to analyze the shroud, who protested that he did not believe in it, but after his analysis he declared it authentic.

In 1976 the shroud was placed under a VP8 Image Analyzer, used by NASA to create 3-dimensional images of the moon.  Astonishingly, it created a 3 dimensional image of a man.   This is astonishing because even other photographs fail to do that.  And they could not duplicate it.  More incredibly, the image has since then been made into a hologram, which is supposed to be impossible for 2-d objects.  The hologram reveals even more about the shroud.  The thing that stood out to me when I saw it (in a museum in Rome) was that the body appeared to be hovering over the cloth, not right against it. The implication is that it was photographed at a small distance- as if Jesus body somehow began hovering, with the shroud ballooning around it, then emitted the radiation which caused the image, possibly at the moment that he rose.

The other piece that astounds me is the evidence of the blood. First , the blood was on the shroud before the image. (Some dispute this). This would be extremely strange for someone to fake- paint blood streaks down where the arms will be, and arms on after.  The blood from the wounds, including the scourging, is consistent with the tortures described  in the passion narrative, to a degree that is not described and should not have been known to a 14^th century fraudster.  Such as the nature of the roman scourge. Or the fact that he is pierced through the wrist, not the hand, as he was always portrayed in medieval art.  The blood from the side is separated into red blood cells and serum- as happens when someone dies, and as is attested by John “blood and water came out.”  Which by the way can only be determined under UV light.  The rest of the blood is from a living person- rather, they were living when the man bled.  

So, suppose someone was faking this.  They would have had to get a living man’s blood onto the shroud, then a dead mans, in the exact right places such that 21^st century science could not conclusively show it to be wrong, scourging marks accurate, pierced through the wrist, include undetectable serum on in the side wound, then photograph the whole thing using technology newly introduced from the Arab world, such that it would create a negative image with a high enough resolution to create holograms, and then they have to bother to include flowers and pollen and coins….

Does it take more faith to believe that this is real, or to believe that it was faked?

So why does it only appear in 1390?  I would suggest that it was known about all along.  We know of something called the “Image of Edessa”, which was said to show the face of Christ. That disappears, and then Constantinople claims to have the burial cloth of Jesus.  That too disappears during the crusades, when Constantinople is sacked in 1204.  A French knight claims to have the burial cloth in Lirey in 1353.  Is it possible that it is all the same cloth?  I would put to you that it is possible and reasonable to think so.

In fact, I think there is evidence that this is the case in Byzantine Icons.  Judge for yourself the similarities in the images- shoulder length hair parted in the middle, long thin nose, thin mustache, gaunt cheeks, often a 2 part beard.  Anyone ever ask you how we know what Jesus looked like?

But what’s really striking are the eyes.  Often Jesus’ left eye is distorted in Byzantine art.  Notice that this is also the case on the shroud!  Is it possible that when Jesus was arrested that he was struck on the cheek, and his left eye was swollen?  That artists who created the icons copied the shroud, and ended up with the same line- unintentionally distorting his left eye?

To me the evidence is remarkably in favor of regarding the Shroud as genuine.  Furthermore, if it is genuine, this indicates that Jesus really rose from the dead- and of course the implications of that are staggering.  I admit that the evidence of the Carbon dating is strong-  but to me it does not outweigh the body of evidence in favor of the authenticity of the shroud, especially in that  there are such strong indications that there was a sampling error.   I leave it to you- is the shroud real, or just an utterly remarkable fake?

If God is real, why is there no evidence for Him?

Q. If God is real, why is there no evidence?

A.  I suppose it depends on what kind of evidence you are looking for. 

A lot of people demand physical, empirical evidence for God.  But God Himself is not physical.  By his nature, he cannot be measured.  And empirical science can only deal with that which can be measured.  Philosophically, God is "existence", and so asking the question "What is the evidence for God's existence" is somewhat like asking the question "What is the evidence for existences existence."

I also do not actually think that there is irrefutable evidence for the existence of God.  Any evidence I could present, someone could say 'yes, but...'.  Christians believe that god is like this deliberately, that God for some reason wants people to have faith in Him, and trust what they do not see.  In deed, Jesus makes a really big deal out of faith, doing works for people with faith, not doing them for people who don't have it, scolding people who don't have it, praising those who do.  For some reason Jesus never made it plainly and irrefutably obvious to everyone that he was the Messiah.  I suspect that that reason is in keeping with why God does not reveal himself in a way that could not be rejected.

That said, I think there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God.  I think it is suspect that the evidence for God is routinely thrown out by those who would deny his existence.

I will start with the weaker evidence to my mind;

I will skip over the whole argument from beauty thing.  I think that arguing that God exists on the basis that there is so much beauty in the world begs the question why is there so much ugliness?

Argument from design-  young earth creationists in particular seem to like this one.  They will point to extraordinary animals; turtles with built in compasses, beetles with explosive compounds in their abdomens, giraffes with an intricate series of valves to allow blood to flow up and down it's neck according to need, wood peckers with tongues that begin by going down their throat, up around their brain, through a nostril, and out their beak... etc.  The argument goes that these animals have irreducibly complex systems-  systems that would fail if not all there at once so cannot be explained by the mechanism of evolution by natural selection.  Microbiologists (notably Michael Behe) will point to the nature of the cell, of blood clotting, of flagellum, and point to the same logic of irreducibly complex systems.   Physicists will describe the laws governing our universe, and the fact that if any of these laws were adjusted by the slightest degree, life would be impossible.  And so they argue "Therefore there must have been an intelligent designer."

But the counterargument comes quickly that if conditions were not just so, there could be no one to ask the question, therefore they must have been so.  And they propose the idea of a multi verse, wherein different universes are potentially popping in and out of existence, and we naturally live in the one suitable for life.  In the end they tend to accuse us of believing in the "God of the gaps".  They suggest that we believe in God simply because we have questions that cannot be answered by science yet, and we assume that they never will be.  Then you get guys like Richard Dawkins who paint Christians as believing in God simply to explain the universe.

I think the 'unanswered questions' argument is fair, but I think it goes both ways.  If we cannot allow for unanswered and seemingly unanswerable questions about science to be evidence for the existence of God, I would challenge that unanswered and seemingly unanswerable questions about God are not evidence against.  Why doesn't God heal amputees? I don't know, but this does not mean He does not exist.   In fact, I would expect that if God were real, there would be things about Him that we could not understand.  If a religion successfully answered every question, I would suspect that it was man made.

Argument from Morality-  I've already exhausted this one in previous posts.  Much of morality, notably sexual morality and the concept of human rights-  depends on the idea that humans have a dignity above that of animals. Catholics argue that morals are intrinsic-  in something called 'natural law', and I think this is demonstrated clearly by the morals of non Christians.  But for Catholics our morals are based in something and are consistent-  atheists are left with the uncomfortable position that morals are subjective and decided democratically.

Argument from History- I would like to suggest that scripture is itself a type of evidence of the existence of God.  It is interesting how the Bible gets treated by those who doubt it.  They say "what evidence was there for the existence of Jesus outside of the Bible?".  And Christians tend to say something about Flavius Jospehus, a Jewish historian who made a very vague and unimpressive reference to Jesus.  But why would we reject scripture as historical documents?  Unlike most historical documents, scriptures have been painstakingly copied and preserved for centuries.  Many of the scriptures- Gospel of John, letters of Paul, Acts- claim to be written by people with first hand knowledge of what they are speaking about.  Others- Gospel of Luke- claim to be well researched.  I would like to suggest that scriptures are rejected as historical documents on the grounds that we reject their conclusions, therefore we cannot accept the documents.  I think rather we should treat them like historical documents, and recognize that this is a form of evidence which should be admissible.

Perhaps the most convincing argument from history is the sudden emergence of the Christian movement 2000 years ago wherein people were killed for making the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. 

Argument from miracles-  At the moment, this is the argument I find most compelling.  That's because miracles- at least the ones I refer to- are scientifically verifiable, and therefore provide the opportunity to disprove Catholicism, and yet they stand up to scrutiny!  In my discussions with atheists, I keep hearing this argument regarding miracles;  "Miracles are by definition impossible. If you rule out the impossible solutions, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.  For every miracle there is other possible, though improbable, explanations. We must accept that explanation, and reject the miraculous one."  In other words  "Miracles are impossible, therefore miracles are impossible."

It is remarkable to me that I keep coming across this line of thinking again and again.  I suspect that someone must be teaching it, because so many atheists seem to come to the same conclusion independently.  If what we are discussing is whether miracles are possible, we cannot allow for a premise 'miracles are impossible.'  I even had an atheist argue that Padre Pio's stigmata was not a miracle, because it could have been faked, or it could have been that 'contrary to the laws of nature, holes grew in his hands and in his feet in a way the emulates a crucified man.'  Although that is extremely unlikely, an extremeliy unlikely thing is more likely than an impossible thing, therefore it must be the true explanation.

A parallel is drawn to believing in UFO's based on what evidence is presented, despite the fact that it is extremely unlikely that if intelligent alien life did exist it would be able to visit earth, and would focus all it's attention on Americans.

So let's all agree that the idea of alien life forms coming to earth is extremely unlikely, to such a degree that we would sooner dismiss all claims as being those of lunatics or liars or people with faulty memory.   But supposing they produced evidence-  say they produced a spacecraft with technology hitherto unknown on earth, that could do things that even the American military, though they could duplicate, could only do so with great difficulty.  And let’s say there were some elements that they could not quite duplicate, but could make a fairly close replica of.   From that evidence, which can be scientifically tested, we would have to eliminate the lunatic and liar theories, and develop some others.  I think the reasonable theories to consider would be.

1.       This is an alien spacecraft

2.       This craft was designed by another country (Russia) or secret agency and was not meant to be discovered.

3.       The person holding the technology created an extremely elaborate hoax.

Now supposing the CIA and FBI and foreign intelligence agencies whatever scientific communities have a stake in it all claim to have no knowledge of where the thing came from or how it was made.

I would offer to you that this would be substantial evidence for the idea of aliens.  Not proof- but admissible evidence.  No longer could we assume that aliens don’t exist (or at least don’t travel to Earth), I think we would have to re-examine our biases.

I would argue that the substantial evidence for Catholicism is of that nature!  Not only that, but we have corroborating evidence!  Say in the alien example that we then found a ‘spacesuit’ which would not fit a human, is made of unknown materials, and is very difficult to duplicate, but is found 1000’s of kilometers, say in another country, from the craft find.  Add to this the ‘testimony’ of an eyewitness who says there was an alien in it, who stripped for a dip in the lake, and they stole it.  Then you find that the dimensions of the suit are compatible with the dimensions of the craft. And a photo on the spacecraft mantle depicts an alien wearing that very suit.

Shall we conclude that we have not only a hoax, but a conspiracy of hoaxes?

The Shroud of Turin, taken alone, is that kind of evidence.  So is Our Lady of Guadalupe.  The shroud can be duplicated-  with great difficulty and some level of inaccuracy.  Our Lady of Guadalupe, to my knowledge, cannot be duplicated.  Add to this Lanciano, incorruptibles, exorcisms, Marian apparitions, the confirmed miracles at Lourdes, stigmatists, and 2 scientifically verified miracles for every canonized saint. And they all point to the same consistent reality.  

The Church has had to rule on the subject, and has its own reputation to uphold which would be dubious if it ever claimed a hoax to be authentic.  Note it has not ruled on the Shroud, but did declare Padre Pio a saint.  If Padre Pio can be demonstrated to be a fraudster, then we will know for certain that the Church is wrong!  The Church cannot afford those risks… and so requires a certain level of scrutiny before authenticating something.  So the very fact that the Church would examine a miracle like Pio's stigmata, and still feel compelled to stake it's reputation on canonizing him, is itself an indication of the strength of the evidence.

If the Church were faking her miracles, or they were just fortunate coincidences, I would expect  to find such fortunate coincidences in other religions as well.  (When I've used this argument, people tend to say 'yeah, well there's miracles in other religions.'  So far I have not found a any compelling ones, and I've looked.  I'm open to suggestions.)

Conclusion-  I return then to my original point, which is this-  There is plenty of evidence for God, even a remarkable amount.  I submit that the tendency to reject the evidence outright usually demonstrates that we are using our conclusion as a premise.  It is my opinion that the evidence strongly points to the conclusion that Catholicism is correct, even if it leaves some questions unanswered.

Is it possible for Christians to behave Morally?

I recently posted an article entitled "Is it possible for Non Christians to behave morally?"  Honestly at the time that I wrote it I thought that I would get explanations for foundations of ethics outside of Christianity and the logic of human dignity-  but I didn't!  I did however get one very interesting response, which included a link to this video-  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cumCZ4bAXZA.  In it, Christopher Hitchens (who was among the most respected and vocal advocates of atheism until his recent death) argues that it is in fact impossible for Christians to behave morally.  As usual, Hitchens communicates his points articulately and with a gravity and courtesy which demand respect.  He makes some very compelling arguments, some of which I have already discussed in "Why Catholics are right."  (Interestingly, the video contains a link to the original whole debate, but that link has been severed, so we only get one side of the argument).

However, I found that many of Hitchens' arguments-  in fact, almost all of them, are based on false understandings of Christianity.  Now Hitchens is an extremely intelligent man, and very well informed, so to make such a bold and sweeping statement may seem unfair.  But I think that a cursory examination of the ideas he assumes are Christian beliefs will quickly demonstrate my point.

I have found in my discussions with atheists that invariably when they raise an argument against Christianity, it is against fundamentalism, and not against Christianity as I understand it as a Catholic.  Maybe this is because the fundamentalists are the most vocal Christians, certainly here and in the United States and the UK.  The difficulty is that I disagree with fundamentalists often for the same reasons as the atheists, and can usually offer more reasons to boot!  Within Hitchens' errors most of them fall into that category, but not all.  In this article I intend to explain the Catholic viewpoint as best I understand it.  I do not intend to defend what other Christians believe, or what Hitchens thinks they believe.

The first error I came across is in Hitchens' understanding of redemption by Christ.  There is a very simplistic way of explaining why Jesus' sacrifice is atoning for our sins, and that is the courtroom analogy.  This works great for explaining the concept to teens and to new converts,  but actually what Catholics understand about the nature of Christs redeeming act is much more profound.  At least as far back as St Anselm (1033-1109) Catholics have been articulating why this explanation is insufficient.  I won't get into it all here, except to say that the scapegoat analogy is incomplete, and so the arguments Hitchens has with Jesus redemption are incomplete.  There are 2 major points that stand out to me.  One is that we do not cast our sins upon Christ, but rather He takes them on Himself.  We could not have sacrificed just any human, and indeed the sacrifice of Christ would not have worked if we had tried to make it work rather than Him taking it on Himself.  Secondly, sacrificing any other human would not have done it, and this is precisely why the sacrifice of Christ can carry with it the forgiveness of sins.  Hitchens argues that even if he could take on someone else's punishment, he could never forgive them their sins.  Of course not!  Hitchens is not God.  Jesus is.  The fact that Jesus claimed to forgive sins in his life, and passed that authority on to his apostles, is one of the most outlandish claims possible.  No one but God can do that.  And God forgiving us of our sins does not take away our responsibility for them, as Hitchens suggests.  In fact I would propose that the Christian view holds that we are much more responsible for our sins than a secular view would.  I suspect that this is in part why we ought to fear God, and if we had the slightest grasp of the immensity of our sins it would only serve to increase our aprecaition that he forgives them!

"If I do right it is only to evade punishment".  I highly, highly doubt that you would find a mature Christian that would agree to that summary of Christian morality!  In fact, this is largely the mentality that St Paul was arguing against when he spoke of 'freedom from the law'.  It is difficult to take on errors of such magnitude within a short blog entry, as I have to explain every background idea.  The concept in Christianity is that we have been created good and have been corrupted, and are being restored to our original state by submission to Gods will.  It is not legalistic like the Jews or Muslims.  The process is called Sanctification in the west, Deification in the East.  We were made in the likeness of God and are being restored to it.  And the likeness of God, his nature, is love.  So being sanctified is being restored to love!  Once restored to our original state, we will not even desire sin!  When Jesus speaks of freedom from the law, it is because if I do not desire to murder, than I have no need of the law "thou shalt not murder."  If I have no desire to lust, I don't need the laws regulating sex. It is ridiculous to think that the only reason Christians do not murder if for fear of punishment.  It is also ridiculous to think that the only reason Mother Teresa did what she did was for fear of punishment.  The doctors of the Church repeatedly taught that this servile fear stage is one of the first ones Christians go through, sometimes necessary at the start.  But if you remain in that stage, you will always be choosing good for selfish reasons, which is in fact sin and would frustrate your process of sanctification!

Hitchens also fails to understand the nature of the punishment of Hell.  He speaks of worldly punishments, which as he said 'somtimes follow axiomatically', but he does not realize that Hell follows selfishness axiomatically as well.  God does not send us to Hell, we effectively choose it out of selfishness! (Some of these arguments are so often stated elsewhere that it feels redundant to even bring them up.  I am not bringing anything new to the table, so surely Hitchens should have known better!)

 Hitchens complains about God's totalitarianism.  Why should we be forced to restore ourselves to sanctity-  we did not choose this state!  Why should we have to accept help from Christ.... we weren't there when he was crucified!  As if God were just another human setting up arbitrary laws.  I wonder if Hitchens thought it unjust that he was subject to the laws of physics, when these were not his own idea and he had no say in them?  The reality is for Christians that we are in need of redemption, and Christ gives us grace on the cross to receive it.  That's the starting point.  Arguing that it is not fair because you didn't choose it is like the child yelling at his mother "I didn't ask to be born!".    God wrote both the laws of physics and the laws of morality.  Through studying the laws of physics, we have come to the fascinating conclusion that in fact the universe would only produce life if the laws were as they are.  I suspect that if we accepted the laws of morality as they are rather than attempting to manufacture them we would discover the same principal applies! 

Hitchens argued that Christians think that we as humans have no innate sense of right and wrong, as if we did not know murder was wrong until we got to Sinai and received the 10 commandments.  It is hard to imagine where Hitchens even got that impression!  Christians have long held the principal of "Natural Law", which is precisely that we do have an innate sense of right and wrong. 

With humans being on the planet for 100,000 years, and Jesus only bothered to pop in for the last 2000-  that's his best argument, and I may one day dedicate a whole blog entry to it.  But again he fails to understand that Jesus redeeming act goes both ways, and that it is not necessary to know what Jesus did in order to benefit from it.  That latter notion is popular among fundamentalists and Jehovah's Witnesses but is not consistent with Catholic thinking. 

Lastly, he says that God fashioned us in filth and we are encouraged to be disgusted with our sexuality.  The former notion is held by Lutherans, and Calvinists, but not Catholics. As stated before, we believe that we are in the image of God an damaged by sin, but not disgusting. The latter notion is easily refuted by even a superficial examination of John Paul II's theology of the Body, that clearly Catholicism teaches that Sex is good and to be honoured, and that sexual ethics are routed in this notion, and not the one proposed by Hitchens.

In short, while I have no doubt that Hitchens would have handily defeated me in a live debate, most of his arguments against Christian Morality fall short when considered by someone who has an genuine understanding of Christian Morality. 

For people interested in going deeper into these ideas, I recommend the book "The Fulfillment of all Desire" by Ralph Martin.  It is not an apologetics book, but about maturing as a Christian and how the journey is explained by the doctors of the Church. 

Why is swearing a sin?

Q.
So yesterday I was having a conversation with a friend in one of my classes about swearing. He's an Atheist with this habit but he was really open to being told why it's wrong to do so, yet I still found I couldn't explain it to him. Obviously just saying "because it's a sin" wasn't going to work, but even looking at that, why is it a sin? The ten commandments say not to take the name of the Lord in vain, but they don't actually say not to swear. In fact I seem to recall that there are numerous times throughout the old testament where it says that the Lord swore an oath to different people. I guess the part that I don't understand is what the difference between saying shoot and saying something else is. What makes one word a swear and something you shouldn't say, while another very similar word is perfectly fine to use in it's place?

A. 
I don't actually think swearing is a sin, in and of itself.  Words come and go in offensiveness!  When French people speak about seals, are they swearing? 

I used to work in a group home for kids with behavior problems, and we had a swear jar.  The trouble was, while I had eliminated swearing from my vocabulary way back in high school, I did not regard things like "damn" or "what the hell" as swears.  So often the kids would catch me, and I would have to put in a quarter!  But who gets to decide these things anyway?

I think that it is obvious why using the Lords name in vain is disrespectful.  And by extension, using any Religious word like a swear word, as the Quebecois do-  the question is why do it?

A friend of mine once said (and probably quoted something) "Common cursing and swearing is an attempt on behalf of the inarticulate person to express himself."  When I was the Dean of Boys at Clear Water Academy, I had a student sent to my office for swearing in class.  I challenged him to compile a list of 10 professions where frequent swearing would not inhibit his advancement.  I expected him to come up with garbage man, trucker, etc-  professions that are respectable in their own right but which I knew he did not aspire to.  But he came up with actor, prostitute, drug dealer....

(Not implying anything wrong with acting!)

I find the words that offend me are different from those that offend others.  I consider it profoundly disrespectful to call someone a 'retard' or to say 'that is so gay', but don't mind as much terms like
sh-t.  It is an interesting education to young people who use the word 'faggot' to learn that the song "Money for nothin'" by the Dire Straits is no longer allowed on Canadian airwaves for use of the word, even while not only songs but radio hosts use a variety of other words traditionally considered swears!

The long and the short of it is this-  swearing is offensive, and therefore is uncharitable.  It is also considered undignified, and so is below the behaviour which should be expected of a Christian who is to be 'above all reproach'.  I think that Christians do ourselves a disservice by overreacting to swears. 

(At a staff meeting in the group home, we were discussing which words to consider swears, and I mentioned the Lords name.  One of my fellow employees said "We can't even say that anymore?  Jesus Christ!"  I looked at him and said "F--k you."  He laughed, and I think that response was probably the most respectable one I could offer!)

So, swearing is wrong because it is not courteous.  But what is courteous is likely to continue to change!

Is there such a thing as a soulmate?

 

 

Any time you can start a blog entry with a Dilbert comic, it is a good day.

 

My original reaction to this question, frankly, is of course not, what a silly question.  But then as you think about it you realize just how profound the question really is. I'm going to be a little more personal than is typical, because in the end I don't actually know the answer!

 

I am very happily married to a beautiful woman named Catherine.  In a certain sense, it seems like we are 'perfect' for each other, like made for each other.  "You complete me", kind of a thing.  I sometimes think, what would happen if she died, or if in some parallel universe I had the opportunity to marry someone else, what kind of person would it be?  And I quickly realize that in truth, there is no one out of the thousands of women that I know that I feel better suited to.

 

Awwww.

 

But I also realize that this is in part because Catherine made me the guy that I am.  I believe strongly in simplicity-  that we have a moral responsibility to live simply so that others may simply live.   Evidence for this conviction is seen in the clothes I wear, the car I drive, the way I decorate my house, the kind of vacations I go on.  Catherine and I share these values, and so there is very little tension in them.  Honestly, I know very few women who would be happy to furnish their homes with free second hand furniture so that they can give more money away!

 

But I didn't care that much about simplicity until Catherine convicted me of it.  This, I believe, is one of the ways in which Catherine and I are sanctifying each other, as is the purpose of marriage.  (Purgatory is sanctifying, so when I proposed to Catherine I said "Will you let me be your purgatory?"  and she replied "I can't think of a better man for the job."  JK.)

 

My suspicion is that God is a lot less deliberate in the functionings of the world then many people think.  Everything that happens is within his 'permissive will', but not necessarily his 'active will.'  God allows a great number of things to happen without causing them.  This makes a lot more sense out of suffering, I think-  or at least it dismisses the notion that all suffering should make sense! 

 

So I think that while God blessed my idea to marry Catherine, I might just as easily have remained single, become a priest, or even married another woman.  This respects my free will.

 

But then there is that troublesome word, 'vocation'.  Vocation literally means 'calling', and so if my vocation is to be Catherine's husband, than this implies that God called me to that.  Another comic strip comes to mind, (couldn't find it), where in Fox Trot Jason is playing football with Marcus.  Marcus says "Go deep".  Jason "What is the relationship between fate and free will".  Marcus "Too deep."

 

There's also the problematic idea that God knew each one of us from before time. In Michelangelo's depiction of the creation of Adam, you will notice that under God's mantle looking over his shoulder is Eve.  The mantle is deliberately shaped like a human brain, indicating that even as God created Adam, Eve already existed in God's mind.

 

 I would love to dismiss the whole idea that God knew me  from before time, and had a plan for me as being just pious rhetoric, and not actually the teaching of the Church.  But Pope Benedict XVI recently said "Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed. Each of us is loved. Each of us is necessary."

 

Here's the thing.... if each of us is willed, necessary, and known from before all time, including my daughter Lucia, doesn't this imply that from before all time Catherine and I were destined to be married?

 

On the other hand, chances are that each of us has at least one sinful copulation in our lineage.  In other words, we are all the result of sin, somewhere down the line.... did God predestine the sin?

 

You can dismiss some of this with the whole "God is outside of time", thing, but there is still the apparent deliberateness of vocations and of each of our existences.

 

I suspect that a clue to the answer may lie in the existence of imaginary numbers, but that is probably beyond the scope of this little blog!

 

So in answer to the question "Is there such a thing as a soul mate?" I have to say "Of course not, don't be silly.... but maybe."

 

PS.  Don't you love mysteries?  I have a sneaky suspicion that if someone had all the answers this would prove that they were wrong.