Missing Catholicism, but focusing on adding and not subtracting

I remember when I was a postdoc fellow, and I went with another fellow, who was and is Catholic, to stations of the cross in a historic church in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. It was the first time I was in a Catholic church for many years, and while I expected mixed feelings (and got it), the strongest was one of necessary sadness. Like seeing an old friend whom you couldn't see for really good reasons.

The Catholic church, in my mind, is at its best during Lent. Not even in a high Episcopalean church can, in my view, you get the experience the Catholic church offers. Stations of the cross puts you into Easter, where you can begin to feel all that Jesus went through.

Last Sunday, I was in D.C., where there is a strong Catholic presence, with beautiful, large and vibrant Catholic churches. I went to one. (No, I didn't go to National Cathedral). And, as much as I love the Methodist church, and as much as I prefer simple, low churches, it again made me long for the Catholic Lenten experience.

But, there is something about Lent in the Catholic church that I think embodies a lot of the reason I am Protestant, and something I cannot figure out for the life of me.

In the Catholic tradition, believers are encouraged to give up something. The spirit of it is easy to understand of course; we are almost uniformly inadequate at putting God in his rightful place, first above all other things.

But i always thought it peculiar, and, moreover, thought it would be much more beneficial to, instead of give something up, add something.

Maybe visiting the relatively forgotten in hospitals, or stopping to talk to those living on the streets. Maybe making an effort to read a chapter of Scripture a day, or make an extra effort to understand other people's point of views that you just can't quite figure out how they could think or act like that (say Donald Trump's).

For me, it tends to place in this category: forgiveness.

Forgiveness is perhaps the hardest of all Jesus' commandments. To really, really bear down to think through how you could deeply forgive someone who has hurt you significantly, repeatedly, and, without awareness, care or remorse, is an extraordinary challenge. It's one that is very draining, particularly because going into it you know its a one-way street, a unilateral effort, a task that there is no satisfaction, except knowing that you are following your King.

To add the act of forgiveness is, in my mind, a great way to expend Lenten energy. It requires hanging onto Scripture. It requires remembering the extraordinary story of Easter. It requires actively believing in Jesus as Lord, Savior, and priority. Ultimately, it is not about the person you are pardoning for hurting you. It is about God pardoning us through an almost inconceivable act, one that is as impossible to believe as it is impossible to ignore. When we choose to forgive, something in fact, I trust and feel, happens. When we forgive, that bridge from disbelief in an outrageous story of God coming down to Earth in ancient times that only insane people would believe, is drawn and lowered. And it allows us to pass to the realization that this enormously silly story is something more. Something  true, something miraculous, and the cornerstone of the story of humanity.

You have proof of God existing? No thanks. I rather have hope.

“You know me, you don’t mind waiting, you just can’t show me, but God I’m praying, that you’ll find me, and that you’ll see me, that you run, and never tire.” Ryan Adams, “Desire”

Perhaps the biggest genius in the past 100 years, Kurt Godel, posthumously, published his proof of the existence of a God. Indeed, his spouse recounts the most brilliant logician of his time spent his Sunday mornings in bed reading Scripture.

Obviously, as someone fully qualified to match intelligence with Dr. Godel, I find myself cringing at these proofs, or those of maybe even greater minds, Aquinas. Not that they may not be correct or probably correct, but because the modern Theists’ understanding of God, and the modern Christians’ understanding of God in particular, should be offended by these proofs, for two primary reasons:

1)    The first is it assumes a conversation can occur where whether God exists or not is meaningful in any sense. As I have written in the past, I fully agree with the likes of Anscombe and Plantinga, whom basically say this: in order to have a conversation where our minds can be trusted to analyze any argument, belief, declaration, sentence, etc., particularly one that involves any of our senses (i.e. the tree is green, bumpy and exists) it has to assume the underlying causes of existence is an intelligent being that lives outside of this existence (i.e. what we call God).  Furthermore, to argue about anything would presuppose that a belief can be held, or even more so, changed, therefore presupposing free will. None of these things are possible in a non-Theistic world. It’s just not. And I think this is one of the single most important revelations women and men can have.

2)    For those of us in the Abrahamic Faith (Muslim, Jew, Christian being the primary make-up), Faith is the cosmic currency, the only real “pay-back” we can provide, both through action and thought. With any kind of proof, like with God writing “I exist” in the sky tonight, faith is squeezed out; and along with it, in my estimation, the Christian Faith implodes.

Instead of “proofs”, I think signposts pointing to God is a better why to discuss the many cumulative things that send us to Faith. The existence of mathematics, its ability to perfectly describe the natural sciences, why there is a mysterious impulse in nature to exist, why nature argues through instinct life is better than death. These are some of the brightest signposts I see. Others, like some of the other English philosophers of Anscombe’s time, saw things like beauty as the most compelling. And there is of course love. And then, then there is the hunt.

In one of Ryan Adams’ earliest songs after Whiskeytown, the lyrical genius sums it up, in a prayer to God, which I am convinced, is answered every moment of each of our lives, from the first primate that crossed the boundary to human: “You know me, you don’t mind waiting, you just can’t show me, but God I’m praying, that you’ll find me, and that you’ll see me, that you run, and never tire.”

In our limits of vocabulary and humanity, the notion of God running and never tire to me, is still remarkably perfect. With a God that created free-will creatures, God leaves it up to us to nurture our Faith. But God also, like a mother separated from her child, manically runs and shouts and searches frantically, never to cross over God’s created boundaries, for each of his sons and daughters. Even to the ones whom through a mix of genes and environment are sociopathic. Even to the ones whom are among the most loving and giving, yet self-satisfying. And everyone in between. This hope trumps proof. This hope sustains hope against hope, that even the ones whom have lived a life denouncing God and his followers, may at some point be tracked down.

It is to this God I pray.

As one who has loved ones running out of time that have lived with their backs turned away and minds closed off from God, my great hope is  we do not have a God that exists with proof but without maniacal lust for his created, but, rather, a God that exists without proof but frantically runs without tire toward his prodigal children.

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God, the rewarder

"...without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Romans 11:6).

I am getting through Mircea Eliade's seminal work, The Sacred and the Profane. Much like Rene Girard, Eliade makes the convincing case that historically, while Wikipedia will tell you monotheism has not always existed, humans have actually always worshipped a supreme being -- and by pleasing this God, humans always believed they could and would achieve favorability. Despite the different traditions (some involving polytheism, animalism, etc.) the internal impulses that have always existed in women and men have been towards one true God. The ways history has revealed how we have aimed to please this supreme God -- many ways barbaric, genocidal and horrifying -- is testament to this impulse. 

When God was more fully revealed to humankind 2000 years or so ago, so was the only way we draw the reward of God: Through the divine, cosmic currency of Faith.