Here is a question for you to think about. It is directed to Christians, but I will ask supply a "Muslim version" of the question too, afterwards.
Question: What would you say to someone who believed and had wholehearted faith in Jesus Christ, but who ignored God and was often disobedient to God? What if that person was you?
Question: What would you say to someone who believed and had wholehearted faith in the Prophet (PBUH), but who ignored God and was often disobedient to God? What if that person was you?
Just to be fair, here is the Jewish version of the question.
Question: What would you say to someone who believed and had wholehearted faith in Moses, but who ignored God and was often disobedient to God? What if that person was you?
This reflection is mostly targeted at Christians. I provided the equivalent question to Muslims and Jews so that they can follow along with the logic-and the peril of error-that I am pointing out among many who declare their faith (and have genuine belief and trust) in Jesus, but who feel that having done that, God himself can be ignored or selectively obeyed. What would you say to such a person, and what if that person is you?
Luke 18:28-29
And Peter said, "Behold, we have left all and followed thee." And he said to them, "Amen I say to you, there is no one who has left house, or parents, or brothers, or wife, or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive much more in the present time, and in the age to come life everlasting."
Notice that Peter affirms to Jesus that the Apostles have left all to follow him. Look carefully at what Jesus replied. Jesus affirms that as a result, anyone who has done so will receive more "in the present time" (now, while alive) and "life everlasting." In other words, Jesus affirms that people who follow him will have better lives, in addition to salvation. But here is my greater point. Did Jesus say that this is for his personal sake? No. Jesus said, "No one who has left house....for the sake of the kingdom of God." Jesus always, always, always points the attention of his followers to God, not himself.
With this in mind, look at this example of the important wording and distinction a few verses later.
Luke 18:42-43
And Jesus said to him, "Receive thy sight, thy faith has saved thee." And at once he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people upon seeing it gave praise to God.
You read this role modeling of how both Jesus and the recipients and witnesses of his miracles repeatedly. First, Jesus gives all glory to God (and applauds the person's faith) when he performs a miracle. Second, the recipient of the miracle realizes that the source is God himself through Jesus, and accordingly glorifies God while witnessing to Jesus. Read that again. The petitioner praises Jesus and witnesses to him, but glorifies God. Likewise do the people who witness the God given miracles of Jesus.
Luke 20:25
And he said to them, "Render, therefore, to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."
Jesus did not say that because he, Jesus, is now present that all that is due to God is no longer required. There is a vast difference between updating, for lack of a better word, the Law, to reflect the Messiah's arrival and bringing of the New Covenant to replace the Old Covenant, but that does not mean that God is no longer due to him the things that are all along, and will be forever, due to him, since he is the source of all that humans have.
Luke 21:15
"For I myself will give you utterance and wisdom, which all your adversaries will not be able to resist or gainsay."
What does Jesus tell the Apostles and disciples that he will give to them? "Utterance" and "wisdom." What kind of utterance and wisdom can withstand any enemy? There is only one answer, for there is nothing but one thing that can withstand any and all adversary of any type or sort, and that is knowledge of the truth about the one God.
It is thus entirely possible, and even alarmingly frequent, that people "stop," so to speak, at believing in Jesus, trusting in Jesus and having faith in Jesus, but do not accept that gift of Jesus as he offers it (not as some might wish or imagine that he offers it), which is knowledge that he, and the entire scriptures, have given about the truth, and what is due, to the one God.
John the Baptist explained:
John 3:34-6
For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for not by measure does God give the Spirit. The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hands. He who believe in the Son has everlasting life; he who is unbelieving towards the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.
Ah ha! such people say. See? All we need to do for everlasting life is to believe in the Son, Jesus Christ. But wait a minute, because it's abundantly clear what John is saying as he is careful to explain to both sides (he is explaining when disciples of his were arguing with some Jews) the proper order and working of things. Yes, belief in Jesus yields everlasting life, and deniers of Jesus will receive the wrath of God. But John puts the relationship and "mechanics" in its proper context. Jesus "speaks the words of God." They are God's words, and Jesus speaks them with authority given to him by God, as is appropriate to the Son who represents the Father. So the "duh" moment for many moderns is that incredibly they have the notion that like God has popped out of heaven, into Jesus, rather than understanding that God is always everywhere, in totality, in control, with perfect constancy over all things and all times. Jesus is speaking the words of God, and is thus showing the face of God to humans, but God is still God and is where he always is, and is due all that he has always been and always will be due. John makes this very clear, most particularly to the Jews who are, understandably, confused and thus antagonistic.
What does John mean by "for not by measure does God give the Spirit." Again, understanding of this important statement has diminished with modern societies and scripture readers. Your agricultural great grandfathers well understood this statement. John is saying that God does not dispense the Holy Spirit through usage of a measuring cup or a liter container. In other words, God has not given Jesus a cupful of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is speaking the words of God, not some words of God, since Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit from God, not dispensed an allocated amount of the Holy Spirit.
I marvel (in a bad way) how people miss the brilliance of John the Baptist, as he explains what is nearly impossible to understand, patiently (even under fire), and in a way that makes the relationship among God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit crystal clear. You can see also the structure of classic teaching and logic as John patiently and simply lays out the "physics" of how the Trinity works.
1. He whom God sent speaks the words of God.
You can deduce that God is still where God always is and always will be, but he has sent someone who is speaking his actual words.
2. God does not allocate fixed amounts or doses of Spirit to the Son.
You can deduce that the Holy Spirit cannot be understood as something that God gives or that humans can gain in a step by step, piecemeal dosage AND further, you can deduce that the Son does not receive a partial amount of the Holy Spirit, but is filled with the Holy Spirit.
Then John makes the third important point.
3. Why does this happen? Because God the Father loves the Son.
There are two things that you can deduce. One is that the purpose of what God does is love. The second is that there is a perfect Father-Son relationship between God and Jesus; God and Jesus are not "interchangeable."
4. Therefore, because of 1, 2 and 3, God "has given all things" into the Son's hands.
Jesus therefore is wielding the full authority of God in all that he says and does. [Again, that does not mean, of course, that the only things that God is "doing" are the things Jesus was doing. God is always God and busy, for lack of a better word, being God, even as he gives full authority over whatever Jesus is doing to Jesus.] Think of it this way: God gives to Jesus full authority to be Jesus, and to speak the words of God. Jesus is not "being God" in his totality while he is alive in his ministry. For example, it's not like Jesus, while walking the Holy Lands, was also listening to the prayers of all the people around the world. God is still, and is always, the one and only who is doing that. A person who believes in the one true God, and even those who prayed to the reflection and image of God in their culture, but who has not yet received knowledge of the true God, is not timesharing praying to Jesus! Obviously all that is due to God (such as prayer) to going to God, even as Jesus walked the earth. It's not like Jesus had a buzz in the back of his mind that some person in China was praying to God and it was being routed to Jesus! But surprisingly, many moderns, who just cannot understand the eternity and all presence of God, think of God as some "energy" that popped into and thus became Jesus. Yikes, I hate even typing this, but it must be said.
5. Because 1, 2, 3 yield 4, therefore God affirms that all who believe God's word (in this case spoken by Jesus) and his love (the authority of the Son and the utmost importance that God be understood as the source of all love, including earthly love) by believing "in the Son has everlasting life."
6. If 4 is denied and ignored, those disbelievers will not receive 5, and thus will "not see life" and have "the wrath of God" resting upon him (or her).
This is one reason that Jesus referred to John the Baptist as the greatest of men. Jesus knew that John understood and, of course, witnessed to, during the Baptism of Jesus, how the Trinity works, and the oneness of God the Father. It all comes back to and is due to God. God loves Jesus, and gives Jesus his words and authority, and God gives the Holy Spirit. God is the ope rant word and entity, as God is dispensing to humanity both Jesus and the Holy Spirit. To put it another way, it's not like the Holy Spirit can send God or Jesus on missions, nor can Jesus send God. Once Jesus died, resurrected and ascended into heaven, at the right hand of God the Father, then Jesus sends the Holy Spirit (Pentecost), in the fullness of God's presence. Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit but not until he was ascended into heaven and has taken his place by God, who was always there.
I could keep citing scripture (loads of it about this topic) but I think you see the problem.
Many people think that if they believe in the existence of Jesus, trust that he will bail them out of anything, and even love and have faith in Jesus, that this is "enough" and they can ignore or at best be selective about rendering to God what is his due, what is God's. Incredibly they cite this scripture without understanding the laborious and patient context that John the Baptist offers it in the lines immediately before!
What does this mean to you? It's not theology or abstract thoughts: this is essential day to day giving the due to heeding and obeying the Lord God.
It is this type of misunderstanding that results in people committing incredible sins, sins that God has forbidden, yet because they genuinely belief in Jesus Christ, they think it's alright to sin! Another variation is that they think that the sins are no longer sins, because belief in Jesus Christ trumps all bad behavior. Further, they think that Jesus and God are interchangeable. To put it cynically, they think if they make Jesus happy because they believe in him, then God and all his needs are "covered" too. Nothing that Jesus ever said or did should give that impression. The Christians who accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior when they were alive continued to praise and glorify God. The obvious example is as I cited, that as Jesus performed miracles people followed, praising God and witnessing to Jesus.
Here's a little bit of a silly way to demonstrate what I am saying. Imagine you are a disciple of Jesus during Biblical times when Jesus was in his public ministry. When you are away from Jesus, do you figure that God no longer exists, and your every action, both secular and faith, is guided by specific orders given by Jesus before the two of you parted? Imagine if Jesus had to be sure to tell each disciple, "Now, while we are apart, don't lie, don't steal, be kind to your family, wash your hands and feet, don't forget to give to the poor..." etc. Jesus would have to "program" each disciple "what to do" while they were apart because after all, if one believes in Jesus one no longer has to be obedient to what God has been saying all along, nor no longer give God his due attention, whether in prayer or in obedience! Wouldn't that be absurd, demented, in error, and extremely scary? Welcome to modern times.
I hope, and pray, that you have found this helpful and thought provoking for some self examination and also, well, think about those whose opinions you previously valued and wonder if God is truly pleased with their "belief" in Jesus, if it is a belief that is not at all reflective of the totality of what Jesus and the Apostles, John the Baptist, and God himself through the Holy Spirit teaches and requires.
Showing posts with label St. John the Baptist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St. John the Baptist. Show all posts
Friday, August 14, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Suffering, both of humanity and of Jesus Christ
Here is more about understanding suffering, particularly, during this time of Lent, more accurately understanding the suffering of Christ. I am, however, focusing on this subject to rectify human understanding of suffering, since that has been terribly warped in modern times, particularly in the extremes (avoidance or glorification and willful infliction) that I described in my first post on this subject. So in this posting bear in mind the analogy I introduced in that post, which is that suffering is, like paper from a tree that is used once or for a short amount of time and then discarded or recycled, a natural occurrence when one is alive and one encounters a boundary of loss. Check that post out again if you didn’t read it before or remember, before proceeding here.
There are two things about modern society that have contributed to the warping of understanding of human suffering. One is that humans have, as I explained in that previous post, isolated and commoditized suffering as a free standing quantity or experience that can and should be “managed.” But that is neither intellectually, spiritually or emotionally correct, nor how humans have biologically evolved to encounter and deal with suffering. Humans have not evolved in a way that views suffering as a standalone quantity or quality of life. One evidence of that evolution is how quickly the human body recovers from an individual experience of physical pain. When one hits one’s self on the thumb with a hammer, for example, it really hurts and going forward, sure, you remember that it hurt. But if you think about it, it is difficult to bring to perfect memory recollection a rerun of the experience of that pain, short of actually doing it again. Natural childbirth is another example where mothers through the generations sure remember the agony that some, but not all, births entail, yet are preserved from having perfect rerun in their minds of that pain.
Furthermore, athletes will tell you that you learn to “play through’ chronic pain from sports, for example. As an athlete who for a while was in a martial art that involved contact (being hit by a sword or a fist) I can attest that the first few times hurt “more” than subsequent times. Part of pain is the surprise and “unfairness” of it (disproportionality) that contribute to its severity of initial “suffering”, and that with training can be managed. So the first time I was really whipped with a fencing foil it sure hurt, but as one develops one “takes the hit” while already thinking about one’s next move, and thus does not focus on the pain like one did as a beginner. Boxers can probably tell you the same thing. So these are just some of the evidences that humans have evolved to have a lasting “lesson” of pain but not a perfect rerun and recollection of pain over and over again. If humans had that they would be immobilized from risking pain in hunting, agriculture, building, giving birth and sheer survival activities (such as when there was no central heating or electricity during very cold weather). Humans are not meant to nor are they evolved to “preserve” pain and thus suffering in perfect replicable images in either their body or their mentality. People can much more easily recall the bliss of a perfect date, for example, in great detail than they can the detail of a strike of physical pain, or the details of heart rending suffering that was once experienced. They recall how awful it felt, but it is difficult, thankfully, to “mediate” one’s self back into perfect recollection of all the aspects of that pain since time and understanding always moves a body and mind forward.
So here is where we can start to understand how isolating and “commoditizing” pain is an error, and how it crept into modern society, to humans’ great disadvantage. When I was young “popular psychology” was just beginning to become part of social discourse. In other words, what had been before that part of the doctor’s or psychiatrist’s office was now a subject that average people talked and read about. One of the first things that was printed in the public media was a “grief scale,” where people were assigned “points” to understand their “level of pain” after various tragic events or during life pressures. Thus “the death of a spouse” would get something like “10 points” assigned to it, meaning that it was viewed as a high pain and stress experience, while things such as job loss, etc had lower numbers of points. When as a teenager I first saw that I thought “Oh, oh, this is wrong and a problem.” While it is “understandable” that humans try to “self understand” and medical technicians try to “quantify,” it is totally bogus and erroneous, and a result of succumbing to one of the scourges of temptation of humans, which is to dehumanize and decouple from their context their own humanity. It is a temptation and a professional and societal laziness and it is wrong. Part of it is a result of the industrial revolution where humans obtained their factory assembly line mentality, where “one part fits all.” Look at computer interface standards and their importance and you see what I mean. Humans started thinking of themselves and each other in terms of standard parts and interfaces that can be counted and quantified.
Here are some examples to help you to understand how to identify this problem and see its fallacy and danger. Compare two widows, where each has had the death of their husband. Can the grieving be compared between them if one was married for a long time and one for a short time? What about if one is left destitute while the other, while unhappy, has more than adequate means to survive? What if one has children and the other does not? What if one has great faith and believes her husband is in heaven, while the other does not believe? While losing a loved spouse is a terrible loss, it is patently false and misleading to assign a “point” level to the totality of experience. In fact, medical people have even been “suspicious” of “denial” if a widow handles a spousal death as a “5” rather than as a “10,” if you know what I mean. Or the reverse happens, and I have seen that in actual clinical context. Medical personnel underestimate the pain of things they can assign numbers to. I have seen grieving widows be totally undertreated in individual and group therapy because medical personal have a mentality that quantifies their experience rather than have a holistic understanding of how totally shattering it can be.
Here is another example taken from sociology and anthropology. There are many studies of cultures where the most severe punishment possible is not death or torture but either exile (being thrust physically outside of the community) or “shunning” (where one stays in the community but is avoided and not interacted with as if one were invisible or did not exist). Studies have shown that people have died from the suffering of both exile but more particularly of shunning. Anthropologists discovered that in such societies the suffering of the shunned is so great that it can and does cause death. Fast forward to modern times and think about the high degree of alienation that many, particularly the youth feel, and also the problem of the “violent ex-“ who kills his ex- and even their children rather than be “without them.” When one relies on numerical and isolating experiences of pain in the medical and social community one is left not only ignorant but pointed in the totally opposite direction of genuine human experience and problems. Moderns have not only forgotten their own human experience (the pain of shunning for example) but they now wield in a very dark way that form of suffering while denying its social or medical existence. Humans used to know very well the suffering of exile or of shunning and used it as a social “last resort” for the most egregious of perceived or real behaviors. Today we have the dual problem of 1) not understanding individuals who are experiencing either externally or internally the suffering of a form of exile or shunning AND 2) actually using the “nerve endings” of such pain to market products and develop destructive social cliques and behaviors that prey on the fear of shunning and, worse, promote a sense of shunning by exaggerating real or perceived social divisions.
Racism is the most obvious example of shunning in widespread practice, in a way, and so I think those who have experienced or studied racism may be the first to understand my point here. Afro-Americans for a long time were the suffering “invisible” people expected to move among the wealthy and enfranchised, doing their work, but through segregation not expected to be “visible” and participatory. That was enormous suffering and has, thankfully, been dramatically alleviated in the last few decades by desegregation, equal rights, and social progress and societal mindset. Still, even racism cannot fully articulate the horror of individual shunning since even during the worst of racism people still had their own families, education, socializing and human-to-human interaction. Individual shunning is far worse because the person is denied all ties with surrounding humanity, including speech. You might think that does not exist in such sophisticated, refined and enlightened culture as today, but think again. Think about two examples already mentioned above: youth who are alienated, feeling out of touch with life itself, both as an individual condition and also a “popularity” and clique or gang way, and violent ex’s, who are bereft and feel invisible and totally alienated from life without their ex. The suffering of such people, whether one believes it is founded, reasonable and “justifiable” is truly “off the scale.” One cannot quantify the suffering of a person who is shunned or in a position that replicates the physical sensation and also the emotional and spiritual consequences of an alienating isolation that is akin to being shunned.
This is one reason that society sees remarkable suffering, self harm and violence that seems “baffling” to people who are part of the “majority,” who do not understand why, for example, a violent ex will kill his ex, their children, their family, friends, strangers, etc before, usually, killing themselves. On comment boards people repeatedly key in, in understandable frustration, “Why doesn’t he just kill himself rather than take everyone along with him?” See, that is the perfect example of how people no longer understand their own humanity based suffering. Anthropologists would tell you that societies that shun would understand fully well why someone who feels shunned might snap and react in exactly that same way. Modern society seems to have invented the nuclear bomb but then juggles with it and puts it in video games and then denies it exists, to use another analogy. Humans viscerally know the suffering of shunning, but then after generations of knowing about it and using it as last resort, now both “forget” that it even exists and the horrible harm that it causes but still for marketing, entertainment and other purposes, including some very dark ones, “pushes those buttons” in other people, among each other, and themselves. Thus people inflict the worst of shunning and alienating experiences on each other yet at the same time it itself is shunned, invisible and denied. As another example of this, society will push the importance of sex yet also push how inadequate a potential partner most people are. And you wonder why child abuse is out of control? Society pushes sexual gratification constantly while at the same time teaching an elite reward and shunning disapproval for those who are not “hot.” As a result, individuals, both men and not even some women, feel alienated from the “total sexual experience” they feel they are entitled to, and fill in the gaps with children.
To wrap up the point about quantifying suffering and its temptation and error, think about the implications of what I have explained here. Not only do people miss the mark in understanding their own legitimate and genuine suffering, but society has “manufactured” new ways of suffering that did not exist before. One suffers the death of a spouse, for example, but is treated in a “standard interface” cookie cutter approach due to it being a “medical pain scale and insurance reimbursed” isolated phenomenon on the one hand. On the other hand society has invented new forms of commoditized suffering, which is to be promised total sexual gratification, while at the same time reducing marriages, increasing the population of single people, yet putting them in a caste system of “hot or not,” “in or out.” Unrealistic expectations of sex, for example, are pushed on society while at the same time the most reliable and dependable forms of gratification, such as within marriage, are shattered, and people have turned into wild dogs operating within a bizarre and cruel self imposed caste system of sexual availability and desirability in intimacy. And you wonder why violent ex’s kill, and why so many now prey on the young, who are both defenseless but also deemed to be open and non-judgmental in that area where the offender is hurting. Society has manufactured of its own freewill forms of suffering that make me tremble for the survivability of humans and this is just a few examples.
The second problem with modern warping of suffering is also, in part, a result of that cookie cutter factory line mentality toward modern industrial and technological life. There is a tendency for many to “sound byte” suffering. We can use the example of the suffering of Jesus Christ to better understand this.
People are impatient with their understanding of each other and themselves and so they always try to “bottom line” their own understanding or in movie jargon “cut to the chase scene.” This is, as I’ve pointed out, not the normal evolved human condition and is, in fact, counter to evolutionary development and also is not an asset in survivability. Thus you see people encapsulate (again, how very modern, like taking a pill) not only their own experiences, and that of others, but that of the divine. You have a slogan understanding of life, including the divine, and that warps the human mindset and specifically understanding real normal life such as suffering. Therefore modern people differ from all of the previous generations by trying to bumper sticker God as “Christ died for your sins” or “Jesus suffered for you” etc. People have reduced, like a sauce on the stove, their own humanity and their understanding of divinity to encapsulated sound byte jargon of “understanding,” which is not actual understanding at all.
Jesus was not born in order to suffer and to be crucified. Jesus was born even though he knew he would suffer and be crucified. There is one hell of a difference.
The suffering of Jesus never was an “objective,” an isolated phenomenon that is a goal. The suffering was the inevitable consequence of being alive and his taking a stand. They did not invent scourging, mocking and crucifixion just for Jesus. That was the common form of punishment for the “lowest of the low” who were judged criminals or treasonous. It was also a punishment used to terrorize and subordinated population into total submission. This makes it doubly ironic that the Jews who persecuted Jesus turned to Rome to inflict the very punishment that was used to keep Roman territories and the conquered people in line.
Thus people in modern times erroneously use the foreknowledge of the prophets that Jesus would be the Messiah, rejected, suffer and be crucified as making the suffering the “meaning,” the sound byte, of his entire life and mission. Some of this is willful, deliberate and somewhat blasphemous misunderstanding, while other of it is a consequence of lazy modern people who try to cookie cutter and sound byte into capsules everything, including the divine.
Jesus did not come to humanity in order to suffer and to die. Jesus came despite knowing that he would suffer and die.
The message of Jesus was not that he was stripped, whipped, spit on, crowned with thorns and crucified. The message of Jesus was that he arose from the dead.
I’m not trying to put bumper sticker makers out of business, or to minimize the redemptive value of suffering, far from it. I’m trying to restore the glory of actually understanding it.
Was St John the Baptist born to be beheaded? Obviously not, and so when one contemplates the one who declared the coming of Christ one can better understand the risk of the suffering sound byte that I am pointing out to you. John the Baptist is rightfully revered, but his entire ministry lives on in baptism, not slogans that “John the Baptist: born to be beheaded for you.”
Likewise the focus on the physical component of the redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ, done ONCE for ALL, misses the entire point of the ministry of Jesus. Yes, it is important to have gratitude to Jesus for having suffered and died for all, but one must have a sane and balanced approach to that understanding, one that is modeled after the Gospels and Epistles themselves. None of the Apostles or disciples glorifies the physical suffering of Jesus; they document it but do not focus on it at all. Instead, as St Paul repeatedly explains, it is Christ crucified (the death, not the pain) and resurrected from the dead that is everything, absolutely everything.
John 20: 27-28
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
The Apostle Thomas declared he would not believe the others had seen the resurrected Jesus “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” John 20:25. And so Jesus appeared to him and allowed him to do that very thing, saying “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” John 20:29. Think about this: Thomas would be the last person to think that Jesus was nailed to the cross so that he, Thomas, would have wounds to put his fingers into and believe. Yet that mentality has crept into many in modern times that the objective of Jesus was the suffering he endured rather than belief that his resurrection from the death of crucifixion engendered.
Just as a brief aside to teach you another way to apply logic, think about this. If the actual suffering and crucifixion of Jesus were the “objective,” would not one expect that after Thomas believes only after seeing the wounds that Jesus would order that all Apostles obtain similar wounds and “pass that along” through the generations? Would we have bishops undergo nonfatal crucifixion wounds generation after generation, to pass it “on,” if the suffering and the wounding were the point? Instead we have the breaking of the bread, the consecrated wine, the consecrating oil, the laying on of hands in ordination, and baptism of the faithful. No where is the “suffering” passed on as witness of faith. Use logic, people, and it will never fail you.
John 20:30-31
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of [his] disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.
What John did not write: And therefore we each of us drive a nail through our own hands when we become bishops so that we share in the suffering of Christ since that is the sign of faith and the whole point of his coming.
Protestants are sometimes the most contradictory on this point, and I say this with affection, not criticism. They criticize Catholics for having a crucifix (the body of Christ displayed on the cross) rather than a cross (Methodists have the cross with a red fabric draped over it) since they feel that Catholics are stuck in the crucifixion and not the resurrection, which they symbolize by the empty cross. Yet who are the ones who tend to write and verbalize the most rhetoric about the suffering of Jesus “on behalf” of the saved? Yep.
Catholics display the crucifix as a reminder that Jesus actually died, not as a reminder of his tortures. It is the fact that Jesus actually died, one, and resurrected, two, that is the essential foundation of the entire faith and the New Covenant with God, not the suffering. The fact that Jesus performed his ministry knowing of the suffering that he would work through and resurrect from that makes it “redemptive suffering,” not the suffering itself. Whenever you are tempted to be confused about this, repeat the slogan “John the Baptist was not born to be beheaded.” John the Baptist can continue to make straight the way of the Lord by today being a sanity and perspective touchstone to put the death and suffering of Jesus in the proper context. Then one can read what St. Paul wrote with restored perspective and clarity, without the strange posttraumatic intrusive thoughts about suffering that this lost generation is afflicted by.
Hebrews 2:8
Yet at present we do not see “all things subject to him,” but we do see Jesus “crowned with glory and honor” because he suffered death, he who “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels,” that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
Hebrews 2:14
Now since the children share in blood and flesh, he likewise shared in them, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life.
St. Paul could not be clearer that it was not the suffering, but the death and resurrection of Christ that once, for all, showed everyone that they should not fear the devil of bodily death and the sin that fear tempts humans to commit. Instead, St. Paul explains, Jesus demonstrated once for all that one does die, but one then goes to God in eternal life.
Hebrews 2:18
Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.
In Biblical language “testing” does not mean being quizzed. When St. Paul uses the term “tested” and when one reads about saints being “but to the test,” that is more of a term that comes from refining of ore, for example, where impurities are melted away. Thus Jesus showed that he could suffer bodily and emotional harm the same way that any human would, “be tested,” and come through it all the way, which is to die and the demonstrate through his resurrection and his witness that God is in control and that life everlasting exists in heaven, and does not end in the slavery of the devil of bodily death and sinful behavior.
Hebrews 9:11-14
But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come to be, passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, he entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a heifer’s ashes can sanctify those who are defiled so that their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.
This, by the way, is one of the Biblical justifications that Catholics use on Ash Wednesday, when the sign of the cross is marked on their foreheads. It is a ritualized reminder of these words of St Paul that no longer, as in the Old Covenant, are the heifer’s ashes needed to sanctify the defiled, but that the blood of Christ, shed once for all, is the cleanser that the ashes once were under the Law.
Hebrews 10:26-29, 31
If we sin deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire that is going to consume the adversaries. Anyone who rejects the Law of Moses is put to death without pity on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Do you not think that a much worse punishment is due the one who has contempt for the Son of God, considers unclean the covenant-blood by which he was consecrated, and insults the spirit of grace?... It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
I include this because passage because again I must correct the notion that the physical suffering of Christ somehow “clears the way” for people. St Paul warns FELLOW CHRISTIANS that if they sin deliberately after knowing the truth of what Jesus has proclaimed that “there no longer remains sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire.” A profane and immodest treatment of the sacrifice of Jesus is an insult to “the spirit of grace” and will result in falling into the hands of the living God who will judge and who will cast into hell. St. Paul would be shocked to the core of his being by ghoulish and profane modern perspectives regarding “the covenant-blood by which he [Jesus] was consecrated.”
I could cite much, much more from St. Paul but I have demonstrated my point and it is better that people now read scripture on their own with clear eyes and understanding after this commentary I have provided.
The suffering of Jesus was not an exceptional phenomenon to be encapsulated as glorifying suffering. In fact, the reverse is true where suffering is not glorified and instead Jesus stoops in order to undergo what humans do to each other, and the natural boundary of life which includes death, in order to show the open path to the one true God. I have demonstrated how to read several selections from scripture and observe that the suffering is not a quantity or a quality, but simply a signpost along the way of the totality of the ministry of Jesus Christ. I have also given you a tool to use, showing how the saints remain a welcome friend, wise counsel and aid to today, where one can realign inappropriate thoughts about human suffering and the suffering of Jesus with the yardstick that “St John the Baptist was not born to be beheaded.” Finally I have pointed out that humans are in great peril of encapsulating and making into sound bytes entire perspectives of human and divine reality and that this encapsulating and “sloganizing” of human or divine reality results in dire and destructive perpetuating error that must be corrected in this time of physical, moral and spiritual crisis.
Galatians 3:1-4
O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publically portrayed as crucified? I want to learn only this from you: did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard? Are you so stupid? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so many things in vain?-if indeed it was in vain.
I include this to remind you that glorifying in things such as the physical suffering of Christ is like thinking one is saved through works and not grace, because merely counting the wounding of Christ is like relying only on works and denying faith.
Romans 6:5-11
For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin. If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him. As to his death, he died to sin [my notation: this phrase "he died to sin" means that Jesus died on account of sin being done to him of his unjust condemnation and thus in death moved out of the reach of further harm by sin to him] once and for all; as to his life, he lives for God. Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as [being] dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.
Just as a dead body cannot be forced to sin, since that person is dead and thus absolved from sin, living people must be like a dead body toward sin. To use a scientific term the living must be like inert matter that does not bond or interact with any sin. This is another, more oblique, way to apply scripture to my admonishment to you all that sinful behavior and suffering cannot be “managed,” accounted for and commoditized, since that is interacting with sin and not being, as Paul warns one must be, “dead to sin” and instead “living for God in Christ Jesus.” Those who commoditize suffering are interacting with sin and are not dead to sin. Insensitivity and worse the promotion of suffering in others is an obvious example, as is the enumeration of occult practices, including self harming in order to do suffering “accounting,” which is not only wrong but blasphemous.
There are two things about modern society that have contributed to the warping of understanding of human suffering. One is that humans have, as I explained in that previous post, isolated and commoditized suffering as a free standing quantity or experience that can and should be “managed.” But that is neither intellectually, spiritually or emotionally correct, nor how humans have biologically evolved to encounter and deal with suffering. Humans have not evolved in a way that views suffering as a standalone quantity or quality of life. One evidence of that evolution is how quickly the human body recovers from an individual experience of physical pain. When one hits one’s self on the thumb with a hammer, for example, it really hurts and going forward, sure, you remember that it hurt. But if you think about it, it is difficult to bring to perfect memory recollection a rerun of the experience of that pain, short of actually doing it again. Natural childbirth is another example where mothers through the generations sure remember the agony that some, but not all, births entail, yet are preserved from having perfect rerun in their minds of that pain.
Furthermore, athletes will tell you that you learn to “play through’ chronic pain from sports, for example. As an athlete who for a while was in a martial art that involved contact (being hit by a sword or a fist) I can attest that the first few times hurt “more” than subsequent times. Part of pain is the surprise and “unfairness” of it (disproportionality) that contribute to its severity of initial “suffering”, and that with training can be managed. So the first time I was really whipped with a fencing foil it sure hurt, but as one develops one “takes the hit” while already thinking about one’s next move, and thus does not focus on the pain like one did as a beginner. Boxers can probably tell you the same thing. So these are just some of the evidences that humans have evolved to have a lasting “lesson” of pain but not a perfect rerun and recollection of pain over and over again. If humans had that they would be immobilized from risking pain in hunting, agriculture, building, giving birth and sheer survival activities (such as when there was no central heating or electricity during very cold weather). Humans are not meant to nor are they evolved to “preserve” pain and thus suffering in perfect replicable images in either their body or their mentality. People can much more easily recall the bliss of a perfect date, for example, in great detail than they can the detail of a strike of physical pain, or the details of heart rending suffering that was once experienced. They recall how awful it felt, but it is difficult, thankfully, to “mediate” one’s self back into perfect recollection of all the aspects of that pain since time and understanding always moves a body and mind forward.
So here is where we can start to understand how isolating and “commoditizing” pain is an error, and how it crept into modern society, to humans’ great disadvantage. When I was young “popular psychology” was just beginning to become part of social discourse. In other words, what had been before that part of the doctor’s or psychiatrist’s office was now a subject that average people talked and read about. One of the first things that was printed in the public media was a “grief scale,” where people were assigned “points” to understand their “level of pain” after various tragic events or during life pressures. Thus “the death of a spouse” would get something like “10 points” assigned to it, meaning that it was viewed as a high pain and stress experience, while things such as job loss, etc had lower numbers of points. When as a teenager I first saw that I thought “Oh, oh, this is wrong and a problem.” While it is “understandable” that humans try to “self understand” and medical technicians try to “quantify,” it is totally bogus and erroneous, and a result of succumbing to one of the scourges of temptation of humans, which is to dehumanize and decouple from their context their own humanity. It is a temptation and a professional and societal laziness and it is wrong. Part of it is a result of the industrial revolution where humans obtained their factory assembly line mentality, where “one part fits all.” Look at computer interface standards and their importance and you see what I mean. Humans started thinking of themselves and each other in terms of standard parts and interfaces that can be counted and quantified.
Here are some examples to help you to understand how to identify this problem and see its fallacy and danger. Compare two widows, where each has had the death of their husband. Can the grieving be compared between them if one was married for a long time and one for a short time? What about if one is left destitute while the other, while unhappy, has more than adequate means to survive? What if one has children and the other does not? What if one has great faith and believes her husband is in heaven, while the other does not believe? While losing a loved spouse is a terrible loss, it is patently false and misleading to assign a “point” level to the totality of experience. In fact, medical people have even been “suspicious” of “denial” if a widow handles a spousal death as a “5” rather than as a “10,” if you know what I mean. Or the reverse happens, and I have seen that in actual clinical context. Medical personnel underestimate the pain of things they can assign numbers to. I have seen grieving widows be totally undertreated in individual and group therapy because medical personal have a mentality that quantifies their experience rather than have a holistic understanding of how totally shattering it can be.
Here is another example taken from sociology and anthropology. There are many studies of cultures where the most severe punishment possible is not death or torture but either exile (being thrust physically outside of the community) or “shunning” (where one stays in the community but is avoided and not interacted with as if one were invisible or did not exist). Studies have shown that people have died from the suffering of both exile but more particularly of shunning. Anthropologists discovered that in such societies the suffering of the shunned is so great that it can and does cause death. Fast forward to modern times and think about the high degree of alienation that many, particularly the youth feel, and also the problem of the “violent ex-“ who kills his ex- and even their children rather than be “without them.” When one relies on numerical and isolating experiences of pain in the medical and social community one is left not only ignorant but pointed in the totally opposite direction of genuine human experience and problems. Moderns have not only forgotten their own human experience (the pain of shunning for example) but they now wield in a very dark way that form of suffering while denying its social or medical existence. Humans used to know very well the suffering of exile or of shunning and used it as a social “last resort” for the most egregious of perceived or real behaviors. Today we have the dual problem of 1) not understanding individuals who are experiencing either externally or internally the suffering of a form of exile or shunning AND 2) actually using the “nerve endings” of such pain to market products and develop destructive social cliques and behaviors that prey on the fear of shunning and, worse, promote a sense of shunning by exaggerating real or perceived social divisions.
Racism is the most obvious example of shunning in widespread practice, in a way, and so I think those who have experienced or studied racism may be the first to understand my point here. Afro-Americans for a long time were the suffering “invisible” people expected to move among the wealthy and enfranchised, doing their work, but through segregation not expected to be “visible” and participatory. That was enormous suffering and has, thankfully, been dramatically alleviated in the last few decades by desegregation, equal rights, and social progress and societal mindset. Still, even racism cannot fully articulate the horror of individual shunning since even during the worst of racism people still had their own families, education, socializing and human-to-human interaction. Individual shunning is far worse because the person is denied all ties with surrounding humanity, including speech. You might think that does not exist in such sophisticated, refined and enlightened culture as today, but think again. Think about two examples already mentioned above: youth who are alienated, feeling out of touch with life itself, both as an individual condition and also a “popularity” and clique or gang way, and violent ex’s, who are bereft and feel invisible and totally alienated from life without their ex. The suffering of such people, whether one believes it is founded, reasonable and “justifiable” is truly “off the scale.” One cannot quantify the suffering of a person who is shunned or in a position that replicates the physical sensation and also the emotional and spiritual consequences of an alienating isolation that is akin to being shunned.
This is one reason that society sees remarkable suffering, self harm and violence that seems “baffling” to people who are part of the “majority,” who do not understand why, for example, a violent ex will kill his ex, their children, their family, friends, strangers, etc before, usually, killing themselves. On comment boards people repeatedly key in, in understandable frustration, “Why doesn’t he just kill himself rather than take everyone along with him?” See, that is the perfect example of how people no longer understand their own humanity based suffering. Anthropologists would tell you that societies that shun would understand fully well why someone who feels shunned might snap and react in exactly that same way. Modern society seems to have invented the nuclear bomb but then juggles with it and puts it in video games and then denies it exists, to use another analogy. Humans viscerally know the suffering of shunning, but then after generations of knowing about it and using it as last resort, now both “forget” that it even exists and the horrible harm that it causes but still for marketing, entertainment and other purposes, including some very dark ones, “pushes those buttons” in other people, among each other, and themselves. Thus people inflict the worst of shunning and alienating experiences on each other yet at the same time it itself is shunned, invisible and denied. As another example of this, society will push the importance of sex yet also push how inadequate a potential partner most people are. And you wonder why child abuse is out of control? Society pushes sexual gratification constantly while at the same time teaching an elite reward and shunning disapproval for those who are not “hot.” As a result, individuals, both men and not even some women, feel alienated from the “total sexual experience” they feel they are entitled to, and fill in the gaps with children.
To wrap up the point about quantifying suffering and its temptation and error, think about the implications of what I have explained here. Not only do people miss the mark in understanding their own legitimate and genuine suffering, but society has “manufactured” new ways of suffering that did not exist before. One suffers the death of a spouse, for example, but is treated in a “standard interface” cookie cutter approach due to it being a “medical pain scale and insurance reimbursed” isolated phenomenon on the one hand. On the other hand society has invented new forms of commoditized suffering, which is to be promised total sexual gratification, while at the same time reducing marriages, increasing the population of single people, yet putting them in a caste system of “hot or not,” “in or out.” Unrealistic expectations of sex, for example, are pushed on society while at the same time the most reliable and dependable forms of gratification, such as within marriage, are shattered, and people have turned into wild dogs operating within a bizarre and cruel self imposed caste system of sexual availability and desirability in intimacy. And you wonder why violent ex’s kill, and why so many now prey on the young, who are both defenseless but also deemed to be open and non-judgmental in that area where the offender is hurting. Society has manufactured of its own freewill forms of suffering that make me tremble for the survivability of humans and this is just a few examples.
The second problem with modern warping of suffering is also, in part, a result of that cookie cutter factory line mentality toward modern industrial and technological life. There is a tendency for many to “sound byte” suffering. We can use the example of the suffering of Jesus Christ to better understand this.
People are impatient with their understanding of each other and themselves and so they always try to “bottom line” their own understanding or in movie jargon “cut to the chase scene.” This is, as I’ve pointed out, not the normal evolved human condition and is, in fact, counter to evolutionary development and also is not an asset in survivability. Thus you see people encapsulate (again, how very modern, like taking a pill) not only their own experiences, and that of others, but that of the divine. You have a slogan understanding of life, including the divine, and that warps the human mindset and specifically understanding real normal life such as suffering. Therefore modern people differ from all of the previous generations by trying to bumper sticker God as “Christ died for your sins” or “Jesus suffered for you” etc. People have reduced, like a sauce on the stove, their own humanity and their understanding of divinity to encapsulated sound byte jargon of “understanding,” which is not actual understanding at all.
Jesus was not born in order to suffer and to be crucified. Jesus was born even though he knew he would suffer and be crucified. There is one hell of a difference.
The suffering of Jesus never was an “objective,” an isolated phenomenon that is a goal. The suffering was the inevitable consequence of being alive and his taking a stand. They did not invent scourging, mocking and crucifixion just for Jesus. That was the common form of punishment for the “lowest of the low” who were judged criminals or treasonous. It was also a punishment used to terrorize and subordinated population into total submission. This makes it doubly ironic that the Jews who persecuted Jesus turned to Rome to inflict the very punishment that was used to keep Roman territories and the conquered people in line.
Thus people in modern times erroneously use the foreknowledge of the prophets that Jesus would be the Messiah, rejected, suffer and be crucified as making the suffering the “meaning,” the sound byte, of his entire life and mission. Some of this is willful, deliberate and somewhat blasphemous misunderstanding, while other of it is a consequence of lazy modern people who try to cookie cutter and sound byte into capsules everything, including the divine.
Jesus did not come to humanity in order to suffer and to die. Jesus came despite knowing that he would suffer and die.
The message of Jesus was not that he was stripped, whipped, spit on, crowned with thorns and crucified. The message of Jesus was that he arose from the dead.
I’m not trying to put bumper sticker makers out of business, or to minimize the redemptive value of suffering, far from it. I’m trying to restore the glory of actually understanding it.
Was St John the Baptist born to be beheaded? Obviously not, and so when one contemplates the one who declared the coming of Christ one can better understand the risk of the suffering sound byte that I am pointing out to you. John the Baptist is rightfully revered, but his entire ministry lives on in baptism, not slogans that “John the Baptist: born to be beheaded for you.”
Likewise the focus on the physical component of the redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ, done ONCE for ALL, misses the entire point of the ministry of Jesus. Yes, it is important to have gratitude to Jesus for having suffered and died for all, but one must have a sane and balanced approach to that understanding, one that is modeled after the Gospels and Epistles themselves. None of the Apostles or disciples glorifies the physical suffering of Jesus; they document it but do not focus on it at all. Instead, as St Paul repeatedly explains, it is Christ crucified (the death, not the pain) and resurrected from the dead that is everything, absolutely everything.
John 20: 27-28
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
The Apostle Thomas declared he would not believe the others had seen the resurrected Jesus “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” John 20:25. And so Jesus appeared to him and allowed him to do that very thing, saying “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” John 20:29. Think about this: Thomas would be the last person to think that Jesus was nailed to the cross so that he, Thomas, would have wounds to put his fingers into and believe. Yet that mentality has crept into many in modern times that the objective of Jesus was the suffering he endured rather than belief that his resurrection from the death of crucifixion engendered.
Just as a brief aside to teach you another way to apply logic, think about this. If the actual suffering and crucifixion of Jesus were the “objective,” would not one expect that after Thomas believes only after seeing the wounds that Jesus would order that all Apostles obtain similar wounds and “pass that along” through the generations? Would we have bishops undergo nonfatal crucifixion wounds generation after generation, to pass it “on,” if the suffering and the wounding were the point? Instead we have the breaking of the bread, the consecrated wine, the consecrating oil, the laying on of hands in ordination, and baptism of the faithful. No where is the “suffering” passed on as witness of faith. Use logic, people, and it will never fail you.
John 20:30-31
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of [his] disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.
What John did not write: And therefore we each of us drive a nail through our own hands when we become bishops so that we share in the suffering of Christ since that is the sign of faith and the whole point of his coming.
Protestants are sometimes the most contradictory on this point, and I say this with affection, not criticism. They criticize Catholics for having a crucifix (the body of Christ displayed on the cross) rather than a cross (Methodists have the cross with a red fabric draped over it) since they feel that Catholics are stuck in the crucifixion and not the resurrection, which they symbolize by the empty cross. Yet who are the ones who tend to write and verbalize the most rhetoric about the suffering of Jesus “on behalf” of the saved? Yep.
Catholics display the crucifix as a reminder that Jesus actually died, not as a reminder of his tortures. It is the fact that Jesus actually died, one, and resurrected, two, that is the essential foundation of the entire faith and the New Covenant with God, not the suffering. The fact that Jesus performed his ministry knowing of the suffering that he would work through and resurrect from that makes it “redemptive suffering,” not the suffering itself. Whenever you are tempted to be confused about this, repeat the slogan “John the Baptist was not born to be beheaded.” John the Baptist can continue to make straight the way of the Lord by today being a sanity and perspective touchstone to put the death and suffering of Jesus in the proper context. Then one can read what St. Paul wrote with restored perspective and clarity, without the strange posttraumatic intrusive thoughts about suffering that this lost generation is afflicted by.
Hebrews 2:8
Yet at present we do not see “all things subject to him,” but we do see Jesus “crowned with glory and honor” because he suffered death, he who “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels,” that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
Hebrews 2:14
Now since the children share in blood and flesh, he likewise shared in them, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life.
St. Paul could not be clearer that it was not the suffering, but the death and resurrection of Christ that once, for all, showed everyone that they should not fear the devil of bodily death and the sin that fear tempts humans to commit. Instead, St. Paul explains, Jesus demonstrated once for all that one does die, but one then goes to God in eternal life.
Hebrews 2:18
Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.
In Biblical language “testing” does not mean being quizzed. When St. Paul uses the term “tested” and when one reads about saints being “but to the test,” that is more of a term that comes from refining of ore, for example, where impurities are melted away. Thus Jesus showed that he could suffer bodily and emotional harm the same way that any human would, “be tested,” and come through it all the way, which is to die and the demonstrate through his resurrection and his witness that God is in control and that life everlasting exists in heaven, and does not end in the slavery of the devil of bodily death and sinful behavior.
Hebrews 9:11-14
But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come to be, passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, he entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a heifer’s ashes can sanctify those who are defiled so that their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.
This, by the way, is one of the Biblical justifications that Catholics use on Ash Wednesday, when the sign of the cross is marked on their foreheads. It is a ritualized reminder of these words of St Paul that no longer, as in the Old Covenant, are the heifer’s ashes needed to sanctify the defiled, but that the blood of Christ, shed once for all, is the cleanser that the ashes once were under the Law.
Hebrews 10:26-29, 31
If we sin deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire that is going to consume the adversaries. Anyone who rejects the Law of Moses is put to death without pity on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Do you not think that a much worse punishment is due the one who has contempt for the Son of God, considers unclean the covenant-blood by which he was consecrated, and insults the spirit of grace?... It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
I include this because passage because again I must correct the notion that the physical suffering of Christ somehow “clears the way” for people. St Paul warns FELLOW CHRISTIANS that if they sin deliberately after knowing the truth of what Jesus has proclaimed that “there no longer remains sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire.” A profane and immodest treatment of the sacrifice of Jesus is an insult to “the spirit of grace” and will result in falling into the hands of the living God who will judge and who will cast into hell. St. Paul would be shocked to the core of his being by ghoulish and profane modern perspectives regarding “the covenant-blood by which he [Jesus] was consecrated.”
I could cite much, much more from St. Paul but I have demonstrated my point and it is better that people now read scripture on their own with clear eyes and understanding after this commentary I have provided.
The suffering of Jesus was not an exceptional phenomenon to be encapsulated as glorifying suffering. In fact, the reverse is true where suffering is not glorified and instead Jesus stoops in order to undergo what humans do to each other, and the natural boundary of life which includes death, in order to show the open path to the one true God. I have demonstrated how to read several selections from scripture and observe that the suffering is not a quantity or a quality, but simply a signpost along the way of the totality of the ministry of Jesus Christ. I have also given you a tool to use, showing how the saints remain a welcome friend, wise counsel and aid to today, where one can realign inappropriate thoughts about human suffering and the suffering of Jesus with the yardstick that “St John the Baptist was not born to be beheaded.” Finally I have pointed out that humans are in great peril of encapsulating and making into sound bytes entire perspectives of human and divine reality and that this encapsulating and “sloganizing” of human or divine reality results in dire and destructive perpetuating error that must be corrected in this time of physical, moral and spiritual crisis.
Galatians 3:1-4
O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publically portrayed as crucified? I want to learn only this from you: did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard? Are you so stupid? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so many things in vain?-if indeed it was in vain.
I include this to remind you that glorifying in things such as the physical suffering of Christ is like thinking one is saved through works and not grace, because merely counting the wounding of Christ is like relying only on works and denying faith.
Romans 6:5-11
For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin. If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him. As to his death, he died to sin [my notation: this phrase "he died to sin" means that Jesus died on account of sin being done to him of his unjust condemnation and thus in death moved out of the reach of further harm by sin to him] once and for all; as to his life, he lives for God. Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as [being] dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.
Just as a dead body cannot be forced to sin, since that person is dead and thus absolved from sin, living people must be like a dead body toward sin. To use a scientific term the living must be like inert matter that does not bond or interact with any sin. This is another, more oblique, way to apply scripture to my admonishment to you all that sinful behavior and suffering cannot be “managed,” accounted for and commoditized, since that is interacting with sin and not being, as Paul warns one must be, “dead to sin” and instead “living for God in Christ Jesus.” Those who commoditize suffering are interacting with sin and are not dead to sin. Insensitivity and worse the promotion of suffering in others is an obvious example, as is the enumeration of occult practices, including self harming in order to do suffering “accounting,” which is not only wrong but blasphemous.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Identifying vanity, which can be quite subtle
I don't really have a long commentary or case study to provide at the moment, but just a thought that I had while reading some commentary on the Psalms by famed British Baptist Charles Spurgeon. Yes, even though he was a Baptist, John Calvin was, well, Calvinist, and Matthew Henry was Presbyterian, I do enjoy reading their commentaries.
Now, one of the great quarrels that the children of the Reformation, especially the Baptists, have with the Catholic Church is that they object to infant baptism. Spurgeon wrote a treatise condemning it quite soundly.
I have written before (check under the baptism label) explaining that infant baptism is biblical and there is scripture that alludes to its practice among the Israelites, who ceremonially washed infants and birth and wrapped them in new swaddling clothing which, when they are taken to the Temple, indicates their admittance into the faith. This is why the Gospel makes a point of Jesus being wrapped in swaddling clothing (he would have been washed first) and at the right time taken to the Temple.
The Israelites and thus Judaism, from which Christianity springs, had no concept of "waiting" for infants to become adults where they then "declare" for God! Jewish infants were consecrated to God and their faith community upon washing, swaddling, and the Temple presentation with sacrifice. It is from that custom and ritual that John the Baptist obtained the idea to baptize.
That is the greatness of John the Baptist. I often have wondered why more people did not wonder, and ask, "From where did John the Baptist get the idea to baptize people with water?" John the Baptist got the "idea" when the Holy Spirit inspired him to realize that the people needed a new baptism to prepare for the Messiah, the one whose way he knew he was preparing. Thus John the Baptist repeats what people were already doing, but with his strong message of the need to repent and convert. The Jewish people were already dedicating their newborns to God through their washing, swaddling, and infant presentation to the Temple with sacrifice.
It is for this reason that Catholics correctly maintain that the proper Biblical stance is to baptize infants as their entry into the faith community, just as the Israelites had washed, swaddled and brought their infants to the Temple. John the Baptist, through his greatness (remember that Jesus himself called John the Baptist the greatest of men), recognized through the Holy Spirit that the people needed to prepare for a new way, for the Messiah. Thus he "re-washed" believers, baptizing them, just as if they are spiritual and physical infants again. That is why John the Baptist performed "adult" baptism, because he was preparing the way, the new way, the New Covenant, that would come through Jesus Christ. But he used the method that was already firm tradition and the ritual that was part of the Law, which is to wash, swaddle and present at the Temple infants... except now these of necessity were adults who were like infants again, awaiting the Messiah and Savior.
So where does the vanity enter into the point that I am making? With the best of intentions and the most pure of heart, those who are the most critical of the Catholic Church for infant baptism are guilty of vanity. It seems as though no pastors want to give up being "the one" to "lead" and "conduct" an adult to God through adult baptism.
You see, when an infant is baptized one cannot take "credit" for bringing that soul to God, since the infant's parents, and godparents who sponsor the baptism, have made that decision for the child. Thus Catholics are exactly like the people of the Old Covenant, the Chosen People, the Israelites, the Jews of biblical times: they do not "wait" for the child to become an adult and 'choose' God. An infant is washed (baptised), swaddled (the baptismal gown), and presented to the Temple for presentation with sacrifice (brought to the church, blessed, and recorded as a member of the faithful).
My point is not to have dueling scripture or to re-argue the problem and the error of misunderstanding. My point is to help many of you to understand that vanity, personal vanity where one takes "credit" for "bringing a soul to God," is very, very pernicious and subtle, and it hides in even the best and most well intentioned of men and women. The Catholic Church continues what the biblical Temple attending Jews did throughout the centuries and there is no "credit" for doing what is obviously one's parental and faith forming duty, which is to dedicate one's infant to God at the early appropriate time.
Obviously in the early days of the Church, baptism started with adults because it symbolized the break from the Old Covenant and the joining of the New Covenant. But remember this: the New Covenant applies to all, Jesus Christ as Lord brought it for everyone, not just for adults who one day suddenly realize they are "ready." I have observed in people's hearts that one barrier to fruitful dialogue and understanding of the Catholic doctrine-and its origins-results from the unconscious clinging to the vanity of adult baptism, as personal "credit" for "bringing the adult into the fold, "credit" which is pointless and not even part of the Catholic psyche since one is simply doing one's parental duty when one has one's infant baptized.
If you are being honest with me, and yourself, if you imagine and picture the scenario of the truth that I am saying, you will watch your inner screen of emotions carefully and thus detect that qualm of not wanting to give up the adult person being baptized looking at YOU as the one giving them the gift. The fiercely denominational and independent structure of the Protestant faiths is another way to understand this "credit" and baptism "competition" of vanity. Catholic churches don't compete with each other, for example, for being "the one" who "brought that infant to baptism." If anything they have gone too far in the other direction, where it's not as personal a family experience as it used to be in my day. I still remember with horror my godson's baptism was part of something like two dozen families all have a massive baptism event, rather than the personal family experience that it was when my niece was baptized years earlier. Baptism in some parishes have more the whiff of bureaucracy, in other words, than any whiff of vanity. But if one is objective one cannot help but to observe that those who conduct adult baptism and who go out of their way to be intolerant and critical of Catholic infant baptism are, in fact, very strongly tied to the vanity of the taking "credit" for "adding an adult to one's personal flock." Remember, that's God's job and all credit and glory are to him and him alone.
I hope that this has given you something to think about. Vanity, especially in faith, is a very pernicious, subtle, and strong power, one that must be guarded against lest it harm rather than promote humility, sanctity, and giving the true glory to God.
Now, one of the great quarrels that the children of the Reformation, especially the Baptists, have with the Catholic Church is that they object to infant baptism. Spurgeon wrote a treatise condemning it quite soundly.
I have written before (check under the baptism label) explaining that infant baptism is biblical and there is scripture that alludes to its practice among the Israelites, who ceremonially washed infants and birth and wrapped them in new swaddling clothing which, when they are taken to the Temple, indicates their admittance into the faith. This is why the Gospel makes a point of Jesus being wrapped in swaddling clothing (he would have been washed first) and at the right time taken to the Temple.
The Israelites and thus Judaism, from which Christianity springs, had no concept of "waiting" for infants to become adults where they then "declare" for God! Jewish infants were consecrated to God and their faith community upon washing, swaddling, and the Temple presentation with sacrifice. It is from that custom and ritual that John the Baptist obtained the idea to baptize.
That is the greatness of John the Baptist. I often have wondered why more people did not wonder, and ask, "From where did John the Baptist get the idea to baptize people with water?" John the Baptist got the "idea" when the Holy Spirit inspired him to realize that the people needed a new baptism to prepare for the Messiah, the one whose way he knew he was preparing. Thus John the Baptist repeats what people were already doing, but with his strong message of the need to repent and convert. The Jewish people were already dedicating their newborns to God through their washing, swaddling, and infant presentation to the Temple with sacrifice.
It is for this reason that Catholics correctly maintain that the proper Biblical stance is to baptize infants as their entry into the faith community, just as the Israelites had washed, swaddled and brought their infants to the Temple. John the Baptist, through his greatness (remember that Jesus himself called John the Baptist the greatest of men), recognized through the Holy Spirit that the people needed to prepare for a new way, for the Messiah. Thus he "re-washed" believers, baptizing them, just as if they are spiritual and physical infants again. That is why John the Baptist performed "adult" baptism, because he was preparing the way, the new way, the New Covenant, that would come through Jesus Christ. But he used the method that was already firm tradition and the ritual that was part of the Law, which is to wash, swaddle and present at the Temple infants... except now these of necessity were adults who were like infants again, awaiting the Messiah and Savior.
So where does the vanity enter into the point that I am making? With the best of intentions and the most pure of heart, those who are the most critical of the Catholic Church for infant baptism are guilty of vanity. It seems as though no pastors want to give up being "the one" to "lead" and "conduct" an adult to God through adult baptism.
You see, when an infant is baptized one cannot take "credit" for bringing that soul to God, since the infant's parents, and godparents who sponsor the baptism, have made that decision for the child. Thus Catholics are exactly like the people of the Old Covenant, the Chosen People, the Israelites, the Jews of biblical times: they do not "wait" for the child to become an adult and 'choose' God. An infant is washed (baptised), swaddled (the baptismal gown), and presented to the Temple for presentation with sacrifice (brought to the church, blessed, and recorded as a member of the faithful).
My point is not to have dueling scripture or to re-argue the problem and the error of misunderstanding. My point is to help many of you to understand that vanity, personal vanity where one takes "credit" for "bringing a soul to God," is very, very pernicious and subtle, and it hides in even the best and most well intentioned of men and women. The Catholic Church continues what the biblical Temple attending Jews did throughout the centuries and there is no "credit" for doing what is obviously one's parental and faith forming duty, which is to dedicate one's infant to God at the early appropriate time.
Obviously in the early days of the Church, baptism started with adults because it symbolized the break from the Old Covenant and the joining of the New Covenant. But remember this: the New Covenant applies to all, Jesus Christ as Lord brought it for everyone, not just for adults who one day suddenly realize they are "ready." I have observed in people's hearts that one barrier to fruitful dialogue and understanding of the Catholic doctrine-and its origins-results from the unconscious clinging to the vanity of adult baptism, as personal "credit" for "bringing the adult into the fold, "credit" which is pointless and not even part of the Catholic psyche since one is simply doing one's parental duty when one has one's infant baptized.
If you are being honest with me, and yourself, if you imagine and picture the scenario of the truth that I am saying, you will watch your inner screen of emotions carefully and thus detect that qualm of not wanting to give up the adult person being baptized looking at YOU as the one giving them the gift. The fiercely denominational and independent structure of the Protestant faiths is another way to understand this "credit" and baptism "competition" of vanity. Catholic churches don't compete with each other, for example, for being "the one" who "brought that infant to baptism." If anything they have gone too far in the other direction, where it's not as personal a family experience as it used to be in my day. I still remember with horror my godson's baptism was part of something like two dozen families all have a massive baptism event, rather than the personal family experience that it was when my niece was baptized years earlier. Baptism in some parishes have more the whiff of bureaucracy, in other words, than any whiff of vanity. But if one is objective one cannot help but to observe that those who conduct adult baptism and who go out of their way to be intolerant and critical of Catholic infant baptism are, in fact, very strongly tied to the vanity of the taking "credit" for "adding an adult to one's personal flock." Remember, that's God's job and all credit and glory are to him and him alone.
I hope that this has given you something to think about. Vanity, especially in faith, is a very pernicious, subtle, and strong power, one that must be guarded against lest it harm rather than promote humility, sanctity, and giving the true glory to God.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Understanding faith in God via Catholic topics (2)
This next topic is so vast and important that I’m going to present it in easy to understand sections that build upon each other. The topic is the Catholic priesthood, and understanding what it is to be a priest.
First I must make the point that I am, as I explained in my introduction, using Catholic doctrine as the basis for this tutorial. This does not imply that only the Catholic Church contains the practices I describe throughout this series, as different Christian denominations maintain, or not, differing components from the mother Church. However, with the exception of the Orthodox Church, the “eastern tradition,” all Christians up until the Reformation had the common doctrine and furnishings of worship as I describe here in this series.
What is the priesthood, and what does it mean to be a Catholic priest, and where does the current structure of the priesthood come from? First, let me address a modern misconception that the priesthood is an “elite” position with a “job description.” That concept has never been true, and is wrong for two reasons. One is that under Catholic doctrine all the faithful are considered priests, called the “baptismal priesthood.” The second reason this is wrong is that the “ministerial priesthood” is not a job description to which one attains, but has its roots in the priesthood of the Old Covenant, which has the purpose of offering sacrifice.
So that you don’t have to believe me, but read the actual words of the Catholic Church, here are readings from the “Catechism of the Catholic Church.” The correctness of the Catechism is, by the way, a responsibility of the Pope, one of his “job responsibilities!” This means that the Pope “signs off” on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and all updates and clarifications. This is not a work of the Pope’s “infallibility” per se; it is, rather, one of his responsibilities as Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Jesus Christ to ensure accuracy and “quality control.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church is, to quote Pope John Paul II in his introduction, “a compendium of all catholic doctrine regarding both faith and morals… a point of reference for the catechisms or compendiums that are prepared in various regions.” This means that the Catechism is a statement of doctrine that the Church has always maintained and guarded, but assembled into one reference book so that local churches can have the complete set of doctrine from which to draw upon as a resource locally. Pope John Paul II even calls it a “reference text.”
Thus, here is the Catholic doctrine regarding the priesthood of all the faithful.
Two participations in the one priesthood of Christ
1546 Christ, high priest and unique mediator, has made of the Church, “a kingdom, priests for his God and Father.” The whole community of believers is, as such, priestly. The faithful exercise their baptismal priesthood through their participation, each according to his own vocation, in Christ’s mission as priest, prophet, and king. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation the faithful are “consecrated to be…a holy priesthood.”
Let me explain. Far from demeaning parishioners, the lay people, and “reserving priesthood for the elite hierarchy,” Catholic doctrine has always maintained that all the faithful are members of the priesthood. This is called the “baptismal priesthood,” and each member carries out their participation in the priesthood of Christ according to their vocation. I cannot tell you how annoyed I have been with non-Catholic Christians who blatantly lie, willfully or out of ignorance, that the Catholic priesthood is somehow elitist and separating of the people from Jesus Christ, when the opposite is true. In fairness in the crisis of faith that affects all Christians in this society, Catholics themselves of the past two generations have lost track of the realization that they, through Baptism and Confirmation, have been initiated into the very real priesthood of Jesus Christ. They are then speechless when non-Catholics criticize them, quoting from scriptures the very basis that yes, indeed, Catholic doctrine agrees, which is the priesthood of the faithful. I sigh in extreme exasperation and get headaches of annoyance, and my blood pressure rises, I won’t hide those facts from you.
While leaving discussion of infant Baptism and the sacrament of Confirmation to later tutorials, let me make this pertinent point. I’ve explained it before in posts under the tag of Baptism, but now you probably understand it more easily. Baptism of infants is a continuation of the washing and swaddling that Israelite infants received after their birth to bring them to the Temple and be initiated into their faith. John the Baptist did not “invent” baptism and he didn’t “mean for it to be for adults.” John the Baptist recognized that a new baptism will be needed when the Messiah comes; that no longer the washing of the infant, the putting of the infant in new swaddling clothes, and taking the infant to the Temple with the appropriate sacrifice made one a member of the faithful that the Messiah will call. John the Baptist, called by Jesus the greatest born of human woman, understood that a new Baptism is needed, of water and Spirit. This Baptism was given, obviously, to adults as the shift from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant took place, with the coming of Jesus Christ. But the Catholic Church always understood that infants are to be consecrated to God at their birth, just as had been true of the Israelite infants. This is the Baptismal origin of both the practice of baptizing infants and the Catholic doctrine that upon their baptism they are part of the “baptismal priesthood.”
Recognizing that infants cannot have a vocation other than to be infants, the active period of the “baptismal priesthood” of children commences at their thirteenth birthday when they receive the sacrament of Confirmation. Again, without preempting what I want to explain about this sacrament in future tutorials, I will make some simple points. At thirteen in the Israelite tradition of the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, children are viewed as being adults regarding their responsibility to God and their faith. Confirmation is a continuation of that understanding and, again, it is where the Old Covenant meets the New Covenant. This is why the Catechism section that I have just quoted calls the priesthood of the Christian community, the laity, a “baptismal priesthood” but one where the faithful are fully “consecrated” “through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.”
Yes, you Catholic parents who are reading this and who have either not baptized your child or had them receive Confirmation; this is why there is a problem. It is not the Catholic Church being “mean” but rather, these are the steps one takes to be consecrated, to be made a sacred member of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, exactly as when in the Jewish faith, the Bar Mitzvah boy must actually study and do his Bar Mitzvah to be the Bar Mitzvah boy; just thinking good thoughts and going to synagogue is not the same.
So this directly addresses the dignity of the laity. The Catholic laity is not only dignified, it is priestly and each and every person, male or female, married, single or divorced, straight or gay, rich or poor are a member of the “baptismal priesthood” and are “consecrated” “in Christ’s mission as priest, prophet, and king” if they have received Baptism and Confirmation, period. From the point of those sacraments onward, throughout one’s life, it is “each according to his own vocation” that the baptismal priest exercises their priesthood. Here is further explanation.
1547 The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood of bishops and priests, and the common priesthood of all the faithful participate, “each in its won proper way, in the one priesthood of Christ.” While being “ordered one to another,” they differ essentially. In what sense? While the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of baptismal grace-a life of faith, hope, and charity, a life according to the Spirit-, the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of baptismal grace of all Christians. The ministerial priesthood is a means by which Christ unceasingly builds up and leads his Church. For this reason it is transmitted by its won sacrament, the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Notice that rather than being an upward hierarchy, “the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood.” Thus the “ministerial priesthood” serves the baptismal priesthood, the common priesthood. To summarize:
1591 The whole Church is a priestly people. Through Baptism all the faithful share in the priesthood of Christ. This participation is called the “common priesthood of the faithful.” Based on this common priesthood and ordered to its service, there exists another participation in the mission of Christ: the ministry conferred by the sacrament of Holy Orders, where the task is to serve in the name and in the person of Christ the Head in the midst of the community.
1592 The ministerial priesthood differs in essence from the common priesthood of the faithful because it confers a sacred power for the service of the faithful. The ordained ministers exercise their service for the People of God by teaching (munus docendi), divine worship (munus liturgeicum), and pastoral governance (munus regendi).
1121 The three sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders confer, in addition to grace, a sacramental character or “seal” by which the Christian shares in Christ’s priesthood and is made a member of the Church according to different states and functions. This configuration to Christ and to the Church, brought about by the Spirit, is indelible; it remains for ever in the Christian as a positive disposition for grace, a promise and guarantee of divine protection, and as a vocation to divine worship and to the service of the Church. Therefore these sacraments can never be repeated.
I’m going to wrap up this segment of discussion here, even though I know it raises even more questions! But I want to keep this a “one topic at a time” approach as much as possible. Therefore my summary point of this section is that Christians should understand that Catholics, through Baptism and Confirmation, are considered of the priesthood of Christ and that while this differs from the ministerial priesthood, there is a dignity of vocation that if anything is under-recognized and under utilized among Catholics themselves. Rather than agitating an erroneous belief that the Catholic “hierarch” somehow “keeps down the dignity” of the laity, everyone needs to understand that Catholic doctrine most clearly states as it has from Apostolic times that the opposite is true. When I write later about the apostolic basis for the understanding of the sacrament of Confirmation, you will see that even more clearly. I honestly have been disappointed with many Catholics at their lack of understanding of the dignity and the calling of the baptismal priesthood.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
First I must make the point that I am, as I explained in my introduction, using Catholic doctrine as the basis for this tutorial. This does not imply that only the Catholic Church contains the practices I describe throughout this series, as different Christian denominations maintain, or not, differing components from the mother Church. However, with the exception of the Orthodox Church, the “eastern tradition,” all Christians up until the Reformation had the common doctrine and furnishings of worship as I describe here in this series.
What is the priesthood, and what does it mean to be a Catholic priest, and where does the current structure of the priesthood come from? First, let me address a modern misconception that the priesthood is an “elite” position with a “job description.” That concept has never been true, and is wrong for two reasons. One is that under Catholic doctrine all the faithful are considered priests, called the “baptismal priesthood.” The second reason this is wrong is that the “ministerial priesthood” is not a job description to which one attains, but has its roots in the priesthood of the Old Covenant, which has the purpose of offering sacrifice.
So that you don’t have to believe me, but read the actual words of the Catholic Church, here are readings from the “Catechism of the Catholic Church.” The correctness of the Catechism is, by the way, a responsibility of the Pope, one of his “job responsibilities!” This means that the Pope “signs off” on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and all updates and clarifications. This is not a work of the Pope’s “infallibility” per se; it is, rather, one of his responsibilities as Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Jesus Christ to ensure accuracy and “quality control.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church is, to quote Pope John Paul II in his introduction, “a compendium of all catholic doctrine regarding both faith and morals… a point of reference for the catechisms or compendiums that are prepared in various regions.” This means that the Catechism is a statement of doctrine that the Church has always maintained and guarded, but assembled into one reference book so that local churches can have the complete set of doctrine from which to draw upon as a resource locally. Pope John Paul II even calls it a “reference text.”
Thus, here is the Catholic doctrine regarding the priesthood of all the faithful.
Two participations in the one priesthood of Christ
1546 Christ, high priest and unique mediator, has made of the Church, “a kingdom, priests for his God and Father.” The whole community of believers is, as such, priestly. The faithful exercise their baptismal priesthood through their participation, each according to his own vocation, in Christ’s mission as priest, prophet, and king. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation the faithful are “consecrated to be…a holy priesthood.”
Let me explain. Far from demeaning parishioners, the lay people, and “reserving priesthood for the elite hierarchy,” Catholic doctrine has always maintained that all the faithful are members of the priesthood. This is called the “baptismal priesthood,” and each member carries out their participation in the priesthood of Christ according to their vocation. I cannot tell you how annoyed I have been with non-Catholic Christians who blatantly lie, willfully or out of ignorance, that the Catholic priesthood is somehow elitist and separating of the people from Jesus Christ, when the opposite is true. In fairness in the crisis of faith that affects all Christians in this society, Catholics themselves of the past two generations have lost track of the realization that they, through Baptism and Confirmation, have been initiated into the very real priesthood of Jesus Christ. They are then speechless when non-Catholics criticize them, quoting from scriptures the very basis that yes, indeed, Catholic doctrine agrees, which is the priesthood of the faithful. I sigh in extreme exasperation and get headaches of annoyance, and my blood pressure rises, I won’t hide those facts from you.
While leaving discussion of infant Baptism and the sacrament of Confirmation to later tutorials, let me make this pertinent point. I’ve explained it before in posts under the tag of Baptism, but now you probably understand it more easily. Baptism of infants is a continuation of the washing and swaddling that Israelite infants received after their birth to bring them to the Temple and be initiated into their faith. John the Baptist did not “invent” baptism and he didn’t “mean for it to be for adults.” John the Baptist recognized that a new baptism will be needed when the Messiah comes; that no longer the washing of the infant, the putting of the infant in new swaddling clothes, and taking the infant to the Temple with the appropriate sacrifice made one a member of the faithful that the Messiah will call. John the Baptist, called by Jesus the greatest born of human woman, understood that a new Baptism is needed, of water and Spirit. This Baptism was given, obviously, to adults as the shift from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant took place, with the coming of Jesus Christ. But the Catholic Church always understood that infants are to be consecrated to God at their birth, just as had been true of the Israelite infants. This is the Baptismal origin of both the practice of baptizing infants and the Catholic doctrine that upon their baptism they are part of the “baptismal priesthood.”
Recognizing that infants cannot have a vocation other than to be infants, the active period of the “baptismal priesthood” of children commences at their thirteenth birthday when they receive the sacrament of Confirmation. Again, without preempting what I want to explain about this sacrament in future tutorials, I will make some simple points. At thirteen in the Israelite tradition of the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, children are viewed as being adults regarding their responsibility to God and their faith. Confirmation is a continuation of that understanding and, again, it is where the Old Covenant meets the New Covenant. This is why the Catechism section that I have just quoted calls the priesthood of the Christian community, the laity, a “baptismal priesthood” but one where the faithful are fully “consecrated” “through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.”
Yes, you Catholic parents who are reading this and who have either not baptized your child or had them receive Confirmation; this is why there is a problem. It is not the Catholic Church being “mean” but rather, these are the steps one takes to be consecrated, to be made a sacred member of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, exactly as when in the Jewish faith, the Bar Mitzvah boy must actually study and do his Bar Mitzvah to be the Bar Mitzvah boy; just thinking good thoughts and going to synagogue is not the same.
So this directly addresses the dignity of the laity. The Catholic laity is not only dignified, it is priestly and each and every person, male or female, married, single or divorced, straight or gay, rich or poor are a member of the “baptismal priesthood” and are “consecrated” “in Christ’s mission as priest, prophet, and king” if they have received Baptism and Confirmation, period. From the point of those sacraments onward, throughout one’s life, it is “each according to his own vocation” that the baptismal priest exercises their priesthood. Here is further explanation.
1547 The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood of bishops and priests, and the common priesthood of all the faithful participate, “each in its won proper way, in the one priesthood of Christ.” While being “ordered one to another,” they differ essentially. In what sense? While the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of baptismal grace-a life of faith, hope, and charity, a life according to the Spirit-, the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of baptismal grace of all Christians. The ministerial priesthood is a means by which Christ unceasingly builds up and leads his Church. For this reason it is transmitted by its won sacrament, the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Notice that rather than being an upward hierarchy, “the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood.” Thus the “ministerial priesthood” serves the baptismal priesthood, the common priesthood. To summarize:
1591 The whole Church is a priestly people. Through Baptism all the faithful share in the priesthood of Christ. This participation is called the “common priesthood of the faithful.” Based on this common priesthood and ordered to its service, there exists another participation in the mission of Christ: the ministry conferred by the sacrament of Holy Orders, where the task is to serve in the name and in the person of Christ the Head in the midst of the community.
1592 The ministerial priesthood differs in essence from the common priesthood of the faithful because it confers a sacred power for the service of the faithful. The ordained ministers exercise their service for the People of God by teaching (munus docendi), divine worship (munus liturgeicum), and pastoral governance (munus regendi).
1121 The three sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders confer, in addition to grace, a sacramental character or “seal” by which the Christian shares in Christ’s priesthood and is made a member of the Church according to different states and functions. This configuration to Christ and to the Church, brought about by the Spirit, is indelible; it remains for ever in the Christian as a positive disposition for grace, a promise and guarantee of divine protection, and as a vocation to divine worship and to the service of the Church. Therefore these sacraments can never be repeated.
I’m going to wrap up this segment of discussion here, even though I know it raises even more questions! But I want to keep this a “one topic at a time” approach as much as possible. Therefore my summary point of this section is that Christians should understand that Catholics, through Baptism and Confirmation, are considered of the priesthood of Christ and that while this differs from the ministerial priesthood, there is a dignity of vocation that if anything is under-recognized and under utilized among Catholics themselves. Rather than agitating an erroneous belief that the Catholic “hierarch” somehow “keeps down the dignity” of the laity, everyone needs to understand that Catholic doctrine most clearly states as it has from Apostolic times that the opposite is true. When I write later about the apostolic basis for the understanding of the sacrament of Confirmation, you will see that even more clearly. I honestly have been disappointed with many Catholics at their lack of understanding of the dignity and the calling of the baptismal priesthood.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Background and context 3 & Bible Reading John 1
John 1: 19-34
John the Baptist’s Testimony to Himself. And this is the testimony of John. When Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites [to him] to ask him, “Who are you?” he admitted and did not deny it, but admitted, “I am not the Messiah.”
((This passage means that John the Baptist admitted being someone on a divine mission, but he admitted that he was not the actual Messiah.))
So they asked him, “What are you then? Are you Elijah?” And he said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.” So they said to him, “Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us? What do you have to say for yourself?” He said:
“I am ‘the voice of one crying out in the desert,
“Make straight the way of the Lord.”’
As Isaiah the prophet said.”
((Notice that John the Baptist replies by quoting from the Book of Isaiah. A true prophet always quotes God or the prior servants of God; he or she does not make up new doctrine.))
((Isaiah 40: 3-5. A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.))
((See, John the Baptist’s glory is that he did not claim a mission or an identity that was not his. His glory is that he recognized his right to cite the words of Isaiah, who had come before him. Rather than carving out a role for himself, John the Baptist’s glory was that he knew he was there to proclaim what Isaiah had foreseen.))
Some Pharisees were also sent. They asked him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah or Elijah or the Prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” This happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
John the Baptist’s Testimony to Jesus. The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
He is the one of whom I said, ‘A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.'"
((By this John the Baptist is confessing that Jesus lived before him in the sense of either the literal continuity of Elijah or in the eternal being of God’s intention to send the Messiah. In other words, Jesus is already ‘alive’ from the first moment of God’s intention to create and send him.))
John testified further, saying “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from the sky and remain upon him I did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the holy Spirit.’ Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.”
((This is crucial testimony by John the Baptist, and while it is well known, there is a vital informative piece of this testimony that most people totally miss, for some reason. Everyone knows, and has seen in art work, the event where the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus when John the Baptist baptized Jesus. But what everyone misses is that God had instructed John the Baptist to watch not only for the one upon whom the Holy Spirit descended, but the one where the Holy Spirit REMAINED. The Holy Spirit remained on and within Jesus from that point forward. Jesus was born “of” the Holy Spirit, and of course was filled with the Spirit from infancy. But this is the public declaration of God that Jesus is his Son, and God is calling Jesus his Son not because of a genetic, clan or biological symbolism, which is what causes question among Muslims about how God would have a “son,” but God is calling Jesus his Son because from that point of baptism the actual Holy Spirit of God is “remaining” upon and within Jesus. THAT is the “how did he do it” explanation and testimony about the mystery of God’s relationship as Father to Jesus as Son. God is the Father because at the time of baptism he sent his Holy Spirit to “remain” with Jesus. This is why it is crucial to understand the fullness of this event.
Much of the strong language in the Qur’an is a result of people not understanding this passage or, rather, their not even being properly informed. As I said, many argued for centuries within the Christian Church trying to understand Jesus’ “true nature,” rather than having the serenity and faith in mind that comes from trusting and believing in God. This is why I was moved to cite and comment on this passage in today’s background and context Bible reading. People knocked their brains against the wall trying to figure out the “nature” of Jesus, yet God has explained the simplicity of it all along. Jesus was born “of the Holy Spirit” from the immaculate Virgin Mary. Thus Jesus had his human nature directly from Mary, and was born at the behest, will and mercy of God through the Holy Spirit. But Jesus gained his right to be called the “Son of God,” and to call God the Father, when God sent the Holy Spirit “upon” him at baptism but also to REMAIN with him. The Holy Spirit remaining upon Jesus as he entered and conducted his public ministry is not only the granting of the power to perform miracles, but also the “letter of authorization,” in a sense, for the only son to conduct the business of the Father. This is why no one need to be alarmed that acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God by any means implies a sharing of god-ship with God himself. When Jesus said that people are speaking to God, and looking upon him, through him, this is exactly what he meant, that the Holy Spirit that God sent has “remained” with him.
This is, obviously, one of the greatest mysteries of God, but it by no means as difficult, gimmicky or mysterious, or as complicated as humans have endeavored to make it, to their loss. So this is another piece of the puzzle about why God, through Gabriel, to the Prophet, “sounds” so “frustrated” by the misidentification problem of Jesus. God had made it clear that Jesus was not the son in the way that humans mean it, either as human genetics and biology that is traced via some sort of supernatural manipulation back to God, or a splitting of the functionality or actual being of God himself. Humans have swung wildly and incorrectly among all the extremes of “theory” about Jesus. They have thus managed to exaggerate and be plain wrong, instead of actually reading what God said. The Arabs who gained the Qur’an through the Prophet (PBUH) naturally had even less chance of reading, discerning and comprehending the nuance of “how” and “why” God made Jesus his Son since few people at that time had access to the written Gospels and obviously, Christians had reading and discernment problems of their own. God, in his wisdom, knew that the view of Jesus as Son would be a great stumbling block among Muslims due to their cultural emphasis upon the structure of the biological family. Therefore God did not push the point. God, however, through Gabriel, shared with the Muslims a beautiful love for the biological Son of Man, Jesus born of Mary of the House of David, and also his admitted virgin birth by Mary from the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, and the accompanying will of God that he perform miracles and be the Messiah.))
There is so much more that I can write to illuminate this point, using analogies and other scripture, and citations from the Qur’an, but the important point has been made and the most fruitful progress will be from my dear readers to ponder this and think through the implications of its new clarity. I hope that you find this helpful.
By the way, I don't know how many Christians realize that the head of John the Baptist is a holy relic in the Grand Mosque of Damascus, Syria. Both Muslims and Christians revere his memory, and Pope John Paul II became the first Pope to visit a mosque in 2001 when he visited that mosque in particular. A description of the mosque is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Mosque
John the Baptist’s Testimony to Himself. And this is the testimony of John. When Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites [to him] to ask him, “Who are you?” he admitted and did not deny it, but admitted, “I am not the Messiah.”
((This passage means that John the Baptist admitted being someone on a divine mission, but he admitted that he was not the actual Messiah.))
So they asked him, “What are you then? Are you Elijah?” And he said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.” So they said to him, “Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us? What do you have to say for yourself?” He said:
“I am ‘the voice of one crying out in the desert,
“Make straight the way of the Lord.”’
As Isaiah the prophet said.”
((Notice that John the Baptist replies by quoting from the Book of Isaiah. A true prophet always quotes God or the prior servants of God; he or she does not make up new doctrine.))
((Isaiah 40: 3-5. A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.))
((See, John the Baptist’s glory is that he did not claim a mission or an identity that was not his. His glory is that he recognized his right to cite the words of Isaiah, who had come before him. Rather than carving out a role for himself, John the Baptist’s glory was that he knew he was there to proclaim what Isaiah had foreseen.))
Some Pharisees were also sent. They asked him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah or Elijah or the Prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” This happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
John the Baptist’s Testimony to Jesus. The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
He is the one of whom I said, ‘A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.'"
((By this John the Baptist is confessing that Jesus lived before him in the sense of either the literal continuity of Elijah or in the eternal being of God’s intention to send the Messiah. In other words, Jesus is already ‘alive’ from the first moment of God’s intention to create and send him.))
John testified further, saying “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from the sky and remain upon him I did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the holy Spirit.’ Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.”
((This is crucial testimony by John the Baptist, and while it is well known, there is a vital informative piece of this testimony that most people totally miss, for some reason. Everyone knows, and has seen in art work, the event where the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus when John the Baptist baptized Jesus. But what everyone misses is that God had instructed John the Baptist to watch not only for the one upon whom the Holy Spirit descended, but the one where the Holy Spirit REMAINED. The Holy Spirit remained on and within Jesus from that point forward. Jesus was born “of” the Holy Spirit, and of course was filled with the Spirit from infancy. But this is the public declaration of God that Jesus is his Son, and God is calling Jesus his Son not because of a genetic, clan or biological symbolism, which is what causes question among Muslims about how God would have a “son,” but God is calling Jesus his Son because from that point of baptism the actual Holy Spirit of God is “remaining” upon and within Jesus. THAT is the “how did he do it” explanation and testimony about the mystery of God’s relationship as Father to Jesus as Son. God is the Father because at the time of baptism he sent his Holy Spirit to “remain” with Jesus. This is why it is crucial to understand the fullness of this event.
Much of the strong language in the Qur’an is a result of people not understanding this passage or, rather, their not even being properly informed. As I said, many argued for centuries within the Christian Church trying to understand Jesus’ “true nature,” rather than having the serenity and faith in mind that comes from trusting and believing in God. This is why I was moved to cite and comment on this passage in today’s background and context Bible reading. People knocked their brains against the wall trying to figure out the “nature” of Jesus, yet God has explained the simplicity of it all along. Jesus was born “of the Holy Spirit” from the immaculate Virgin Mary. Thus Jesus had his human nature directly from Mary, and was born at the behest, will and mercy of God through the Holy Spirit. But Jesus gained his right to be called the “Son of God,” and to call God the Father, when God sent the Holy Spirit “upon” him at baptism but also to REMAIN with him. The Holy Spirit remaining upon Jesus as he entered and conducted his public ministry is not only the granting of the power to perform miracles, but also the “letter of authorization,” in a sense, for the only son to conduct the business of the Father. This is why no one need to be alarmed that acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God by any means implies a sharing of god-ship with God himself. When Jesus said that people are speaking to God, and looking upon him, through him, this is exactly what he meant, that the Holy Spirit that God sent has “remained” with him.
This is, obviously, one of the greatest mysteries of God, but it by no means as difficult, gimmicky or mysterious, or as complicated as humans have endeavored to make it, to their loss. So this is another piece of the puzzle about why God, through Gabriel, to the Prophet, “sounds” so “frustrated” by the misidentification problem of Jesus. God had made it clear that Jesus was not the son in the way that humans mean it, either as human genetics and biology that is traced via some sort of supernatural manipulation back to God, or a splitting of the functionality or actual being of God himself. Humans have swung wildly and incorrectly among all the extremes of “theory” about Jesus. They have thus managed to exaggerate and be plain wrong, instead of actually reading what God said. The Arabs who gained the Qur’an through the Prophet (PBUH) naturally had even less chance of reading, discerning and comprehending the nuance of “how” and “why” God made Jesus his Son since few people at that time had access to the written Gospels and obviously, Christians had reading and discernment problems of their own. God, in his wisdom, knew that the view of Jesus as Son would be a great stumbling block among Muslims due to their cultural emphasis upon the structure of the biological family. Therefore God did not push the point. God, however, through Gabriel, shared with the Muslims a beautiful love for the biological Son of Man, Jesus born of Mary of the House of David, and also his admitted virgin birth by Mary from the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, and the accompanying will of God that he perform miracles and be the Messiah.))
There is so much more that I can write to illuminate this point, using analogies and other scripture, and citations from the Qur’an, but the important point has been made and the most fruitful progress will be from my dear readers to ponder this and think through the implications of its new clarity. I hope that you find this helpful.
By the way, I don't know how many Christians realize that the head of John the Baptist is a holy relic in the Grand Mosque of Damascus, Syria. Both Muslims and Christians revere his memory, and Pope John Paul II became the first Pope to visit a mosque in 2001 when he visited that mosque in particular. A description of the mosque is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Mosque
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Bible Reading: Luke 7:31-35
“The Stubborn Children” (A commentary by Jesus)
Luke 7:31-35
“To what then shall I liken the men of this generation? And what are they like?
They are like children sitting in the market place, calling to one another and saying, ‘We have piped to you, and you have not danced; we have sung dirges, and you have not wept.’
For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a devil.’
The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Behold a man who is a glutton, and a wine-drinker, a friend of publicans and sinners!’
And wisdom is justified by all her children."
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Important information about baptism
As a Catholic I belong to the Church founded by Jesus Christ that has its roots firmly in both the Apostolic tradition and lineage and also in the word as given to the Israelites by God. Growing up I was very surprised that not only were many Christians incorrect in their Biblical understanding and lax in their obedience to the Lord but that they expressed calumny and insults toward Catholics. An example is the subject of infant baptism. Here I will point you to the scripture that specifies that infants were born of the water in ancient Israel in order to distinguish them from the pagans. It is from the ancient Israelite practice of infant baptism that John the Baptist drew in order to do his baptism, which was a renewal of baptism, not a new invention for adults.
Ezechiel 16: 1-5
Thus the word of the Lord came to me: 2. Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations:
[My comment. The Lord is angry at the Israelites and is instructing Ezechiel to basically yell at them on the Lord's behalf. What follows is the words that the Lord puts in the mouth of Ezechiel to say.]
3. Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: By origin and birth you are of the land of Chanaan; your father was an Amorrite and your mother a Hethite.
[My comment. The Lord is basically opening up his statement by insulting the Israelites. He is accusing them of being of pagan parents. The Lord is saying that instead of being Israelites born and bred they might as well think of themselves as having a father from one non-Israelite pagan tribe, the Amorrites, and having a Hethite pagan mother. What he literally means is that the Israelites have absorbed pagan belief and practices from the land they live in and the pagan tribes that they live among. He is now going to cite proof of this accusation.]
4. As for your birth, the day you were born your navel cord was not cut; you were neither washed with water nor anointed, nor were you rubbed with salt, nor swaddled in swaddling clothes.
[My comment. Um, *cough.* The first example of how to distinguish an Israelite from a pagan that is cited by God himself is that the pagan has an uncut navel cord, is not washed with water, is not anointed with oil, is not rubbed with salt, and is not swaddled in swaddling clothes. So through this accusation God preserves in the Old Testament a description of what a newborn Israelite should experience. An infant is to have navel cord cut, be washed with water, anointed, rubbed with salt, and swaddled in swaddling clothes (in other words, not redressed in the birth blanket but given new birth clothes). You know, like a christening gown is used today? Um, even without providing a picture you could not have a clearer description from the Lord God himself that Israelite babies were baptized immediately upon birth, and that this "washing" and "anointing" distinguished them from the pagans. No one in their right mind "waited" to do adult baptism.]
5. No one looked on you with pity or compassion to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out on the ground as something loathsome the day you were born.
[My comment. Gosh, isn't that clear? God is not saying that it's good hygiene to give a good scrub a dub to a newborn baby. He is stating that if the baby is not cut in navel, "washed, anointed and rubbed" followed by swaddling, then he is treated as if he is garbage and an abomination. In other words, the baby that is not "baptized" is left by negligent parents to be considered garbage and not an Israelite.]
The next three lines of scripture relates how this un-baptized infant would be left weltering in its own blood, living wild in the field, naked until adulthood, at which point the Lord rescues through love the child that has grown outside the community as an adult. This is both a metaphor and literal description. The Lord now describes in theory doing to the adult what should have been done as a newborn Israelite. So here the Lord is not describing a literal "if you missed your birth baptism by your parents you can get an adult baptism from me." The Lord is describing the literal infant "washing, anointing, rubbing and swaddling" that all, even these fallen away, Jewish infants would have received. He is being symbolic in describing what comes next as to how he can claim for his own through an adult washing, anointing and "clothing."
8. Again I passed by you and saw that you were now old enough for love. So I spread the corner of my cloak over you to cover your nakedness; I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you; you became mine, says the Lord God. 9. Then I bathed you with water, washed away your blood, and anointed you with oil. 10. I clothed you with an embroidered gown, put sandals of fine leather on your feet; I gave you a fine linen sash and silk robes to wear.
You see, while the Lord God is speaking of how Israel has fallen away as a whole into idolatry, God is using a literal description of the accepted rites of the time. Thus we have definitive proof in the words of the Lord God himself that during the time of Ezechiel (the exile to Babylon with one specific date in Ezechiel identified as being in the year 593 B.C.) the Israelites baptized their babies on birth simultaneously after the cutting of the navel cord. It is not a simple washing up of the baby because the word "anointing" is used, and swaddling clothes are given to the baby after being born of the water, anointed and rubbed with salt. This was a baptism ritual that identified the baby as being an Israelite. Those who "missed the chance" and grew up as a pagan (unbaptized) have a chance to be baptized as an adult by grace (not merit) of God's love for the unbaptized person. This extensive detailed passage, while not intended as a baptismal instruction, could not be clearer.
The Lord God specifies the lack of baptism of the newborn child as the means by which he insults the fallen away audience of Ezechiel's scolding. God does not have Ezechiel rip into them by mentioning their unholy and pagan practices and lapses in adult faith. He used the analogy of the baptism of the newborn baby into the Israelite community as the way to characterize their lack of obedience, saying "You act as though you were never baptized as an Israelite as a baby."
I really don't know how any "Christian" can criticize Catholics for practicing infant baptism since that is clearly the distinguishing ritual of the newborn Israelite baby specifically documented here as early as six hundred years before Christ was born! That's "where St. John the Baptist got the idea from." St. John the Baptist was recognizing that the people had again fallen away, even as they were continuing to baptize infants they were not living as consecrated-to-God Israelites. Hence St. John the Baptist started a ritual of adult baptism to REMIND people of the baptism they had received as the newborn infant and what it meant. St. John the Baptist was NOT "inventing adult baptism." All Jewish babies, including Jesus, would have had their navel cord cut and then immediately be brought into the community (baptized) by being "washed" "anointed" "rubbed" and "swaddled." Remember when Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes? Why do you think that was important enough to mention in the Gospel? The angel appears and declares to the shepherds:
Luke 2: 12
And this shall be a sign to you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
Why would an angel mention the swaddling clothes? Because the swaddling clothes indicated a Jewish newborn infant, not a pagan newborn infant. Mary would have cut his cord, washed, anointed and rubbed him with salt first and then swaddled him. Jesus, in other words, would have been "baptized" by his parents at birth just as all the other Jewish infants were, as God himself states in Ezechiel, for the centuries before to distinguish themselves from the pagans and that they are through, yes, call it what it is, this "sacrament," being "baptized" into the community of Israelites FROM BIRTH.
I really was shocked and discouraged when I realized that there is such poor Biblical scholarship (usually among those who proclaim it loudest) that God's own explicit words on this subject are not noticed.
I hope this helps. Gosh, reading the Bible accurately cannot hurt can it? Only false accusations and ignorance hurt. Folks ought to be grateful to the Catholics; we even keep the swaddling "new clothes" through the christening gown!
Ezechiel 16: 1-5
Thus the word of the Lord came to me: 2. Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations:
[My comment. The Lord is angry at the Israelites and is instructing Ezechiel to basically yell at them on the Lord's behalf. What follows is the words that the Lord puts in the mouth of Ezechiel to say.]
3. Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: By origin and birth you are of the land of Chanaan; your father was an Amorrite and your mother a Hethite.
[My comment. The Lord is basically opening up his statement by insulting the Israelites. He is accusing them of being of pagan parents. The Lord is saying that instead of being Israelites born and bred they might as well think of themselves as having a father from one non-Israelite pagan tribe, the Amorrites, and having a Hethite pagan mother. What he literally means is that the Israelites have absorbed pagan belief and practices from the land they live in and the pagan tribes that they live among. He is now going to cite proof of this accusation.]
4. As for your birth, the day you were born your navel cord was not cut; you were neither washed with water nor anointed, nor were you rubbed with salt, nor swaddled in swaddling clothes.
[My comment. Um, *cough.* The first example of how to distinguish an Israelite from a pagan that is cited by God himself is that the pagan has an uncut navel cord, is not washed with water, is not anointed with oil, is not rubbed with salt, and is not swaddled in swaddling clothes. So through this accusation God preserves in the Old Testament a description of what a newborn Israelite should experience. An infant is to have navel cord cut, be washed with water, anointed, rubbed with salt, and swaddled in swaddling clothes (in other words, not redressed in the birth blanket but given new birth clothes). You know, like a christening gown is used today? Um, even without providing a picture you could not have a clearer description from the Lord God himself that Israelite babies were baptized immediately upon birth, and that this "washing" and "anointing" distinguished them from the pagans. No one in their right mind "waited" to do adult baptism.]
5. No one looked on you with pity or compassion to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out on the ground as something loathsome the day you were born.
[My comment. Gosh, isn't that clear? God is not saying that it's good hygiene to give a good scrub a dub to a newborn baby. He is stating that if the baby is not cut in navel, "washed, anointed and rubbed" followed by swaddling, then he is treated as if he is garbage and an abomination. In other words, the baby that is not "baptized" is left by negligent parents to be considered garbage and not an Israelite.]
The next three lines of scripture relates how this un-baptized infant would be left weltering in its own blood, living wild in the field, naked until adulthood, at which point the Lord rescues through love the child that has grown outside the community as an adult. This is both a metaphor and literal description. The Lord now describes in theory doing to the adult what should have been done as a newborn Israelite. So here the Lord is not describing a literal "if you missed your birth baptism by your parents you can get an adult baptism from me." The Lord is describing the literal infant "washing, anointing, rubbing and swaddling" that all, even these fallen away, Jewish infants would have received. He is being symbolic in describing what comes next as to how he can claim for his own through an adult washing, anointing and "clothing."
8. Again I passed by you and saw that you were now old enough for love. So I spread the corner of my cloak over you to cover your nakedness; I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you; you became mine, says the Lord God. 9. Then I bathed you with water, washed away your blood, and anointed you with oil. 10. I clothed you with an embroidered gown, put sandals of fine leather on your feet; I gave you a fine linen sash and silk robes to wear.
You see, while the Lord God is speaking of how Israel has fallen away as a whole into idolatry, God is using a literal description of the accepted rites of the time. Thus we have definitive proof in the words of the Lord God himself that during the time of Ezechiel (the exile to Babylon with one specific date in Ezechiel identified as being in the year 593 B.C.) the Israelites baptized their babies on birth simultaneously after the cutting of the navel cord. It is not a simple washing up of the baby because the word "anointing" is used, and swaddling clothes are given to the baby after being born of the water, anointed and rubbed with salt. This was a baptism ritual that identified the baby as being an Israelite. Those who "missed the chance" and grew up as a pagan (unbaptized) have a chance to be baptized as an adult by grace (not merit) of God's love for the unbaptized person. This extensive detailed passage, while not intended as a baptismal instruction, could not be clearer.
The Lord God specifies the lack of baptism of the newborn child as the means by which he insults the fallen away audience of Ezechiel's scolding. God does not have Ezechiel rip into them by mentioning their unholy and pagan practices and lapses in adult faith. He used the analogy of the baptism of the newborn baby into the Israelite community as the way to characterize their lack of obedience, saying "You act as though you were never baptized as an Israelite as a baby."
I really don't know how any "Christian" can criticize Catholics for practicing infant baptism since that is clearly the distinguishing ritual of the newborn Israelite baby specifically documented here as early as six hundred years before Christ was born! That's "where St. John the Baptist got the idea from." St. John the Baptist was recognizing that the people had again fallen away, even as they were continuing to baptize infants they were not living as consecrated-to-God Israelites. Hence St. John the Baptist started a ritual of adult baptism to REMIND people of the baptism they had received as the newborn infant and what it meant. St. John the Baptist was NOT "inventing adult baptism." All Jewish babies, including Jesus, would have had their navel cord cut and then immediately be brought into the community (baptized) by being "washed" "anointed" "rubbed" and "swaddled." Remember when Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes? Why do you think that was important enough to mention in the Gospel? The angel appears and declares to the shepherds:
Luke 2: 12
And this shall be a sign to you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
Why would an angel mention the swaddling clothes? Because the swaddling clothes indicated a Jewish newborn infant, not a pagan newborn infant. Mary would have cut his cord, washed, anointed and rubbed him with salt first and then swaddled him. Jesus, in other words, would have been "baptized" by his parents at birth just as all the other Jewish infants were, as God himself states in Ezechiel, for the centuries before to distinguish themselves from the pagans and that they are through, yes, call it what it is, this "sacrament," being "baptized" into the community of Israelites FROM BIRTH.
I really was shocked and discouraged when I realized that there is such poor Biblical scholarship (usually among those who proclaim it loudest) that God's own explicit words on this subject are not noticed.
I hope this helps. Gosh, reading the Bible accurately cannot hurt can it? Only false accusations and ignorance hurt. Folks ought to be grateful to the Catholics; we even keep the swaddling "new clothes" through the christening gown!
Saturday, June 23, 2007
St. John the Baptist Vigil of the Nativity
June 24 is the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. In the 1962 proper of the saints, June 23 is honored as the Vigil of St. John the Baptist. That was an important day because it put the birth of St. John the Baptist in the context of the Old Testament prophecies too, just as Jesus Christ was. Here's the Lesson for that day, with an explanatory introduction:
The Church applies to St. John the history of Jeremia, who was also sanctified from his mother's womb to be a Prophet of God. Jeremia was born about 650 BC of a priestly family from the little village of Anathoth, near Jerusalem. He was called to "active duty" as a prophet while very young in 628 BC, for the King Josia.
From Jeremia the Prophet, 1: 4-10
In those days the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you. "Ah, Lord God!" I said, "I know not how to speak; I am too young." But the Lord answered me, Say not "I am too young." To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak. Have no fear before them, because I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord. Then the Lord extended his hand and touched my mouth, saying, See, I place my words in your mouth! This day I set you over nations and over kingdoms, to root up and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.
Here are the next two lines from that passage, relating the first thing the young Jeremia saw after God spoke to him:
The word of the Lord came to me with the question: What do you see, Jeremia? "I see a branch of the watching-tree," I replied. Then the Lord said to me: Well have you seen, for I am watching to fulfill my word.
So you can see why St. John the Baptist, who was aware of the pre-born Jesus Christ while John himself was still in the womb, is very much modeled after Jeremia the Prophet, who spoke to God before he knew "how to speak."
By the way, the "watching-tree" is the almond tree, which was the first tree to bloom in the springtime in the Holy Land. That is why one of its nicknames is the "watching tree," which comes from a play on words in Hebrew, implying that it does not really sleep over winter, just watches for the right time. So it is with the Lord and his prophets.
Notice also Jeremia 1 is the origin of that quotation from the Lord God, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you," that informs everyone that life and soul of a human being exists in the pre-born infant, putting to lie all those who say otherwise. The Lord God is declaring here that even before the infant is fully formed in the womb, the infant is a human being known to God and in possession of their eternal soul. This scripture is much quoted, correctly, by the pro-life movement.
The Church applies to St. John the history of Jeremia, who was also sanctified from his mother's womb to be a Prophet of God. Jeremia was born about 650 BC of a priestly family from the little village of Anathoth, near Jerusalem. He was called to "active duty" as a prophet while very young in 628 BC, for the King Josia.
From Jeremia the Prophet, 1: 4-10
In those days the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you. "Ah, Lord God!" I said, "I know not how to speak; I am too young." But the Lord answered me, Say not "I am too young." To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak. Have no fear before them, because I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord. Then the Lord extended his hand and touched my mouth, saying, See, I place my words in your mouth! This day I set you over nations and over kingdoms, to root up and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.
Here are the next two lines from that passage, relating the first thing the young Jeremia saw after God spoke to him:
The word of the Lord came to me with the question: What do you see, Jeremia? "I see a branch of the watching-tree," I replied. Then the Lord said to me: Well have you seen, for I am watching to fulfill my word.
So you can see why St. John the Baptist, who was aware of the pre-born Jesus Christ while John himself was still in the womb, is very much modeled after Jeremia the Prophet, who spoke to God before he knew "how to speak."
By the way, the "watching-tree" is the almond tree, which was the first tree to bloom in the springtime in the Holy Land. That is why one of its nicknames is the "watching tree," which comes from a play on words in Hebrew, implying that it does not really sleep over winter, just watches for the right time. So it is with the Lord and his prophets.
Notice also Jeremia 1 is the origin of that quotation from the Lord God, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you," that informs everyone that life and soul of a human being exists in the pre-born infant, putting to lie all those who say otherwise. The Lord God is declaring here that even before the infant is fully formed in the womb, the infant is a human being known to God and in possession of their eternal soul. This scripture is much quoted, correctly, by the pro-life movement.
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