Making Moral Judgments

"You shall not act dishonestly in rendering judgment. Show neither partiality to the weak nor deference to the mighty, but judge your fellow men justly" (Leviticus 19:15).

We Christians place a high value on empathy and compassion - or at least we should, if we are trying to live in the image of Christ!  Where far too many Christians run into trouble today however, at least in the West, is when we sacrifice truth in the name of compassion - when we excuse, or worse yet affirm, what Christ would call sin in the name of sparing someone's "feelings."  There is no love without truth.  Sentimentality, yes; but not love. 

Love seeks the other's good, his/her objective good - and that is freedom from sin and life with God.  A person can derive pleasure from something that is killing them.  We see it on the natural level:  smoking, abuse of alcohol, contraction of a sexually transmitted disease.  And the same is true on the supernatural level!  Sin kills the soul, and to remain in that death - to never have repented and accepted God's forgiveness - is to step into Hell.  And for a Christian to affirm someone else engaging in what is objectively sinful behavior, or to keep silent when speaking up could save that person's life, is the opposite of love. 

The Christian does not speak up out of the desire to condemn, but to save - exactly as Jesus did.  We need to judge - to evaluate actions - by Christ's criteria. His judgment does not change because we shed a few tears or feel "condemned" by what He tells us; He loves us far too much to cave to that kind of sentimentality.  He knows our lives hang in the balance.  "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" (John 3:17).

Pushin' 40 - and It is Evil (January 22, 2013)

Only a few months until I turn 40, but I am fine with that.  I realize that chronologically I am not a kid anymore, but I sure feel like one in my head.  Ironically, thanks to God's grace and my good friend Kevin Vost, I am actually in better physical shape now than when I turned 30!

The "pushin' 40" to which I refer in the title is a much more serious matter.  January 22, 2013, will mark 40 years since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade.  In those 40 years, our nation has aborted approximately 55 million children.  My mind can barely begin to make sense of that number; it is just shy of the total number of people killed in WWII.  But this 55 million were not combatants or people living in a war zone - they were children in their mothers' wombs.

I am not a superstitious person, nor am I doom and gloom; but when I hear the number 40, my mind turns to Scripture.  It is a number we encounter there from time to time.  We find it, for instance, in Psalm 95 where Israel was warned:

Today, if only you would hear his voice,
“Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,   

as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness 

[at the time of the Exodus],

where your ancestors tested me;
    they tried me, though they had seen what I did.
For forty years I was angry with that generation;
    I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
    and they have not known my ways.’
So I declared on oath in my anger,
    ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”

(Psalm 95:7-11)

The Epistle to the Hebrews quoted this Psalm to the early Church, adding "Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, that no one fall by the same sort of disobedience" (Heb.4:11).
 
When Jerusalem's leaders rejected the New Covenant God offered them in Jesus, they were given "a generation," (Mt.24:34), commonly understood as forty years, before God allowed judgment to fall.  Instead of repenting of their crime and pursuing God's will however, they pursued their own wills year after year.  They tried to stamp out the Church in its infancy. Their hardness of heart eventually brought them into rebellion against Rome; and Jerusalem and its Temple were leveled in 70 A.D. - approximately forty years after its rejection of Jesus. 

And here is the United States, after forty years of allowing its children - its most innocent members - to be killed in their mothers' wombs.  Forty years - how has the sin of abortion hardened hearts in our nation?  How has it twisted us and eroded the respect we have for all life?  How many Christians in this nation are horrified by it enough to speak out?  Just look at how many Christians - how many Catholics - believe they can justify the unjustifiable: casting ballots for politicians committed to keeping this atrocity legal.  "Today, if only you would hear His voice ..."

If we imagine a bright future for a nation that continues to practice - whose politicians actually seem to be doubling down on the practice of - killing the child in its mother's womb, then we are as blind as Annas and Caiaphas, as blind as Herod and Pilate.  "God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.  For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption" (Gal.6:7-8).  If we continue, then God will finally allow the evil we have courted to overtake us.  I don't have a clue what that might look like, but it has happened again and again throughout history.  Cultures rot from within, and like the Jewish rebellion against Rome, we will bring it upon ourselves.  In our self-imposed blindness we will undoubtedly make foolish choices and bring it all crashing down.

Forty years is a long time for God to tolerate evil ... but He has been known to do so for longer. Hopefully, we still have time to repent.  "Today if you hear His voice ..."  Fast, pray, talk to your loved ones, and realize that God is with you the next time you step into a voting booth.  We may have failed Him in the past, but we don't have to do so again!  But make no mistake, "God is not mocked."  As Ruth Graham, wife of evangelist Billy Graham, concluded, "if God doesn't bring judgment upon the United States, He's going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."  The cries of our aborted children - our 55 million aborted children - do reach His ears.

Salvation, Catholic Style

The New Testament is adamant that justification does not come through the Law of Moses. Baptism is our birth as sons and daughters “in the Son.” We start out as infants, but our Father has no intention of letting us remain infants for eternity (Ephesians 4:13; Hebrews 6:1). He looks forward, eagerly, to our growth and development. In the end we will be like Jesus – loving and pouring ourselves out to Him in the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:29). Faith propels us forward, moving us to not just listen to God’s word but to put it into practice (James 1:22-25). Catholics call this “sanctification” or the “ongoing process of justification” – recognizing birth and the subsequent process of growth as stages in one and the same Life.

Regardless of the terminology, the Apostle Paul has some important things to tell us about this process. First and foremost we have to get it through our heads that the actions we perform (you can call them deeds or works and they can be anything from time spent in prayer, to sharing our goods with less fortunate brothers and sisters, to caring for the sick or dying) are never ours alone – they are primarily the actions of Christ Jesus Himself. As Paul tells us in Philippians, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure,” or as the New American Bible translates it, “who begets in you any measure of desire or achievement” (2:12-23).

Jesus acting in us and through us is what we call the life of Grace.[1] All of His actions during His time on earth were expressions of Love for His Father, and as such they were performed in the Holy Spirit. When He acts in us the same is true; He is Loving the Father, in the Holy Spirit, through us (Galatians 2:20-21). We have already talked about how Jesus deepens our participation in His Life through the Sacraments of Confirmation and Eucharist. Talk about the greatest honor in the universe, we have been inserted into the Life of the God Who is Love!

In Jesus, by His Grace, we live in a way that pleases our Father.[2] And the Father, looking at us with eyes full of mercy and Love, regards these actions (or works, or deeds) as truly ours. But how can an action be simultaneously Jesus’ and ours? Let me offer an analogy.

Suppose you and your sister were standing at the top of a flight of steps when she lost her balance and began to fall. You reached out and grabbed her, pulling her back upright. In her gratefulness she planted a big kiss on your hand, saying, “I love this hand. Thanks for grabbing me.” Now that good deed took place because of the instrumentality of your hand; it extended toward her and grabbed onto her. The only way it could do that good deed though, was because it participated in your life and was under your direction. That action belonged totally to you – and totally to your hand, simultaneously.

And what I remind you of is that, as members of Jesus’ Body, we are His hands…and feet, mouth, etc., etc. The action originates in Jesus but is actualized in us, “For we are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). The idea to perform the work is Jesus’, the Love and Power to carry it out is the Holy Spirit pouring through us, but the action doesn’t take place without our “yes,” our cooperation. And God the Father is pleased by that cooperation – like any father looking at the work his child “helped” him accomplish (even though it required the father to exert more energy than had he just done it himself).

Not only does God the Father regard these works as ours and smile with pleasure, He goes even further and “rewards” us with progressively more of His Grace – until finally He places the crown of life on our heads.[3]

We “merit” this increase of Grace but not in the legal sense of God owing us a payment for our work. We merit in the same way a child who eats everything on his plate merits a second helping – the merit is founded on the Father’s Love for His children.[4] Such a progression can be seen in St. Paul’s journey. He could write to the Philippians, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. . .I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil.3:12,14); and then years later write to Timothy, “I am already on the point of being sacrificed…I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that Day” (2 Tim. 4:6-8). Paul had fully entered into Jesus’ offering to the Father. The refusal of our first parents to enter into the flow of Life going on within the Trinity, and the effects of that sin, are being undone even as you read this. It happened for Paul and it can for us too. If we enter fully into Jesus’ offering to the Father by both our obedience to God’s will and our perseverance through suffering, then we will also share in His resurrection (Philippians 2:8-9; 3:10).

We are meant to be branches living by the life of the Vine, parts of the Body of which Jesus is the Head. If our lives are not showing forth His Life, and progressively more so over the years, then there is a problem. “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. . .I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away” (John 15:4,1-2). 

This is what the Epistle of James means when it says, “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone…For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:24,26). James was not teaching that we can earn initial justification (the gifts of faith and baptism); no, we have been made God’s children purely by His favor. What I am convinced he was teaching, and the Catholic Church continues to bear witness to, is the reality that justification is not only our unmerited incorporation into Jesus’ Sonship; justification is also the process of His lifestyle becoming ours. It is a process that has to be continued. Jesus didn’t pour Himself out to the Father just interiorly, or spiritually, one time at the beginning of His Life. He gave Himself in His flesh and blood, His words, thoughts and actions continually; and as parts of His Body, motivated and empowered by His Grace, we are called to do the same![5]
 

Speaking of the last day, the Lord was very specific about the criteria we will be judged on. Jesus will welcome the just with a word of thanks for their untold kindnesses to Him - kindnesses He received in lieu of His connection to all of humanity. He went on to describe how He will tell the wicked, those condemned to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” to leave His sight - they had neglected and rejected Him (Matt.25:41). They in turn will ask, “Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to thee?”(Matt.25:44). Jesus will answer, “As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me” (Matthew 25:45). Jesus did not even mention our mental or verbal confessions of faith; by themselves they are inadequate. He wants our confession made in our flesh and bone, living as He lived; to do otherwise is to reject the Life He died to give us.

---

[1]For direction to several verses in the next two footnotes I owe thanks to Robert Sungenis’s How Can I Get to Heaven? The Bible’s Teaching on Salvation Made Easy to Understand, (Santa Barbara, California: Queenship Publishing Company, 1998).

Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me”

2 Peter 1:3-4, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness …he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.

1 Corinthians 15:10, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me.”

Romans 12:6, “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.”

Ephesians 4:7, “But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”

See Ephesians 1:11-12 in next footnote as well.

[2]Hebrews 13:20-21, “Now may the God of peace. . .equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.”

Ephesians 1:11-12, “In [Jesus], according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory.”

Philippians 1:9-11, “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God”

2 Corinthians 5:9-10, “So whether we are at home [in the body] or away, we make it our aim to please him.   For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body.”

Romans 12:1, “…present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Philippians 4:18, “I have received. . .the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.”

1 Timothy 2:1,3, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men. . .this is good and it is acceptable to God our Savior”

Colossians 3:20, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”

1 John 3:21-22, “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.”

[3] 2 Peter 1:3,5-8,10-11, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. . .make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ…Therefore, my brethren, be the more zealous to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never fall; so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

We see the Mystery of our cooperation with God’s Grace in Jesus’ “parable of the talents”also: A man went on a journey and entrusted differing sums of money to three of his servants. The first servant, receiving five talents (about five thousand dollars), invests them and makes five more. The second servant did likewise with the two talents he was given. The third servant, however, buried the one talent he had been entrusted with for fear of losing it. When the man returned to settle accounts he was enraged with servant #3,

“You wicked and slothful servant!. . .You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. [I’ll take the talent from you] and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matthew 25:26-29).

[4] Hahn, Scott, Hail Holy Queen: The Mother of God in the Word of God (San Francisco: Doubleday, 2001), pp.133-134.

[5] Galatians 5:4-6 “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law [of Moses]; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love.”

Partners

When I was praying the Rosary this evening I was really struck by the final mystery, the Coronation of Mary. Raised up to Heaven, as we all hope to be some day, she received her crown - "Well done good and faithful servant."

In a strict sense though, what had Mary done to warrant a crown? She did exactly what God had asked of her. But didn't she owe Him that, as a creature to her Creator? Yes, in strict justice she did. But this is where we see the abundant, and utterly gratuitous Love of God. He freely chose to raise up that humble creature, and to count her as his partner in redemption! And as a loving, cooperative partner and daughter, He lavishes honors upon her!

And that is what is awaiting us too! As Paul said, "Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing" (2 Timothy 4:8).