This:
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| As seen on the Stumbling Toward Heaven blog |
The thing hurting the proclamation of the Gospel most, at least in the dying West, is that up and coming youngsters just don't believe it. Oh, they've heard the story most of their lives. At least in the vaguest sense, filtered through the opinions and research of critics, skeptics and people hostile to the Faith. Shocking no one, they just don't believe it. Our atheist culture has told them the Christian Faith is worth no more than a Grimm's Fairy Tale at best, and the Marxist inspired Liberation Theology tradition can't get enough of pointing out how wretched and evil and racist and phobic sexist those old pages of "Holy" Scripture are. The constant drumbeat among believers and leaders today of repenting for the first 2000 years of the Faith, and willingness to change on a dime when the World snaps its fingers, only plays into this.
Plus, as has been said for years, many youngsters just don't believe anyone believes it anymore. I've quoted many times that youth from ages ago who I first saw mentioned at Catholic and Enjoying It. Why are youth formally rejecting belief in God and the Gospel and Jesus Christ? Because they don't see anyone acting like they believe it's true. Oh, on Sundays you get angels and demons and miracles and God and all. But come Monday, and light can barely shine through the gap between the Christian and the Atheist in how life in this world is approached. As someone quipped in a discussion some time back, the big difference between atheists and Christians today is that atheists can sleep in on Sunday.
So there are few things worse in this hot mess context than admitting our faith and prayers and even God are utterly worthless unless they align with the actual solutions to our problems in the form of our political activism for the real world. That tells these young people all they need to know to conclude that yes, Virginia, religion is dead. Or at least pointless. Politics and the state are all that matter. The here and now counts, since there is nothing else. And obviously material solutions are the only ones of consequence. Why, you have plenty of good churchgoers who admit it. See Mark's bold claims above. When the guy who drags himself out of bed to show up to church on Sunday is willing to admit just how useless all this God and prayer garbage is next to our real world solutions, do you really think what goes on in that church is worth anything to our increasingly secularized youth? I don't think so.
And it's not just Mark and the godless secularists who claim that the efficacy of our prayers to God is contingent upon their adherence to proper political activism. A staggering number of Christians and leaders, not just Catholic, have jumped on this 'God as a bad joke' bandwagon, even if they don't realize it. And not just with gun control. Sadly, nothing appears to help secular evangelism today more than modern Christianity. More's the pity.
Oh, and we won't delve into Mark attributing those turning to prayer's fruitfulness and God's sovereignty to the designs of the devil since it doesn't align with his political opinions. That makes me think of no other passage in Scripture than this:
But when the Pharisees heard it they said, “It is only by Beel′zebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.” Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand; and if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beel′zebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. Therefore, I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
I realize there is a lot of theology in that passage, but sometimes a superficial reading is enough to jar our senses. Don't attribute appeals to God's providence to Satan. Unless Pope Francis and others are correct when they allude to the possibility that, like almost anything else in the history of the Faith, the whole 'eternal separation from God' is a bunch of bunk, you might want to slow down associating the working of God and his children with the Devil for any reason, much less political ones. Prayers for his soul being in order in this case.
