Rendering God
Man tends to create the world in his own image. He manifests that which he believes will help him make sense of the wider world, his past and present. Of course, a disordered mind or a mind unaided by grace can lead to investing one's trust in dangerous fantasies. The risk to him is that he twists his mental, spiritual and physical being into the shape of an imperfect god, a lesser god, and then he becomes imprisoned in a perception or construct with limited ability to satisfy the deep hungers within... or worse, the fantasy becomes a monster that consumes the person, magnifies the need for power and control, and diminishes his capacity for love and acceptance, for truth, goodness and beauty. Without grace, the baser instincts push aside virtue, and the person slides toward self preservation at all costs.
When a man's "faith" in his tiny god is tested, it may be that he will lash out to protect that strange god and his relationship to that construction, or he might abandon his personal deity. In the case of the latter, he might then stumble upon the Truth, capital 'T', if he is adventurous, or he might drift into dissolution and possibly anger having had proven to him that his choice is one that spawns addiction and a coverup of inadequacies. He may very well become trapped in a cascading conspiracy of self deceit and plunge headlong into destruction. There are those who may assist him to dive deeper into his terminal fantasy, or there may be those around him, if they are believers, who intercede for him with God, to plant in him the seeds of understanding and acceptance of the real and to propose to him faith in Christ.
The iconoclasm of the human person.
Human beings and our institutions are being shattered again. Despite the sobering example of the 20th Century having been one of the darkest centuries in human history filled with innumerable examples of human beings killing one another in ways that met or exceeded the devil's hoped-for depravity, a new wave of caustic philosophies and political entities are flooding societies with a plague of deceit and death. Said plague has been steadily growing in the wake of the gaping wound left after the world wars and continued to fester in the midst of the Cold War. Our societies are now littered with the casualties of human sacrifice, mutilation, sexual degradation, chemical dependency, and depression. The litany of sorrow could go on and on.
Why does evil seem to thrive?
Anything that helps people identify the true, the good and the beautiful is being attacked. Because they are the places where "demons and monsters shall meet, and the hairy ones shall cry out one to another, (and) there hath the lamia lain down, and found rest for herself (Isaiah 34:14)," there are institutions that should be abandoned, to put it politely. Colleges you ask? Organizations that merit demolition - because they are so riddled with corruption they cannot change - are those wherein people are rendered destitute, spiritually and emotionally impoverished, by rogue ideologies.
The cult of Dionysus - alive and well?
How valid is the use of drugs and surgery to sculpt man into conformity with his disordered imaginings? That people impose upon themselves foolish rituals or project themselves into chaotic fantasies is nothing new. In former times, the idols of the imagination became physical manifestations, too: a talisman, a golden calf, a human sacrifice, or self mutilation in an attempt to appease and tame lesser gods and to alleviate various despondencies. Today, blue and/or pink hair is often the firework that announces and accompanies idolatry in the form of an addiction to an ideology. That so many are enamoured in the same false god is a testimony to the effectiveness of the propaganda preached by the devotees of the false god. The success of the campaign might be attributed not merely to the gullibility of the victims nor to the charisma of the mouthpieces, but to a sinister and much subtler contributor.
Man's ability to create is an amazing power. Unredeemed and unaided by grace, man's creative instincts can produce terrifying results: nuclear weapons; biological weapons; deadly political systems; destructive social programs; pornography; an horrendous theatre in the form of a literal butchering of the physical form and the pulverizing of the mental faculties - all of which results in the annihilation of the person.
The Catholic says 'no' to the limited and limiting projections of man, and because he says 'yes' to the God of revelation, he is able to make beauty, to make art and not worship it, but rather be led through it back to the Creator.
How do you render God?
God created man in His own image. God is the Creator. Thus, man creates, too. Is it any wonder that man, i.e., fallen man, creates gods in his image?
Exodus 20:2-6 | I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Have you listened, read and pondered enough, or suffered enough, lived enough, and/or empathized enough, to recognize the need for honesty over pride and (false) humility to be able to hear and to see God? There is, indeed, a rightly ordered pride for or in virtuosic skill, for example, and the virtue of a genuine appreciation born of humility for that Beauty which transcends us. Those dispositions or orientations can be born of an honesty that comes with confronting one's limitations and one's gifts and offering them to God for His use. We need God's grace to help elevate reason to a point we can recognize that God is searching for us.
We need God's grace to sustain us in virtue and the love of the true, the good and the beautiful. When we deprive ourselves of grace when we sin, we need but turn to God through the Sacrament of Penance to dispose ourselves to God's mercy and renewal. Short of that, we will shrivel if we do not allow ourselves to be watered and warmed by God's grace.
Suffering is a great mystery, but it is through faith in Christ's Passion and Resurrection that we can understand its meaning (Pope St John Paul II, Apostolic Journey to Papua New Guinea: Liturgy of the Word and blessing of the sick at the church of St Joseph in Boroko; 18 January 1995). Accepting and uniting our suffering with Christ's suffering allows us to share in his victory over sin and death.
Suffering can loosen our attachment to situations we ourselves cannot or are unwilling to change. Suffering can be a sword to cleave us free from debilitating attachments, a hammer to break idols to which we stubbornly cling.
Sword, hammer: suffering is painful.
Freed of the idol's grasp on our hearts and minds, we can begin to enter more deeply into the promises of God in Christ. Prayer inviting God's grace into such situations will strengthen us in the midst of painful change. Meditation on the wounds of Christ disposes us to God's healing grace.
When we suffer with Christ, we show that we have not taken offense at him, and we reveal the true dignity of the human person. We make known the truth that God loves us so much that he became one of us to share our pain and sorrows. | ibid.
The suffering of each Christian is a participation in the redemptive suffering of Christ. By suffering in service of the gospel, the Christian completes what is lacking in Christ's afflictions "for the sake of the body of Christ, that is, the Church." | Select Questions on the Theology of God the Redeemer IV. 62, International Theological Commission, 1995 AD.
Suffering educates and fortifies our hope in a special way. It is not escape from suffering that cures the human being, but the ability to accept tribulation and mature through it, finding meaning in it through union with Christ. | Inauguration of the Ecclesial Convention of the Diocese of Rome at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran (June 9, 2008), Pope Benedict XVI.
Suffering has a redemptive value - it is the means by which God expresses his eternal love for us and offers us the gift of Redemption. By his own example, Jesus taught us to care for those who suffer. | To the participants at the 10th Congress of the European Academy of Anaesthesiology, Pope John Paul II (September 8, 1988).
The discovery of the salvific meaning of suffering in union with Christ transforms the sense of the uselessness of suffering. Suffering permeated by the spirit of Christ's sacrifice is an irreplaceable mediator and author of the good things which are indispensable for the world's salvation. | Salvifici Doloris: On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering 27
Conforming to the will of God sounds like madness to the spiritually confused, the spiritually dying and the dead. Yet, the only way forward into the madness of God is to betray one's idols and cling to the One true God, the One Who Is Three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Is yours a safer god?
The Jewish people encountered the God of revelation in ways that should bring a person to an openness to and an awareness of the glory of God that ridicules man's narrow perceptions. God rescued His chosen people from the disaster of sin and from their chosen disasters. When that same God manifested Himself to His people in person, many had reached a level of comfort within the covenant that God had established, a covenant that - faithfully kept - would help the believer recognize the Messiah. That a number of Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus' public ministry could not accept God's ability to exceed their expectations was too much for them to bear, so they pushed for Jesus to be crucified at the hands of their political masters, the Romans. The betrayal even came from within the apostolic camp. Judas betrayed the Son of Man, and killed himself rather than bear the consequences of a disordered attachment to his ideology, to his (lower case 'g') god. The murderous gentiles, the Romans, would eventually become the inheritors of the covenant.
Ephesians 3:6 | (T)he Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
The new covenant fulfills the old. Through a Jew - more than a mere human - God entered into the disaster of our primordial parents' making to offer liberation from false gods.
In our day, people are killing themselves through a form of iconoclasm. The impetus for change they are experiencing is rightly called dysphoria, "a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life". This unease is a disease, a diabolical plague. The strategist behind such a plague could only be an entity capable of preternatural attacks - a fallen angel. That ugly creature's strategy is as follows:
- Convince the devotee that reality does not match his or her imagination, so reality must be destroyed, thus allowing a perversion of maleness and femaleness to find expression.
- The icon of man (God created us male and female) must be destroyed so that some possessing entity may emerge.
Mirror, mirror on the wall... show me only what I want to see.
A fascination with accidents in the Aristotelian sense is leading young people to enter into a treacherous relationship, an association that consumes what little reason remains. The assumption that changing the accidents of appearance, for example, is an affirmation of one's substance is misaligned with the genetic and epigenetic design of the human being.
Rather than embody reality, people suffering from dysphoria, for example, attempt to embody accidents they encounter which, during a time of confusion, seem to make sense. Unfortunately, the abandonment of the authority of reality, of nature, leads to them to disembody themselves. They attempt to embody an idealized version of themselves. Their creative power becomes entangled in philosophies that are incompatible with life as encoded in the design imprinted in our very DNA, and so the course is to deny design and the result is the production of a chimera that, no matter however visually convincing a representation may be, taunts the person from within. To mask the lingering doubt that emerges in and through dreams and others' passing observations, and the mirror on the wall, the chimera engages in ridiculous antics and associations that are merely drugs or distractions the person hopes will calm the upset and decay. However, nothing material nor anything short of the mercy and love of Christ can redeem the passions woven into the unredeemed person's being. Chaos ensues and, like Judas after the betrayal, the soul dies a slow death. The weakened mind leads to a weakened body, et vice versa.
When people, even those who consider themselves normal, allow their fears (or complacency) to generate excuses for avoiding the demands of an integral life in Christ, they miss out on real joy. Recall the Parable of the Talents. He who invested much received much; he who invested little, received little.
St Matthew 25:14-30
He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’
Letting God be God
Saint John 14:6-11 | Jesus said to (Thomas), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.”Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.
St John 14:15-27 | “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.“I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.“These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.
Munchausen Syndrome 2024?
Munchausen syndrome is a psychological condition where someone pretends to be ill or deliberately produces symptoms of illness in themselves. Their main intention is to assume the "sick role" so that people care for them and they are the centre of attention.
That the real victims of body altering surgeries, the detransitioners, are being mistreated for confronting the medical professionals who have participated in the destruction of innocence of minors and have inflicted irreversible damage upon children, is tantamount to blaming rape victims for the crimes committed against them.
Stockholm Syndrome 2024?
Those who are part of a system of violence against children and youth, who themselves may have been co-opted by the ideologues to promote a socio-political agenda, are much like the victims of kidnapping who come to identify with their abductors and then assist their abductors to commit additional crimes.
By contrast, the peace God gives is accompanied by the strength to move beyond one's fears, to tread on uneven ground, to swim in shark infested waters (university campuses?), to invest all that one is given. The peace of God manifests in a person a confident reliance on the mercy and goodness of God. That goodness and mercy is shared with others. The person in communion with the Lord manifests to others Jesus' Gospel of life for the salvation of souls.
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