Last night as I drove home, I listened on the radio to an interview with an author who has written a book about how his work as a religion journalist caused him to lose his faith. His basic point is that he found that Christianity (and really all religion) did not seem to make a difference in Christian's behavior versus the behavior of persons with no religious faith. He mentioned a terrible pedophile scandal in Alaska in which the Church offered $10K per incident, while in California Cardinal Mahoney offered $1M per incident. Is that the value the church places on humans, he asked.
Being discouraged about sinfulness is understandable, and the scandal it causes is, of course, "scandalous." But maybe a different perspective on sinfulness is called for. I recently read a sermon by Fr. Kentenich of the Schoenstaat Fathers entitled, "Overcoming the Pharisee in Ourselves." In it, he said that we commonly think of redemption as having a "clean collar." "We think that the grace of redemption should free us from the struggle for our soul and our battle against sin. There is no bigger mistake we can make."
"The meaning of redemption is not, in the first place, being without spot and sin. What does God want? Why does he allow people . . . to fall repeatedly? God wants to uproot people from the soil of their own selves. People have to be pulled out of it. And God can usually only do this when he allows us to fall. That even includes people who have already reached the higher levels of a life of prayer. Human nature is so selfish and self-seeking, it is so infected by the plague of selfishness, that God repeatedly has to allow the "clean collar" to be dirtied. Otherwise we will never be completely uprooted.
"True redemption includes, first of all, profound humility. . . Let us apply this to ourselves. How many sins and faults can occur! We will never be free from them. God doesn't want it either. He can give us a "clean collar" to the extent that our nature has been uprooted and re-rooted in himself. Can you feel how false our concept of redemption is, and how we actually drive people away from Christ when they are struggling hard to reach him?" (emphasis added)
Fr. Kentenich counsels to remain "calm and at peace despite all your sinfulness and impulsiveness. You will then be able to say with inner feeling: Thank God I do such stupid things, not because they are stupid, but because I am humbled by these stupidities. God wants us to be small. That is the meaning of redemption. We have to be uprooted, so that we can be re-rooted in God."
Good advice when applied to ourselves, Fr. Kentenich's words about "pharisaism" also apply to how we see others. I am so quick to judge! But if I must accept sinfulness in myself, I must also accept it in others, and in charity, allow others the space to continue the process of being up-rooted from sinfulness and being re-planted in the life of Christ. And apparently this even includes criminals, pedophiles, and other "low lives." Of course, we don't accept these behaviors, but in charity we recognize these persons as fellow human beings, all of us together struggling with our sinfulness.
It is a modern heresy to believe that Christian faith must save the present world to prove itself. Rather, as the scriptures say, the grain and the weeds grow up together. Rene Girard, in his book Evolution and Conversion (p. 220), quotes Jacques Maritain: "History progresses both in the direction of good and in the direction of evil." On the Philosophy of History, p.43. (Another formulation I heard from Gil Bailie comes from Hans Urs von Balthasar: "History is the progressive intensification of the struggle between good and evil.")
It seems to me it is also a form of Pharisaism ("He consorts with sinners!") to maintain that, since Christianity has not "cleaned the collar" of civilization, but continues to consort with sinners, it should be shunned as worthless and untrue? We should rather say that civilization's collar is always in need of a wash, our own collar included, and that Christianity is God's "washing machine"!
But isn't it likewise Pharisaism for believers to shun the one scandalized into unbelief by Christian sin? We believers try humbly to rely on God's grace (not our own efforts) to up-root us from the soil of sin and re-plant us in the garden of His life. Unbelievers cannot accept this. But as we all struggle against sin and evil, can't we believers confidently pray and hope that God's grace, which rains on all, will work for the good of all in the lives of believers and unbelievers? For God looks beyond labels; he scrutinizes the heart.
(I note the second reading for the 1st Sun of Lent: 1 Peter 3:18-22: "This prefigured baptism, which saves you now. It is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.")
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