A SMIDGEN OF RELIGION
Sometimes we think we know better than the rules and that certain rules don’t pertain to us.
When Father Mike got his driver’s license, his dad warned him not to let the gas get below a quarter tank. Father Mike thought that this rule was so that he wouldn’t end up stranded in the middle of nowhere (and so that his dad wouldn’t have to pick him up). He also thought that this rule only pertained to people who weren’t good at gauging how long a car could run on fumes. Since this obviously didn’t pertain to Father Mike, he regularly drove his car until the tank was empty. Years later, while Father Mike was driving through rural Iowa to get to a wedding, his engine started behaving oddly. A mechanic told him that the fuel pump stopped working, which could be due to regularly letting the gas get below a quarter tank (since then the fuel pump has to work extra hard).
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“I realized that my dad’s advice was not for his peace of mind or my peace of mind. It wasn’t arbitrary. My dad’s advice was completely in line with the nature of the car — my dad was telling me something about my car that I didn’t know…. He gave me this rule because this is how cars are made. When we look at the commandments of God, I think that sometimes we struggle because we do not know the reason God is saying, ‘Don’t do this. Always do that.’ We look at the commandments and say, ‘How in the world could doing that be wrong?’ Or ‘That doesn’t make any sense to me.’ Or ‘How could that possibly be a sin? It doesn’t hurt anyone.’ Even more tricky, we might say, ‘I can see how that rule would be true for someone else, but in my case it doesn’t apply.’ …But there is a reason for the commandments, God is the designer and maker of this world. God is the designer and maker of humanity, so he knows how human beings ought to live so we can flourish” (27-28).
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Why do we thank God when good things happen if we can’t blame him when bad things happen?
“We would say the sun is the source of light and heat, but the sun is not also the source of darkness. The sun is not also the source of cold. In fact, we recognize that we only experience darkness and cold when something gets in the way of the light and the heat from the sun. …In a similar way, goodness, love, joy, peace, and life come from God. God is not the source of evil. God is not the source of suffering. God is not the source of hatred or death. …We could say that, in some ways, blindness is not a thing itself — it’s the absence of a good thing, sight. We could say that paralysis is not a thing in and of itself — it’s the absence of a good thing, mobility. Even more clearly, evil is not a thing in itself — it is the absence of goodness or the distortion of a good thing” (29-30).
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Every sin has consequences, even if they’re not immediately apparent or the consequences we thought they would be.
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Father Mike’s friend from seminary, Mark, got into a car accident when he was a teenager. It was winter and he drove the car into a ditch.
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“When the car came to a stop, Mark immediately unbuckled the seatbelt, threw open the door, and sprinted away from his car. Anyone looking at him would have said, ‘What in the world is this guy doing?’ But every car accident Mark had ever seen up to that point ended with the car exploding. Of course, every accident Mark had ever seen had been in a TV show or movie. He naturally assumed that car accidents automatically meant car explosions. So he ran away, thinking the car would explode. When the car didn’t explode, Mark thought, ‘Oh, I guess cars don’t explode.’ He figured that nothing was wrong, that it had all been overhyped. When he got out of the ditch and drove back home, he noticed the car was shaking more and more vigorously the faster he drove. But since the car didn’t explode and it still drove, he assumed that everything was fine — until he got home and his older brother pointed out that a portion of one of the wheels was broken. Driving on it had wrecked the rest of the axle, ultimately destroying the car almost as thoroughly as an explosion would have — without the exciting fireball. Eve says that God told Adam and her that if they ate of the tree of knowledge they would die. But she and Adam eat the fruit, and nothing seems to happen. She takes a bite; she’s fine. She hands it to Adam, he takes a bite, and he doesn’t drop dead immediately. We could be led to believe that maybe God was just trying to scare them into obedience by threatening them with certain death. But that would be like my friend Mark thinking that the only way a car gets broken is if it explodes immediately. Often we look at the seemingly limited consequences of sin. We claim that since no one is getting hurt, it can’t be that big of a deal. Yet we forget two important things: Every sin hurts us, but it might not hurt us in the way we imagined it would. It doesn’t always cause an immediate explosion” (33-34).
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We shouldn’t just look at Christianity as a way to avoid doing bad things.
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“Sin can be accurately described as missing the mark. In fact, in the Scriptures, the term that is used when an archer misses the target is the same word that is used for sin. God has made us in a certain way, and to oppose his plan is to miss the point of the life God has given us. ‘Missing the mark’ is a useful way to think about sin, but sometimes it can be misleading. Why? It can lead us to think of being Christian as merely the attempt not to break a rule. We might think that the people who live the best and are the models for us are the ones who simply break the least number of rules. They don’t miss the target. If you follow sports at all, you know there is a lot of debate over who is the best player ever to play basketball in the NBA. People say that Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time. Or they say that Lebron James or Kobe Bryant or Scottie Pippen is the greatest of all time. In the midst of their arguments about these players, people will compare stats. What player had the most assists, what player had the most points scored or rebounds or defensive plays? But one of the stats that is never brought up in a debate about who is the greatest player of all time is who had the least number of fouls. That’s curious, isn’t it? We will compare who had the most three-pointers but not who had the least number of double-dribble fouls. We will compare who had the greatest scoring percentage from the free-throw line but not who traveled the least. This is because we realize that avoiding fouls is not what makes a great basketball player. The goal is not simply to avoid breaking the rules — the goal is to play the game excellently. Of course, part of playing the game well is playing according to the rules, but that is merely the baseline for excellence” (38-39).
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Large sins often don’t happen as a result of one big out-of-the-blue action, but rather a series of actions. It’s harder to say “no” when we place ourselves in positions where we are already opening the door to feeding the desires of the flesh.
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For example, consider how King David went from a man of integrity to an adulterer and murderer.
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King David first made the decision to stay home from battle.
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Then King David made the decision to be leisurely walking on the palace rooftop (instead of working on plans or meeting with people to still be productive).
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Then King David made the decision to continue to stare at Bathsheba after he first spotted her.
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Then King David made the decision to have his servants bring Bathsheba over to his palace.
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Then King David made the decision to lay with her.
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Then King David, upon hearing that Bathsheba was pregnant, made the decision to bring Uriah back and get him drunk so that he would lay with her.
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Then King David, when the last plan failed, still made the decision to not admit the truth or take responsibility. He made the decision to put Uriah on the frontlines of battle so that he would be killed.
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Unless you’re a sociopath or psychopath, you have a conscience that tells you to feel guilty when you do something bad.
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Feeling guilty isn’t a bad thing in itself because it lets you know when you’re off-track (so that you can get back on-track).
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“People with chronic analgesia are unable to feel pain. That might sound like a good thing at first, but imagine not feeling pain when you’ve broken your leg or burned your hand. The pain may be awful, but it actually prevents further harm — you don’t try to stand on the broken leg; you take your hand out of the fire. In a similar way, guilt is the healthy response to sin. Guilt is the sign that tells us, ‘Wait. Something is wrong. I need to change my course’” (70-71).
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What was the love of the father like when the prodigal son returned?
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“The 2018 Christmas commercial by the French company Bouygues Telecom conveys the joy in a father’s gaze on his son, which helps us visualize this love. Directed by Martin Werner, the commercial begins with a dad doing a silly dance for his toddler as he gazes on the boy with delight. As the commercial progresses and the son gets older, the father keeps dancing for him and making him smile. Eventually the father’s dance embarrasses his teenage son, and the young man refuses to meet his father’s eyes. But the dance — and his father’s loving gaze — do not change. Finally, as an adult and a new father himself, the son surprises his father one night with an unexpected call, and this time both of them dance with delight. The unchanging love in the father’s gaze gives us an image of the love that the prodigal’s father had for him” (106).
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Don’t be too vague in confession but don’t be too specific.
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“You don’t have to go into the entire story of how you and Jill were best friends ever since fourth grade except for that one time you were in sixth grade you didn’t really get along because she was into sports and you were into music, and then when you were in tenth grade you overcame all that, and now … You can just say, ‘I have a best friend, and I gossiped behind her back.’ That’s it. It can be simple; just name it. Now, it is important to tell all relevant details that affect the weight of sin. I have a priest friend, Father Gabriel, who is from Kenya. He always says, ‘Do not confess that you have stolen a rope and neglect to mention that there was a cow attached to the rope,’ because the cow changes things. If you were to confess, ‘Father, I hit someone,’ that’s one thing, but saying, ‘Father, I hit my mom,’ that changes things. ‘Father, I hit my mom with the car’ — OK, that changes things. ‘Father, I hit my mom with the car three times and on purpose’ — all those details are relevant details” (117).
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Why do penance? (and as soon as possible)?
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“Say you have an injury to your knee. No amount of therapy, no amount of exercise, no amount of strength can heal a torn ligament, because the damage is inside. A surgeon has to open up your knee and operate internally to repair the ligament. It doesn’t just grow back. The surgery is like what Jesus does in confession. He heals something that was irreparably broken. But if you have ever had surgery, you know that you don’t get your knee operated on and then immediately go for a run the next day — you have to do physical therapy. Why? Because even though the wound is healed, there are consequences of the wound. That is where our penances come in. Confession is like going to surgery, and the penance is like going to physical therapy” (123-124).
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Priests usually don’t remember both someone’s sins AND who confessed them.
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If he does, it’s a reminder for him to pray for X about X, and he is bound to the seal of confession (or else he’s excommunicated). Priests also aren’t “intrigued” by getting the dirt on people (because in reality, sin is just boring garbage).
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“Priests are God’s garbage men. Think about this. When was the last time you ever saw a garbage collector opening a garbage can and saying, ‘Gosh, look at this! Everyone come over here! Do you see this banana peel? This is the most disgusting banana peel I’ve ever seen!’ No — it’s just garbage, and it just gets thrown in the trash. Garbage collectors do not go home at night and think, ‘What did I go through in the garbage today?’ Why? Because when you get used to dealing with it, you think, ‘I’m just going to get this out of here. I’m not intrigued by it at all.’ It is just garbage” (149).