SEEDS OF THE WORD

We live in a time where: 

 

• Some people resort to steroids to cheat their way to an earthly pedestal. In A-Rod’s case, he didn’t start using steroids to get into the major leagues; he started using them to maintain his reputation as one of the greatest when he allowed social pressure to get the best of him.

 

• There’s a “hookup culture”, and some people (who aren’t even religious) get married in Churches but don’t fully appreciate the matrimonial sacrament.

 

• Pro-choice advocates view fetuses as lumps of cells that have not yet undergone the magical transformation of traveling down the birth canal, but were at least outraged when Sycloria Williams’s newborn (who was born prematurely during a delay in the abortion procedure) was disposed of in a dumpster by medical staff in 2006. Sycloria Wlliams pressed charges against Dr. Renelique (since she had changed her mind as soon as she looked into the face of her newborn), but it’s puzzling how she’s pressing charges for carrying out what she scheduled an appointment for.

 

• Some people get abortions based on gender (leading to a disproportionate population in China).

 

• Some people get abortion “reductions” to get rid of 1 of 2 twins or 2 of 3 triplets (whether to save money, etc.)... but how do they tell the survivor that their sibling(s) were murdered?

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What does growth through freedom and guidance look like?

 

“A good piano instructor lays out a plan for her changes. In the course of many years, she takes them through a whole series of exercises and practice sessions. She introduces them to relatively simple pieces of music and then, gradually, to Chopin, Mozart, and Beethoven. She invites them to play ragtime and boogie-woogie. She might finally demonstrate the process of composition and encourage them to write their own music. All this time, she is awakening and informing their freedom, pointing it toward the good, giving it purpose. Her ultimate goal -- again, if she is a good teacher -- is to establish perfect liberty in her students, that is to say, the capacity to play whatever they want. It’s not The Plan vs freedom; it’s The Plan undergirding freedom. God, whose glory is that we be fully alive, is something like the piano teacher” (31).

 

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The movie Eat, Pray, Love shows a slightly-misguided spiritual adventure. 

 

Julia Roberts takes a year off to explore the meaning of life. But even though it was great that she went sight-seeing, it’s a shame that she didn’t stop in any Church to actually worship.

 

“There is a cute scene of Liz sitting on a bench next to a couple of nuns licking ice cream cones, but it never occurs to our spiritual seeker to wonder about the spiritual path those habited women had found. // If she had followed a Christian path, it would have led her to a very different conclusion than ‘God is in me, as me.’ // …I very much admired Liz’s honest prayer, and I respected her willingness to go on a spiritual journey. U just wish she had asked one of those nuns for advice!” (22).

 

Notes from the movie (after I watched part of it):

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• When Julia Roberts asked her best friend how she knew she was ready to have a kid, this was her reply: “Having a kid is like getting a face tattoo: You’ve got to be fully committed.”

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• Julia Roberts mentions a fable where every day for a year, a poor man begged a statue of a great Saint for help in winning the lottery. One day, the exasperated statue comes to life and tells the poor man to buy a ticket (since he has to put in work for a chance to win). Similarly, Julia is putting in 3 “tickets” for chances to change her life (i.e., 3 different trips to constitute one year of a spiritual retreat).

 

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The Hunger Games and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” exhibit a sacrificial victim (like Jesus). In these cases, being chosen/ winning the lottery is NOT fun for the victim.

 

In the Nazi’s case, they chose their victims (the Jews) as a means for scapegoating. They blamed the jews for impurity in the human race and sacrificed them (against the Jews’ will) for “the greater good”.

 

In Jesus’s case, his sacrifice was truly necessary for our redemption. He willingly “volunteered as tribute”, and instead of blaming Him for any hardships we face in life, we should ask for His help.

 

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Jesus is relatable because He is normal like us but just with extra gifts

 

Like Superheroes, these gifts should be used for the good of mankind (and not to settle old scores for selfish reasons).

 

“I can’t help but hear an echo of the ancient Christological doctrine in the latest films featuring Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man. All three of these superheroes are hybrids -- combinations of the extraordinary and the ordinary. In all three cases we have someone who, in his lowliness, is able completely to identify and sympathize with our suffering and, in his transcendence, is able to do something about it” (53).

 

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The Shack has heresies, but it is still a powerful story of hardship and forgiveness.

 

“Would I recommend The Shack? Yes, absolutely, especially to those who have suffered a great loss. But, if I can borrow a metaphor, reading it is a bit like eating a watermelon: lots of good sweet stuff to eat, but you’ve got to spit out a few seeds!” (104).

 

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Like Simon Cowell and Judge Judy, we shouldn’t be afraid to stick to telling the truth if it’ll ultimately be good for someone (even if people aren’t initially happy to hear harsh words).

 

“Perhaps we might consider all of the judges whom we obviously love to watch to be minor icons of the Judge in whose light we ought to live” (198).

 

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We should realize that the sex-abuse scandal isn’t a Catholic-specific problem and that it shouldn’t undermine the goodness of what the Church stands for.

 

“To watch the television networks or read the newspapers, one would think that the sexual abuse of children is a uniquely Catholic problem, one indeed facilitated by a wicked cabal of priestly and episcopal conspirators. There are some in the mainstream culture who are unhappy with many of the positions the Catholic Church has taken on sexual issues, especially abortion, and who would like to marginalize the Church’s voice or eliminate it entirely from the public conversation. Biblically minded people should not find this the least bit surprising” (201).

 

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Science does NOT contradict faith.

 

“May I mention just a handful of the literally thousands of Catholic clerics who have made significant contributions to the sciences? Do you know about Fr. Jean Picard, a priest of the seventeenth century, who was the first person to determine the size of the earth to a reasonable degree of accuracy? Do you know about Fr. Giovanni Battista Ricciolo, a seventeenth-century Jesuit astronomer and the first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a free-falling body? Do you know about Fr. George Searle, a Paulist priest of the early twentieth century who discovered six galaxies> Do you know about Fr. Benedetto Castelli, a Benedictine monk and scientist of the sixteenth century who was a very good friend and supporter of Galileo? Do you know about Fr. Francesco Grimaldi, a Jesuit priest who discovered the diffraction of light? Do you know about Fr. George Coyne, a contemporary Jesuit priest and astrophysicist who for many years ran the Vatican Observatory outside of Tuscon? Perhaps you know about Fr. Gregor Mendel, the Augustinian monk who virtually invented modern genetics, and about Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, a twentieth-century Jesuit priest who wrote extensively on paleontology, and about Fr. George Lemaitre, the formulator of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins? Or Jesuit brother and Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno who, in 2014, became the first clergyman to be awarded the prestigious Carl Sagan Medal ‘for outstanding communication by an active planetary scientist to the general public’? // Can we please, once and for all, dispense with the nonsense that Catholicism is the enemy of the sciences? When we do, we’ll expose the Seth MacFarlane telling of the story for what it really is: not scientific history but the basest sort of anti-Catholic propaganda” (264).

 

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We should remember to read the Bible in the context of the culture back then.

 

“There are lots of things that are indeed in the pages of the Scriptures but that are not essential to the overarching message of the Scriptures. They are things that were in the cultural milieu of the human authors but that are not ingredient in the revelation that God intends to offer. A good example of this would be the references to slavery that Maher cited. The institution of slavery was taken for granted in most ancient cultures, and therefore it is not surprising that biblical authors would refer to it or even praise it, but attention to the great patterns and trajectories of the Bible as a whole reveals that the justification of slavery is not something that ‘the Bible teaches,’ which is precisely why the fight against slavery in the Western culture was led by people deeply shaped by the Scriptures” (267).