RainyAutumnTwilight

dennisnoodles:

Written by my friend John Monaco. I encourage you all to check it out.

Catholic? Protestant? Muslim? Jewish? Hindu? Buddhist? Agnostic? Atheist? Don’t Care? Bored? Lonely? Forever Alone? Read this. It’ll take about 4 minutes of your time, and I promise you, this is written for all of you, no matter who you are, what you believe, and how much you care about religion, or me, for that matter.

“Let your religion be less of a theory, and more of a love affair.” ~G.K. Chesterton

Catholic? Protestant? Muslim? Jewish? Hindu? Buddhist? Agnostic? Atheist? Don’t Care? Bored? Lonely? Forever Alone? Read this. It’ll take about 4 minutes of your time, and I promise you, this is written for all of you, no matter who you are, what you believe, and how much you care about religion, or me, for that matter.

Before you read possibly the GREATEST thing in history (sarcasm, in case your blood pressure rose), I’d like you to sit down, back straight, feet flat on the floor. I hope your hair looks nice and well-kept, and you have a beaming smile on, so you seem happy while reading this. Not a sound should utter from your lips, and your focus should be on me, right now. In other words, “sit down, and shut up.” Isn’t that what religion is all about, anyhow?

Wrong.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, as you might (or might not) be well-aware, a new viral video has emerged on YouTube, a youthful online evangelist is preaching to the Internet, hoping to bring across the message that Jesus does not equal “religion”.  It has attracted over 6 million views and incited hundreds of comments on the true meaning of faith. It has overtaken videos of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber…….AND a grandson and his respective grandmother passionately dancing along to Tyga’s “Rack City” during the past few days. ( For that, let me just say, “Thank God!”)

The issue at hand isn’t so much about who is right, and who is wrong. I place no judgment, whether good or negative on anyone and their beliefs regarding the video. It’s not about whether you agree or disagree with what his popular video says.

The question that all of us should have is, “is this true?”

And also, “based on what we know and heard of Jesus, does this video make sense?”

Let me first start by saying that I agree with this guy on a number of points. For those of us who are Catholic, he reminds us all of a striking truth; that without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, religion is a joke. He speaks the truth that Christ died for our sins, once and for all.

But nevertheless, while he strikes gold on those two statements, he strikes out on the rest of his points. There are two main problems with this video.

1. Jesus would disagree very strongly with this video, based on our faith, tradition, and from what Scripture tells us about Him.

—— and 2. The video just doesn’t make any sense. That is to say, he’s very, very wrong with some excellent video editing, moving background music, a strong emotional appeal, catchy rhyme, and all in relatively well-timed YouTube moment, where in just over 4 minutes, he seems to have built a Christian case against 6,000 years of organized religion, (4,000 for the Jews, 2,000 for the Christians).

Where he seemed to have disproved religion in a matter of 4 minutes, allow me, a simple 19-year old man in love with Jesus to disprove him, and prove one of Jesus’ main points, in just about the same amount of time.

So briefly, let us examine the first problem with this video. First and foremost, Jesus Christ does not “hate” ANYTHING; especially religion. Jesus wasn’t sent by God the Father to abolish religion. He actually was sent to do quite the opposite. Don’t believe me? Ask the Lord Himself, for he literally said the opposite:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17)

What were the Law and the Prophets? Judaism. What is Judaism? A religion. What did Jesus specifically say he was NOT going to abolish? That’s right. A  religion.

Besides the actual words of Christ, one could also look at His actions. Contrary to popular belief, Jesus didn’t ask us specifically to do many things, but the few things he commanded us to do, you probably should consider seriously. One, of course, was to love God with all of our heart, mind, and soul. Then, as almost a fulfilling role to the previous command, we are told to love thy neighbor, as thyself. (Aka, the “Golden Rule”.)

Lastly, one of Jesus’ biggest commands was to “eat my body”, and to “do this in remembrance of me.” Both of which, he asked of us, during the traditional ritual meal, the Passover, of the Last Supper. Yes, Jesus was abiding by the traditions and religious practices of his day, and added upon it for our benefit. Instead of passing over the old traditions, he instituted the Eucharist; His actual Body and Blood in the forms of bread and wine, which he promised would be with us during our time on earth, as his actual holy presence was truly in the bread and wine. The Eucharist comes from the Greek word for “thanksgiving”, and through it, we experience God’s love for us like no other. It is something truly to be thankful for.

The early Church followed this ritual, they obeyed his command to “do this in memory of me.” We know this because Paul says:

“Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16).

We also see the early Church described in Scripture as following ritual, as in Acts 2:42-

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers.” 

Both of those things were done, by the organized Church, as part of a ritual celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ.

Does the mere Christ-follower-religion-hater obey Christ’s command to eat his body and drink his blood, and to do it in memory of Him? The way the video puts it, we don’t need this ritual and tradition, because we can merely just “follow Christ”. How can we even call ourselves “followers of Christ”, when we don’t do one of the very few things he commanded us to do?

It may sound crazy, but Jesus actually FOUNDED a Church! He didn’t merely give us a set of rules to follow, as if Christianity was an early training school for manners and proper behavior. No, the Church is SO much more than that. Why do I want to become a Catholic priest? I would love to bring God to His people, and people to their God. The biggest and most important way a priest can do this is through the sacraments, which are channels of God’s grace, given as gifts to us.

You might say, “Woah there John, before you go all technical on us, isn’t religion man-made?” Not quite. Actually, not at all.

Religion comes from a Latin word meaning “to reconcile”, aka to heal and reconnect our relationship with our Heavenly Creator, God. The only one who can bring us to this reconciliation is God; through His Son, Jesus. That’s why Jesus was sent to earth, to bring us back to His Father. To teach us, love us, and take care of us, to die for our sins, so that heaven would open to us mere mortal humans. It’s such a beautiful thing.

You can’t deny the Church, deny the sacraments, the priesthood, the idea of mass, the idea of ritual, forgiveness, etc. without denying God’s very own commands. He established a priesthood in the Apostles. He gave priests the power to forgive sins in HIS name. He gave us the sacrament of baptism, to baptize people into His Church.

Outside the organized Catholic Church, there are many voices competing, all claiming the Bible as their basis. That’s fine and great, as long as they realize that the Bible was handed down, from all the writings and beliefs, by the Catholic Church, who ended up putting together all of the books of the Bible that were deemed to be “true”. To cling to the Bible as a basis of faith and disregard the Catholic Church as true, is like reading all of the “Harry Potter” novels front to back, and then claiming that J.K. Rowling doesn’t understand the true meaning of Harry Potter.  In the Catholic Church, we have ONE voice, the voice of Christ down through the ages. 

~After his Resurrection, Jesus told his 12 Apostles:

”If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.” (John 20:23)

~He gave men power to make decisions concerning doctrine and Church teachings:

 ”I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 18:18)

(by the way, the whole binding and loosing things stemmed from the ancient Jewish rabbis, who would “bind” a person by excluding them from the religious practices, and when they repented, they would “loose” them back into their temple. Jesus offers us a different method, “binding” and “loosing” refers now to teaching what is right, and what is wrong.)

~ And also, He built this thing, a Church:

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)

By saying that, Jesus founded a spiritual Body, one that would safeguard his teachings through Apostolic succession (meaning going down through tradition) and through Himself, the founder and protector of the Christian Church.

So knowing that Christ so clearly established a Church, with rituals, with priests, and with sacraments, our viral man’s statement “What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?” can only be answered with, “What if He told you you were wrong?”

Okay, so, to summarize the above in one point, it’s this: Jesus would disagree very strongly with this video, based on our faith and from what Scripture tells us about Him. Jesus doesn’t “hate” anything, the very least being the Church HE founded!  

Which brings me to my other major point- This video just doesn’t really make sense. 

The man asks, “If religion is so great, why has it started so many wars?”

Want to know the answer? Well, it hasn’t.

This is often a huge charge against organized religion; from the cynic’s view, it is man-made, corrupt, and presses its beliefs violently against “non-believers”. I get this VERY often, as a guy studying for the priesthood. The question is usually posed as:

“Who are you, a Catholic priest/seminarian, to be making truth claims, when your church has been guilty of so many moral outrages against the human race: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, support of slavery and the clerical sex abuse scandal?”

• I respond by insisting that the existence of bad Catholics does not in itself demonstrate that Catholicism is a bad thing. Therefore, the existence of people who USED religion to exploit and hurt others for their own gain, doesn’t invalidate religion itself.

Consider this:

We have this guy, his name is Albert Einstein. He comes up with his beliefs in physics, especially in atomic science. Suddenly, people start to use his physics in the production of the nuclear weapons that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, aka the atomic bomb. This does not amount to an argument against Einstein. Einstein very well probably said, “What are you doing?! I did NOT intend for this to happen at all! What were you thinking?!”  (And this attitude very well applies to religion. Do you think an all-loving God intended for His Church to abuse its influence and start wars? No.)

• I do not deny the major premise of their argument. But Christians have known always that the church, as St. Paul put it, “holds a treasure in earthen vessels.” In its sacraments, especially the Eucharist, in its essential teachings, in its liturgy and in the lives of its saints, the church participates in the very holiness of God. Meaning that we are a Church full of SINNERS and people with faults, but that does not invalidate the teachings and mean that God “hates” the Church.

While the Holy Spirit leads and protects the Church, man has free will to co-operate with God, and it IS possible that sometimes, certain members of the Church commit crimes. Think of it this way: democracy is a wonderful thing for our country, yes? How many times have people done terrible crimes in the name of democracy, and all the while abusing the very IDEA of democracy by committing those crimes? Does that make democracy wrong and invalid? Absolutely not.

Still with me? Okay, moving on.

The next thing the man in the video says actually made me choke on my Poland Springs water. He says, “Why does [religion] build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?”

 Hold up…………. what?

First of all, religion does NOT fail to feed the poor. What — if you don’t mind me asking — is the number-one most charitable organization in the universe? The Red Cross? Nope. The Secular Humanist Aid and Relief Effort? Hahahahaha, but no. It’s the Roman Catholic Church.

Fun fact:

• Each year, more than 9.5 million people in need receive assistance from 1,400 local Catholic Charities organizations.

• In the past year, Catholic Charities organizations provided food to more than 3.5 million people, temporary shelter to more than 100,000, and clothing to nearly 600,000.

• Altogether, they provided emergency services to nearly six million people and distributed emergency cash assistance of more than $80 million. These statistics do not even include the millions of dollars spent on childcare, counseling, education, health care, pregnancy care and counseling, and job training to ALL, not JUST to Catholics.

Well…. this is awkward.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the man then says “[Religion] tells single Moms God doesn’t love them if they’ve had a divorce.”   

First of all, unless you’re the WestBoro Baptist Church, where they say “God Hates FAGS” and other hateful messages, there is not a single Christian denomination that says that there is any possible way you could get God not to love you. This is a basic premise of Christianity. We are never unloved. We may reject God, but He never, ever, ever rejects us.

So I’ll take his “God doesn’t love…” bit to actually mean religion is against divorce. But there is only one major Christian denomination that is opposed to divorce: The Roman Catholic Church. And it’s true, we have the terrible habit of believing Christ meant what he said:

“They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Mark 10:12)

So yet again, I ask the man in the video, why am I wrong for following Christ in a religion that He founded, while adhering to His requests? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do..? Follow Jesus?

Remember what I wrote at the top of this note? “Let your religion be less of a theory, and more of a love affair.” The view on religion could not be any truer! We need to not just follow a set of rules, but we should be looking to God and the Church as a loving relationship. We were created FOR God, and are on this earth to love and serve the Lord, and one another, so that we may enter heaven and eternal life with Him, and thus be forever happy.

To serve God as loving sons and daughters, we must be like a good son and daughter, by following what Dad says. If Dad tells us to not eat the cookie from the cookie jar, how can we say we follow our Dad’s will if we just go ahead and take it? Granted, if we end up taking the highly desirable cookie from the cookie jar, we can still be forgiven, because our Father is loving and merciful. But the fact of the matter is, he still told us not to do it.

Once again, why believe me, when you can ask Christ Himself?

Before he left his beloved friends and his time on earth in the flesh, he said this simple sentence:

“If you love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

Love of Christ requires obedience to his commands. You cannot have one without the other. So to say, “Okay Jesus, I accept you as my personal Lord and Savior, but that whole thing you said about eating your Body, and praying, and divorce, isn’t very practical for me.”  isn’t very loving of someone to say to God.

So when our popular video star says “The problem with religion is it never gets to the core, it’s just behavior modification like a long list of chores – like let’s dress up the outside, make it look nice and neat.”

These, my friends, aren’t chores. They are commands and requests, given by Jesus and recorded by His Apostles, to help us live a loving and happy life. Religion is meant to LIBERATE the soul, so that an individual can see his or her beauty, as a child of God!

Religion provides no set of rules, just teachings by Christ. You accept what you accept, but remember, these are not arbitrary rules written in a Bible. They are the very words of our Lord, Jesus Christ, as instructions on how to live a life that He desires. You don’t have to follow them; no one is forcing you.

But how can you call yourself a “Christian”, meaning “little Christ”, when you disregard the things He asks of us?

Our main man then clarifies — He loves the Bible. This is interesting. Did Christ hand out Bibles before he ascended into Heaven? No. The Bible is the product of a religion. And this religion is known as Roman Catholicism.

The Bible is a collection of a bunch of writings that were written over thousands of years in different contexts, for different purposes, to different people, in different languages, across different cultures. And some how they all ended up together in one book. Kind of daunting thinking that we can just pull quotes out of context and formulate a coherent unified faith, huh? It’s no surprise then, that many people get confused and then disagree with each other over little, or big parts of Scripture.

We’ve established that Jesus did not define and put together the Bible. In fact, the entirety of the New Testament was not even finished being written until at least 50-60 years after Jesus died (so the first Christians were certainly not “bible-only” Christians). 

So what did they have? What did Jesus found?

He founded a Church. Sound familiar?  And it is the Church that is the “pillar and bulwark” of the Truth (1 Tim 3:15).

Pop Quiz! When Scripture instructs us (Matthew 18:17) that when Christians cannot resolve something among us, what exactly is our last resort?:

 

A. Consult the bible?

B. Vote on it and decide democratically?

C. Just agree to disagree?

D. None of the above

The answer is D. Instead, scripture says to take it to The Church. But this Church must be visible, defined, and structured. Otherwise, we could not take such issues to The Church for clarification as Christians. In fact, taking an issue to the numerous “churches” available today, would simply lead to further confusion and disagreement.

• Through historical evidence and reason we can also come to know that God Himself established a Church and gave Peter (the first Pope) the keys of the kingdom and the power to bind and loose (Matthew 16:19) and gave its leaders the power to forgive sins (John 20:22-23) and to teach in His name.

• It is also undisputed, historical fact that the Catholic Church set and confirmed the New Testament Canon throughout history and definitively at the end of the 4th century. Meaning, the Catholic Church is the one who put together this Bible, and separated what was believed to be “divinely inspired”, and what wasn’t.

So to say you love the Bible, and yet hate religion, is like saying you love the steak you just ate, but you hate meat. It’s part of a whole, and vice versa.

The man in the video then asks, “If Jesus came to your church, would they let him in?”

Considering it was Jesus who said,

“When two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20)

and also, our friend Jesus also might just have said this,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:53-54).

Where do we receive His Body and Blood? The mass, where the sacrament of the Eucharist is. We’re honoring Jesus’ command and trusting in that promise every time we go to Mass.

We gather in two or more each Sunday at mass to pray the greatest prayer there is, the Celebration of the Eucharist. So to ask the question, “If Jesus came to your church, would they let him in?” is kinda a silly question to ask, considering Jesus is with us always, every time we go to church.

Our friend, towards the end of the video, states “Because I believe that when Jesus said ‘It is Finished’, he meant it.”

 

When Jesus said it is finished he died, and yes, without a doubt, his sacrifice was found acceptable to God. It truly is finished — nothing can take away the fact that we have been redeemed. But, we can choose to reject this redemption.

That’s why after the Resurrection, Christ appeared to Peter — upon whom he had said he would build His Church — and told him “feed my lambs.” Christ knew we would need instruction, guidance and example. Jesus established a Church to proclaim to the end’s of the earth that “It is Finished.”

As Jesus said “It is finished”, so will I say, this note is done.  

Through Scripture, sacred tradition, and the actual words of Jesus Himself, it is clear to all who are listening, that God is not calling us to “hate” anything, especially religion. Especially a religion which He founded. For if we hate religion, our road to God is lonely. Using a Bible won’t necessarily help, unless you acknowledge that the religion you “hate” compiled it.

Props to the guy for examining his faith, and for not taking the Church’s word for how to be of what to think, but still, there remains numerous flaws in his logic.

I could go on in this regard, picking the poem apart, but you get the idea. This is the voice of a man, sadly feeling trapped of a religious system that clearly he feels added to the problem rather than guiding him to liberation. I totally get that. Millions of us have been there.

But some of us, myself included, choose to work with what God gave us, the Church, and make it more of what we believe it should be.

It’s so easy to throw stones at organized religion, pointing at its flaws. But it takes some serious courage to take the stone you are ready to throw, place it in a broken spot where it needs to be, and work with millions of others to build a better world and society, to help heal those wounded and hurt. For religion doesn’t cause harm, but certain people who misinterpret it do.

And I believe, with my whole heart, that God desires the entire world, whether you are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, or even an Atheist, to become united, as he even said:

“I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you.” (John 17:21)

Ultimately, religion is here to guide us along our path to God and holiness.

To love Jesus and hate religion is equivalent to calling upon a doctor and smashing all his instruments when he arrives.

And to say Jesus hates religion, let alone ANYTHING, just goes to show that perhaps the Jesus you claim to love, isn’t the same Jesus that was born in a manger surrounded by a loving Mother and father, taught a Gospel of peace and love, died freely for our sins, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, who with the Holy Spirit, loves us, and all of Creation, very, very much.

Thank you so much for taking the time and having the patience to read this. May God enfold you with His happiness and joy, and be assured of the fact that our happy and kind God, does not hate anything. He is a God of love, who IS Love (1 John 4:8)

-John Monaco

 

1 John 4:8

 

The Holy Eucharist, instituted by Jesus, given to the Church for us as a gift. When we receive God’s Body and Blood, the greatest gift mankind could ever have.