Do we need God's help?
"It's the constitution, not the Bible." "It's a country, not a church." These statements assume that we would be better off that way and they might site history to "prove" it. However "the Christian I deal has not been tried and found wanting, but found difficult and [hardly tried]." Many pass by the John 15 parable of the vine and fail to realize that Jesus is using an absolute universal as He says, “apart from me you can do nothing”(John 15:5 RSVCE). This is the annoyance of vicious men (since there is no escaping reality) and the joy of saints (it's what we depend on), truly there is nothing that we have God has not given us. Even our actions bear witness to their Source, “O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for indeed, all that we have done, you have done for us.” (Isaiah 26:12)
Man, without grace, cannot sufficiently be described as lost and deprived of life. Man’s calling, to be adopted children of God (become divinized), is wholly unattainable apart from grace. Since we are sustained in being by the love and thought (which are unequivocally one) of God, we exist by many graces/gifts, “… for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45 _RSVCE_) Man could not be more fundamentally in need of God and his assistance, as Thomas and Augustine consider even man’s thoughts require God.[1] Before the fall, man could only maintain life with God through God’s grace. This grace being at its height in man’s life because of man’s receptibility was brought through God’s own Spirit. At the moment of the fall, man traded this divine life/grace for sin and death. Man, at that moment, had lost all grace barring his existence and sorrow for his sins.[2] After the fall, man is all the more desperate in need of God’s love and grace. Not only had man forfeited God’s grace, but had also damaged himself, making him unreceptive to God’s love and grace.[3] God’s work of salvation starts with a movement toward conversion. Once man recognizes, even in a modicum of repentance, what he has done against God, others, and himself, he has experienced some of the healing which God wishes to impart.[4] This healing of the faculties is abundantly necessary for the divine life (in the form of grace) is built on humanity.[5] If humanity is broken, then grace has little to build upon. Therefore, to experience sin or its effects is to need healing. Likewise, it is man’s part to recognize this need, to accept healing wherever he can, to receive all graces God offers, and to “do whatever He tells you”(John 2:5), because God does not save man without man.[6]
In conclusion, as one reflects on the birth of our Lord, we realize our needs when God goes so far as to not only make One among His Trinity incarnate as a man but also destined Him for the most gruesome torturous death. None of this would be necessary if we did not need salvation. With respect to this alone we could hardly be in more need of God's help, however, our need is preceded by one even more fundamental. Our existence and the existence of everything we need to keep existing well God hardly ceases to give. How is it that we think a world without God is a good one? If freedom from religion is what we want, then what truth do we disparage/assume without merit and which shall we keep? Since God exists, either all truth is religious or no truth is religious depending on your definition of "religious truth" because truth by nature is just true.
FN:
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I-II q. 109 a. 1 at New Advent, www.newadvent.org.
- ST, I-II q. 109 a. 2.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 1459, 1740, 1849, 1999.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2022.
- Cf. ST, I-II q. 109 a. 1.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2022.
