Responsibility of belief
What do you believe? Would you know how to answer if I asked you a question about this or that aspect of your understanding of reality and its implications? If you did, would you be able to make it simple and say it with conviction? If the above questions made you somewhat uncomfortable, it would seem you have some investigation before you. The reality is most people in the West don’t have many strong convictions about what is true except murder is wrong and the dishes should be scraped before being put in the dishwasher. They can answer how to clean their house and how to do it, but when it comes to why one should go to church on Sunday, they just shrug their shoulders and say something like, “Gotta stay churched”. Atheists live what they believe, they know why they think they are right, and they will happily throw out what they perceive to be outside the bounds of what can be felt right without religion. Are Christians as diligent about what is true? Sadly, I think the closest thing to correct is no. Is that how it should be? It seems to me, it should not be. "What can we do about it", you may ask. Well, if you are reading this post, you have already begun. Skepticism as a philosophy or life-organizing principle is not Christian since it is willful and not so reasonable. A healthy sense of “I actually don’t know why I think that is true, let me find out why” is what I mean by “healthy skepticism”. I would say it is the reasonable obligation of every believer of anything, to be able to think critically about how they think about a given issue. This does not have to mean that one should try to rewrite a series to the fundamental questions, but simply that one should seek to better understand what one already believes, and if done right the best arguments should be found and entertained for one’s current beliefs and they should be constantly challenged by other beliefs.
First, as we have previously discussed concerning evangelization, especially regarding the New Evangelization, it is our task not only to know what we believe for our sake, but also for our call to share it. As we also discussed previously, our call to spread the faith is synonymous with the call to love, especially in the objective sense which emphasizes the actual extrinsic good of the other. Neither partaking in the New Evangelization nor willing to the extrinsic good of the other is possible without knowledge of the faith. It seems to me intrinsic to actually understanding the Catholic faith anyway that the more you know the more you love. Knowing your faith, thus has real and lasting extrinsic value, but almost more importantly, even when it comes to acting as though what you say you believe is true which the Church understands as an intrinsic part to faith (ad contra Faith vs Work dichotomy).[1]
Second, what about intrinsic value? It seems this is actually a more relevant consideration to the individual, by its nature. Excluding talk of salvation, what does one have to gain from knowing their faith well or as it were what the Church teaches and what God has revealed? [2] What God has revealed to and through His Church, is a plan of salvation from all our problems. There will be bumps along the way, and no one truly understands the Christian life apart from the Cross of Christ and the fallen but redeemed nature of His followers. However, one MUST not experience this tendency, without understanding that love makes us capable and brings value to all things. Indeed, He who is love itself abides in us and with us whenever trials are brought upon us (John 15). All this is to say that life accrues a stable objective meaning informed by love, ad contra the Atheistic narrative of meaningless chance and subjective meaning. (This is not to say the tenets of faith ought to be believed? only because of this desirable outcome but it is well worth giving it a generous chance.) Living the Christian life brings the greatest possible intrinsic value to one's life and remains worth it in even the worst trials. How much more is it intrinsically valuable to know and understand, with your mind as well as your heart? Indeed, the faith is the "one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it"(Matthew 13:45-46). Concerning whatever Paul may have boasted in before his conversion to Christianity, He says, "whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ" (Philippians 3:7-8). These verses from Luke 14 are a great opportunity to reflect on this:
The Cost of Discipleship
Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
About Salt
“Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”
In conclusion, you cannot love what you do not know, let alone defend it. Knowing our faith well is an intrinsic call, naturally fundamental to the call to love and defend the faith, as well as to an interior disposition necessary to truly live the Christian life. It is, moreover, a logical point to be made that if you conclude something has truth value you are obliged to have seen why it is true. If we do not understand our faith, how can we know why it is worth believing especially when things get difficult or at least inconvenient, we should persevere in living it? It seems we should consider ourselves called to either give it up entirely or to live it in the fullest sense (Matthew 5:37). If it is as lovable as the saints (who lived it to the full) witness to in their lives and deaths, then who are we to say it is not worth it without actually living it or even knowing it in the one sense it is shown to be worth it? There is only one thing that makes anything worth believing, worth proclaiming is the truth unto death, there is only one thing capable of supplying the heroic fortitude it takes to live ad contra of culture, that dear friends are the Love of God. If it does not make you live as though nothing else matters, I would, regretfully and still eagerly and hopefully, tell that person, they have not yet experienced God's love sufficiently.
FN:
- CCC 150: "Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature"
- Including talk of salvation: "This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man 'takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.' In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits."
Written by Carter Carruthers & also available soon at Missio Dei
