I know young people are searching for answers to life’s questions. It pains me to see some of them “finding” answers in all the wrong places.
Tonight I had a long conversation with some young people who seem to be involved in Wicca. Some were Catholic before but say they have left the faith while others were never Christian, floating in between Buddhism and other religions.
They seem like they are in the beginning stages of learning about it themselves and I am worried about them very much. Talking to them tonight, asking them a lot of questions about what they believed, actually provided them with a chance to ask a lot of questions about Christianity and Jesus, they want to know the truth, they hunger for it, but right now I can tell they are so confused.
Saint Dominic Savio, Pray For Us!
Jesus thirsts for these young people. I would ask for prayers for these young people and also for any advise you might be able to offer. I am going to commend them to St. Dominic Savio who was a great young person who at the Salesian Oratory (youth center) very easily lead many other of his peers to live holy and happy lives.
This is the real deal. This is youth ministry. This is why I am a Salesian.
God please work through me and the others here to help them see your love and the truth.
Lord, give me souls, and take away the rest.
The way I see it…once you’ve seen what a wealth of religions there are and that they have about 70% of their “DNA” in common, it becomes harder (and, frankly spoken, makes less and less sense) to say: THIS is the ONLY one that is true, and the rest is imaginations, hallucinations and politics.
I do think that there is something THERE bigger than human comprehension – a divine energy, if you will, and religions are just ways to interpret that huge entity that is so beyond our comprehension. That much you can say – but the rest is what people individually believe. The experience of god is as valid for a Christian as for a Hindu, because it is based on this person’s individual faith. That divine energy and individual faith are the backbone (and a vital aspect of what it means to be human) – the rest is stories.
I respect Christians as I respect God-seekers anywhere – but I believe that they, as everybody else, are on a journey that may differ from other people’s and leads to the same center of the universe, the Godhead.
Koko your response is one I hear often from young people that I encounter. If I understand you correctly you are saying that basically all religions are based on the same principle (this God Being) and that what one believes is merely his or her human interpretation of this God Being.
I have to respectfully disagree. Whereas other religions may believe in God or some form of a God and have a series of beliefs to follow, Christianity’s foundation is based solely and entirely on one person, on Jesus Christ the Son of God.
Any reasonable person who does any research on the first century will be able to tell you that Jesus of Nazareth existed and was crucified, this is not up for debate. What is debated however, is who was this Jesus.
The argument from C.S. Lewis I believe is that Jesus was one of three things. Either He was a Liar, because He said He was God when He really wasn’t, or He was a Lunatic because He thought He was God when He really wasn’t, or He is Lord, He is actually everything He said He was.
Obviously Christians believe the third option that Jesus is Lord. A common misconception of some young people is that they believe Jesus was merely a nice guy who came to Earth to share some insight into God, but if this were true, they would not have crucified Him. He was crucified for one reason only, His claim that He is the Son of God.
I would say however, that many religions share commonalities, and that some religions may even share in a part of the truth. However in the end, they fail to grasp the whole truth, the fullness of truth, the revelation of Jesus and His Church that He established almost 2,000 years ago.
I also must make clear that Catholic teaching does not condemn all believers of other religions to Hell (a common misconception) but instead it teaches that:
“those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.”
And in light of this it also states that:
“The Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.”
I hope this is of some help in clarifying things and I will include you in my prayers as you journey with God Koko.
God Bless! Sean
Hello Sean,
thanks for taking time to writing a response to my posting. I do appreciate it, although I suppose we will have to agree to disagree.
For me a religion that is based on a founder (Jesus for Christianity, as well as Buddha for Buddhism, Mohammed for Islam and so on) is not necessarily “more true” than a religion whose founder isn’t known. The fact that Jesus existed (which is a historical fact) is not proof that he was indeed the son of God, such as the fact that Joan of Arc existed and was burned at the stake does not prove that the voices she heard were real. Jesus called himself the Son of God (and aren’t we all supposed to be the beloved children of God?) just as Joan of Arc said that her voices were the angels’ voices who told her to liberate France. This does not constitute proof. We can choose to believe it or we can choose not to believe it.
That Jesus was crucified does not serve as proof that he indeed was the Son of God either. Lots of people were crucified by the Romans for various offences. Somebody who said he was the Son of God (for whatever reason) threatened the civil order and, I guess, the theological establishment of his time. If you ran around saying today that you are the Son of God there’d be a good chance for you to land in a psychiatric clinic. If you did then, there was a good chance for you to get persecuted by the Romans. In both cases, we would still not know if the person truly was the Son (or Daughter) of God. We would only know how society reacts to people who claim such a thing.
Since the existence of God or the divine nature/inspiration of any founder of any religion cannot be known or proved, what seems to be the decisive factor is a person’s individual religious/spiritual experience. This must be respected. I believe we all want, as a priest I know once put it, go Home and arrive Home safely. We ought to be allowed and encouraged to find our own way Home. Churches and religions can help us to do so because they are experienced God-seekers. But in my opinion they ought to be honest enough to say that they have faith – but not rational, scientific proof, hence, not the one and only “Truth”. (Relativism rears its ugly head here, as Benedict XVI. would be sure to say.
)And that there may be other ways that lead Home (as the Catholic Church seems to be saying now, good step in the right direction).
Oh well. A tangled web, religions. I do believe one thing, that seeking God makes us better as people because it means that we look beyond our own little selves and our own little everyday lives. I am glad for you that you have found what you were seeking.
Thank you for your prayers. Religious bystander that I am, I will keep you in my thoughts, too.
Koko
Koko I had to laugh when reading your post because although in the beginning you wrote we will have to agree to disagree, I actually do agree with much of what you say!
I guess instead of trying to respond to everyone of your points I’ll try to lump them together, if I am mistaken in my “lumping” or if I confuse things please forgive me and I’m sure you’ll allow me to take another shot at it!
Ok so here we go…
I agree that none of these examples prove that Jesus is God. The only way that Jesus can be accepted as Lord and Savior is through the gift and virtue of faith, not through any reasonable argument.
Catholics believe that God gives this gift of faith to all who ask for it. But it is still a leap of faith, Christ can be known through reason, but to accept Him as God can only be known through faith. That is why the Church always strives to bring both faith and reason together because they are closely linked. In the end you cannot force someone to believe, just as you cannot force someone to love. To have faith, hope or love are all opportunities to take a risk and believe in something greater than yourself.
Also Catholics believe in objective truth, I believe you know this already, but I’ll state it here for other readers anyway, that there are some truths that are true no matter what. Even though others may deny belief in some truths and say well that’s what “you believe” or that is just “your opinion” we would disagree, the existence of God, Jesus being God’s Son are some of these truths.
This is where the problem with relativism comes in that you spoke about. I think that Pope Benedict XVI is very wise for calling for dialogue with other religious faiths because of this very issue. Through dialogue we can find some of the truths that are not subjective and in agreeing on them we now have a starting point with which to approach reality, without this starting point everything would eventually fall back on “well that’s what you believe and this is what I believe” and everything would remain in this “relative roller coaster of fun” where we never get anywhere and certainly never grow closer to God who calls us to Him.
Also I just to throw this in there – you are ABSOLUTELY right that we are all sons and daughters of God
So I hope this helps a little!
Sean,
I have run into this issue myself, as have some of the teens here. In particular there is one young man at Guyer HS who comes to our prayer meetings every Tuesday morning. From what I understand, his parents are Christian, but he is a self-proclaimed agnostic (or perhaps atheist).
We have had similar conversations to this one about how we know what TRUTH is. I hope that there is a course in your studies on Epistimology, which seeks to answer precisely that question. In talking with this young man, I was able to boil it down to an issue of relativism.
One of the sources I consulted (I believe it came from Aquinas’ Summa) identified three sources of truth: scientific (observation based), philosophical (reason based), and theological (faith based). What I found in Caleb was an outright denial that truth can be arrived at by faith. With the first two sources, we can approximate proof that Jesus was the son of God, but we cannot get there 100%. That last bit of certainty relies on truth which is based on faith–the assurance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.
I see in teens like Caleb the same longing for truth and for the transcendent that I believe exists in each of us. For some, it is manifested in seeking out the occult. For him, it is sated in video games like World of Warcraft. I understand the draw these games provide, a recovering video game junkie myself. There is the use of magic, alchemy, or other supernatural powers, which I believe point to our inherent hunger for God’s supernatural grace and the power of the Eucharist and the Word.
The question becomes, how do we compete with that? Lots of prayer, and more love. It is tempting to cast off teens who are “too argumentative” or don’t have an open mind or heart. Yet you and I know that there is a soul at stake, and that is why we love them.
Caleb complained that these Christians are always giving him books to read or tracts or pamphlets. He reads them, but resents them all. I asked him why he thinks these people are trying to convert him. He said that they believe he’ll rot in Hell. Then I asked him, “why should they care?” He didn’t have an answer for that.
I do. Love.