Sunday
February 17th, 2019 6th Sunday
Ordinary Time (Cycle C)
I Fought the Law and the Law Won
The tie in
between today’s readings: Different Strokes for Different Folks
The
theme running through today’s Mass Prep is the contrast between the wicked and
the righteous, those who worship and obey the God of the Bible and those who
doubt His existence... or live like it. It’s not a simple question. Because no
one knows for sure, both sides have sincere, intelligent, and not so
intelligent proponents. Curiously, two people can look at the same evidence and
come away with completely opposite conclusions. Our readings, Psalm 1, Jeremiah
17, and in Luke 6, conclude with blessings for the righteous for their
obedience to God. The wicked are warned, but they live by different laws. So
like a hapless mother threatening her petulant child with, “Wait until your
father gets home,” predictions of their Divine Judgment fall on deaf ears.
Guided by today’s scriptures, let’s examine some of the laws the ungodly have
placed their faith in. It’s important. Destinies lie in the balance.
LAW of
Nature: The materialist starts from the premise that if it can’t be measured,
for all practical purposes, it doesn’t exist. So until somebody invents a
God-o-meter, belief in the Almighty is irrational. But if you must, you may
keep your theory. Everything came
from the “Big Bang” and time + matter + chance = your brain. They say that we
will continually climb the ladder of evolution or plug ourselves into our own
machines until we finally reach a reality in which ”We shall not surely die but
will be like God.”
Law of
Common Sense: The scoffer is just straight out proud. He is confident in his
superior intellect. Anything that doesn’t fit into his cosmology is ridiculed
outright. He believes that God is a myth like the Tooth Fairy and that no
rational person would take this religion stuff seriously. He is unteachable. If
you answer one of his God objections, he’ll come back with another, and
another, and another still. The scoffer doesn’t want to know. He would rather
defend his straw man arguments against God than explore another position.
Having figured it all out his universe is small and comfortable. He likes it
that way. Beware of casting your pearls before swine.
Law of
Man: The humanist is similar to the materialist but with a psychological twist.
He believes that in the beginning we all were atheists. As we evolved, we
needed to invent God in order to make sense of nature. The Almighty emerged out
of the black hole of man’s fear. He is confident that science will dispel the
darkness of God ignorance as it expands and projects its’ own light of truth.
In the not too distant future, he expects to consign Jehovah to the museum of
the ”Quaint and Curious” along with other deities like: Thor, Apollo, and
Quetzalcoatl. His credo: You don’t need God in order to have a happy,
productive life. We can overcome our problems by plotting a cooperative future.
The sky's the limit! When the humanist dies we will plant his body in the
ground and commit his soul to the big black hole of “I don’t know”, from whence
God came from in the first place.
Law of
Me: The hedonist thinks that he is only accountable to himself. His motto is,
”It’s my life and I’ll do what I want.” He knows the existence that he covets
is short, so he desperately clutches for all the thrills he can find. He
believes that everybody dies but few of
us live. He doesn’t want to lose out on the one and only chance he has to grab
life by the throat and wring it out for all it’s worth. He resents any judgments
of sin on his character as confining on his life options, which for him is the
biggest sin of all. He does have a sort of “love thy neighbor” morality: do
whatever you want without hurting anyone. He tends not to see that he hurts
anyone until the damage is done. He thinks that he is free. The irony is that a
life of self gratification instead of giving greater experiences becomes banal.
His kicks just keep getting harder to find. So, in the end, all of his
unsatisfying pursuits prove to be a fallacy. His “liberty” has jailed him. He
panics as death stalks and, despite all his rage, he is still just a rat in a cage.
Law of
Results: To the pragmatist: power is god and the ends justify the means. He is
not against religion, on the contrary, he admires it in a perverse kind of way.
For him, it is a great invention of the elite class to get the hoi polloi to do
ridiculously difficult and expensive undertakings on the cheap. Build a
pyramid. Launch a crusade. Give all your money. It’s all for a promise of a
happy afterlife or the avoidance of hell fire. What a wonderful con! Religion is also useful to maintain a docile
citizenship that will put up with hardship imposed by society i.e. the ruling
class. He’s not necessarily a Marxist, but he does enjoy a good population
opiate if it suits his purpose. So support the church or leave it alone, but by
no means get in its way. As long as it promotes the message of “love thy
neighbor” and causes bad people to become good citizens or even good people to
become better ones. However, if it wants to be revolutionary so to make dead
people alive or set the captives free: SQUASH IT LIKE A BUG.
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The
Law of Life: The apostle Paul lays it all out in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 with
one big declaration of “Bring It!” If
the Savior of the world is dead, then Christianity is a joke and all that is
left is a Jesus Club. So to all you worldly wise men: Disprove the resurrection
and the Bible will all go away. Many an adversarial crusader has taken up the
challenge. However, all attempts to prove that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
is a hoax end up in either fanciful theories or result in heartfelt conversions
to the Risen Lord. Paul counters: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, the
first fruits of those who sleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Easter Sunday is the
one irrefutable fact of history that you can stake your life on. The Resurrection
changes everything. It destroys the wisdom of men and, in the destroying, God
offers mankind hope. Jesus said, “Because I live, you can live also” (John
14:19). The Son of God invites you to join Him in faith. Believe in His
sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of your sin and then by faith rise,
born again, with Him in His resurrection to new life for this present life and
forever. So what will it be? Choose! Your destiny hangs in the balance.
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