Considerations on Loss

  Sometimes, it is not enough to point out all the physical goods God bestows on us. We can easily point to the evils we suffer and ask why they are with us. For some reason, we refuse to believe that we are the cause of those evils. We seem more willing to feel sorry for ourselves than to realize the extraordinary benefits provided in suffering. Is it just to blame God for taking away our pleasure and to call Him a spiteful tyrant because He allows us to suffer pain?

  Well, no. What goods truly belong to us? Have we any "goods," any "rights" which are not essentially "gifts"? Have we any right to those same goods when we break faith with the gift-giver and abandon our duty to obey Him? And beyond that―well, things get rather complicated.

Those questions have been answered many times in exactly the same way: We take nothing with us beyond the door of death: all we have has been stored up behind it. We will lose every extraneous thing. We will stand naked before the Eternal Judge to account for every act of ours in this lifetime. None shall stand between you and Jesus, none shall stand beside you except Jesus, and He only as you have stood by Him. This is a frightening thought, and many people rightly shy away from it. It has reduced many great saints to tears; it has caused many to flee in terror, seeking solace in this world instead of repentance for the next. When God reveals His completed Providence at the end of the world, it will not affect us in the same way as when He reveals His plan to each man at the end of his life. The Four Last Things offer a keen image on which to meditate through Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell: my death, my judgment, my everlasting reward or punishment.

I have seen many books on the currency of the end times, many readings of the books of Daniel and Revelation that predict an immediate end to the world. Awaiting the imposition of "the Sign of the Beast" has become some Christians' favourite pastime: they wait to slay the dragon or be slain by it as their ultimate (and sometimes only) act for Christ. Catholics, too, suffer from this disease. They sometimes fear that the Church has become, as Protestants often depict it, the whore of Babylon, the modernist's playground. Unfortunately some of us have not yet accepted that we have been living in the end times since Christ's Ascension. We choose to focus on who or what will cause the Great Return. We construct end-time scenarios that require Christ to act, rather than require us to do so. Such millenarianism implies that someone or something will be to blame for Christ's return, that Christ is waiting for things to get to just the right pitch in order to make a clean sweep of it all and start afresh with the eternal New Jerusalem. In this belief, it is easy to place the blame on someone else. We can always find a sin worse than the greatest one we have committed, or a person we presume is more committed to evil than we are. Surely Christ will come to punish them? Scapegoats are easy to find, but seldom fulfill the demands of repentance. In fact, only one has ever done so, and He chose to bear that burden. Christ does not call us to find and destroy the evilest among our numbers, but to eradicate whatever evil lurks within ourselves as if we were the evilest human living. Then we may call others to do likewise. Most people are burdened by their sins and will not take kindly to those who would add more to their load. On the other hand, concentrating on our own end time, we will find it very difficult to offload our burden of sin onto anyone other than Christ. Remembering our own death should remind us to be grateful to Christ Who added Heaven to the list of Last Things possible for mankind. Remembering His death should dissolve any blame that does not fall on ourselves because He died for each of us!

If we forget His marvelous solicitude for us, we can easily blame others for our suffering. And since we cannot change others, we classify them among the lost who caused Christ's suffering. We make orphans of them, forgetting both our own lost patrimony and the promise God makes never to leave us orphans.

  Forgetting that solicitude is the surest means of losing Hope, and as one loses Hope, so hope is lost for him.  

  True Hope, which is united to Joy, is never lost. We discard it when self-pity forms the bitterest part of loss. When our fields lie fallow, we think it profitable at least to harvest the weeds, rather than uproot them, preparing our fields for the next planting and trusting in God to grant a new increase.

  God's love for us is not disproved when He takes away our pleasures; in fact, it is strengthened by suffering. Posit the contrary. If God were truly cruel, He could give us a desire for Joy that would not be fulfilled in this life or the next. But then we must ask: why does He break the illusion before the crucial moment of death? Perhaps He wishes to build the illusion by breaking it once in a while. All right, suppose that is possible. Then why, in the name of all good sense, did Christ come to Earth offering us promises that would not be fulfilled, and suffer a most excruciating death by way of leaving mankind with a certificate of His good Word signed in His own Blood? Could God derive such pleasure from the death of sinners that He would send His only Son to suffer death to entrap them? What folly! What arrogance to think that our sins are so great that God would elaborately disguise this nefarious purpose to effect the death of those He could refuse to create! What device could bring a wrathful God to say

   "What pleasure should I find in the death of the sinner...when he might have turned back from his evil ways, and found life instead? . . . The wicked man abandons his wicked ways, and learns to live honestly and uprightly; he wins his life by it. He bethinks himself, and turns away from his evil doings; there is life, not death, for him."? (Ezechiel 18:23, 27-28, Knox)

  The wrong answer, of course, lies in denying the entirety of what God has revealed about Himself through Jesus. If God is Goodness, Love, Mercy, Justice, Wisdom, Knowledge, Omnipotence, then we must grant Him a measure of action in some way different from our own. A man may create a thing and do with it as he pleases, regardless of what others wish him to do with it, simply because he made it, and it belongs to him. How can we refuse that same courtesy to God, Who created all things and should be able to dispose of them as He sees fit? Is it a question of rights? Again, what rights do creatures have that are not also gifts?

  In fact, I think it safe to say that there are no natural rights before God. Only His magnanimity and solicitude separate us from non-being, only His Son stands between us and death, only His Spirit defends us from damnation. We are not "sinners in the hands of an angry God". What angry God would spare those who had so ruthlessly disowned their parentage?

  Jesus brings the sword to Earth to divide those who see God as the eternal despot from those who know Him as our Eternal Destiny. No middle ground exists; we shall all fly to God or from Him at the end of time. So why choose to wallow in the mud? Now, as always, is the time to work! Self-pity is the first and greatest obstacle to self-abandonment. Take heart! The readiness is all. Prepare for the coming of the King!

The Devil's Greatest Lie

  It is said that the devil's greatest lie has been convincing the world that he does not exist, a claim that accounts for an important aspect of the most sinister―and in fact only―plot against humanity. Something has always seemed to be missing from that consideration of the devil's ultimate goal before the end of time, and now I think I know what it is: his pride.

  In Chapter VII of the eponymous Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, Uncle Screwtape reveals part of the devil's plan of misinformation: 

    My Dear Wormwood,

      I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The “Life Force”, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” – then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.

 Screwtape intimates with some surprise at Wormwood's ignorance that concealment is a temporary means to an end, a midpoint tactic between the age of magic, in which hidden demons could terrorize humans with their power, and the end of the world, at which time the demons shall reveal their hatred unreservedly for the rest of eternity. As Lewis may be correct that disbelief in the devil is a temporary setback as well as a pragmatic measure, it seems right to ask whether or not the devil's greatest lie could have been convincing the world he does not exist. 

  What does the devil gain if he only teaches us to deny his own existence? Surely Satan must also campaign against the existence of God, of Goodness, Truth and Unity to avoid frustrating his own designs. Even if the devil convinces someone that there is nothing in which to place belief, he still has not barred the door against the forces of Existence, Grace, Reason or Will. A person who truly disbelieves everything still passionately thinks that something is worth believing—even if it is the value of his own disbelief, and he may be brought to believe in anything, even the Good God. Once the foot is set to a path, there is no turning back; one must see such a journey of discovery to the end, unless the devil successfully employs his greatest lie. Belief in Another is unnecessary, everything important is contained within oneself, and no journey is needed: the pilgrim is the shrine.

  In such a case, the devil does not want people to disbelieve in him or in everything; rather, he wants them to believe very strongly in themselves alone. If he can introduce someone to the cult of self, he can succeed in his other goals: to destroy grace and hope in the soul and to steal the worship due to God. The cult of self strangles grace through all manner of sin; it also imitates the founding member of that cult, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

  To look at it in another light, no atheist disbelieves in all gods. The "materialist magician" that Lewis alludes to must believe in some all-powerful force controlling everything, and surely, the most irreligious scientific fanatic must equally accept the existence of some controlling, eternal factor in the universe. Nonetheless, every atheist disbelieves in this or that god. Agnostics, on the other hand, are more universally skeptical. Even though the sophistical command "Doubt everything!" crumbles under rational inspection, it is small wonder that sloth lounges in the shadows of skepticism. It is easy to refuse things one does not want, it is easy to celebrate everything and believe nothing (as the Unitarian Universalists do), but it is difficult to believe. Even more to the point, it is perilous to believe. Every belief has its consequences. How differently men live when they grasp the reality of what they believe!

   Accepting the reality of what is perceived, even when it surpasses rational explanation, is called Faith. Faith is an act, a movement of the will to assent to propositions, promises, instructions, commands and consolations revealed by God to His people. Faith is a virtue, a habitual disposition to acquiesce to the authority of God's infinite Wisdom. In short, Faith is a choice to adhere to a body of Truths encompassing every grammatical type from descriptive to imperative. That choice of Faith is embodied in the choice to Love. Men and women of the simplest minds have become the greatest saints because God's Love is as deep as His Wisdom is great, and those who accept God's Love and do as He commands live in the greatness of His Wisdom. For this reason, the devil assaults the will most severely while wracking the intellect with doubts, filling the present moment with lively distractions and chilling the heart with the icy breath of his hatred.

   Yet, for all this effort, what new thing does the devil offer besides the stale self-sufficiency of his first temptation? The punishment for Adam's sin is also its cure. Men must first learn to respect their dependence on God through toil and labour. Is it not significant that Adam and Eve sought knowledge from the forbidden tree, that they wanted to be enlightened and not to learn?

   Sloth is the deadliest fruit of the tree of deadly sins; it plays upon the natural desire for leisure, and turns the object of that desire to selfish pleasures until the body becomes saturated and the will becomes comatose; it poisons the will against leaving the shade and standing in the light. Until a man burns in the Light of Truth, until he purges his body of the gross humours of his idleness and re-enters the Valley of Tears, until he responds to God's purifying grace against Satan's greatest lie, he cannot be saved.

   "If ye love me, keep my commandments." 

Re: Number One

   One gains endless amusement from reading things he wrote at an early age, much as he does when reviewing his attempts at other art forms.

   Having recently had a good giggle at my own first posts, I am further struck by the implications of one of my favourite lines about authors taken from the 1952 British film Murder Will Out (Voice of Merrill). A famous author and wag, Johnathan Roche, in assessing his wife's author-lover states: "I want to find out if you ever read a book, or just discovered you haven't written one". I enjoy this witticism immensely; I find its needle sampling the blood of my own feeble efforts.

   I used to wonder why I had so few successful drafts. Then I remembered that I started the blog because I thought I had something to say, but in the end had less to say than I thought; I also had far fewer words with which to say what I thought and much less finesse than is proper. 

   Hopefully, this resurrection will remain the result of my finding more to say and better ways of saying it. 

An Improper Suggestion

Having read the quoted article with great relish, I am merely putting my own take on the question into words. I highly recommend reading the seed of these thoughts.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2013/02/im-with-them-the-female-paradox-of-praying-at-planned-parenthood.html

"A common refrain from pro-choice advocates against the pro-life movement is that those who are pro-life simply do not understand the earth-shattering reality of an unplanned pregnancy. In order to speak about abortion, one must have some experiential knowledge of the tragedy or at least the potential for the experience. Without this understanding you are automatically disqualified from the conversation."

"With this line of reasoning, men who pray in front of these clinics are easy to dismiss. Their Y chromosome renders them incapable of understanding the hopelessness of an unplanned pregnancy. Therefore, their opinions on the subject do not matter and their presence outside the clinic is laughable at best and insulting at worst."

Why does this collective conscience ignore the arguments presented by women who regret their abortions? The common refrain seems to be "Your choice, your pain." Planned Parenthood does not aim at the good of all women. They do not protect their own. They do not listen to them; they do not heal them. Their "rebellious" children―that is, women who regret their abortions―are not counselled, or loved for who they are; instead, they are ignored, ostracized and placed with the ignorant rustics who stand outside abortion clinics wailing and gnashing their teeth. 

Men cannot be unrelated to the equation. What woman ever contracted an "unplanned pregnancy" (or any kind of pregnancy save a pregnant thought) from something other than a man? Why does Planned Parenthood encourage men to support women who want abortions, if it simultaneously ignores men's encouragement to do the opposite? Either they have a say, or they have none. Planned Parenthood cannot have it both ways.

Furthermore, men do understand the hopelessness of an unplanned pregnancy; otherwise, they would never counsel for or against an abortion. They would be indifferent on such matters. That, of course, is the image Planned Parenthood wants to paint of the generic male: that he is callous, self-centered, and uninterested in the after-effects of a night in bed. However, the number of male influences both inside and outside of abortion clinics speaks against the very heart of this image. How often does a young girl solicit an abortion because her father might find out she is pregnant? How often does a woman seek it out because her husband did not want to keep an "unplanned" baby? How much more often because a girl's fiance or boyfriend thought it would erase their mistake? How often does the man "force" the woman to an abortion simply because "this was her problem"? How many "doctors" care for their "patients" out of a mistaken solicitude for their "well-being". 

In a negative way, this shows how important a man is to this issue. On the flip side, how often does a woman rely on the man in the equation to help her through the difficult trial she faces? If he stands by her (and, incidentally, the baby), how much more likely is she to birth her child? 

If the man excuses himself from his responsibility, then only a determined woman could keep from shirking her part of the natural "bargain." The converse is also true: if the woman wishes to escape, then only a compassionate man could possibly persuade her to spare the baby. 

Either way, man is essential; he has a definite stake in the question. Then it should not be improper to suggest that he should have a say in the matter. He should listen and be listened to.