Friday after Epiphany

Who indeed is the victor over the world
but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

I recently finished a current non-fiction book called, God is not one by Stephen Prothero. He addresses Christians and wants to remind us that not all religions are alike, that it is foolish at best and perhaps arrogant to suppose that “All religions are the same. We all worship the same God.”

Some religions worship many gods and, if they suppose there is one supreme being they have little interest in him/her/or/it. Others, like the Buddhists, refuse to speak of God and recommend only a way of knowing the unknowable and unnamable. Not all religions have much to say about morality. They do not discern the “two ways” of good and evil so well mapped by Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions. Not all religions try to win converts. Not all religions agree on religious rites or particular prayers.

Even within the same religion there is little uniformity as witnessed by the disparity of style between High Anglican and Pentecostal worship.

Young Christians, experiencing the wide array of religions in the world, realizing that if the God of Jesus Christ were running for high office among the peoples of the world he would not win the election, decide there is no “true religion.” Some of them fly off into the night looking for a lesser truth.

Mister Prothero seems to go out of his way to remind us that many religions do not imagine boundaries between believers and non-believers. Even belief is not that important to some. They have never written creeds. Nor do all religions try to suppress dissent. Some, like the Jews, seem to thrive on it! They have no popes to settle arguments and can’t imagine why they might want one.

It is easy to lose one’s faith or, at least, to become defensive in the face of such variety.

Pondering these matters helps me to reelect my own Catholic faith. Throughout these two thousand years the Church has worked valiantly to “stay on message.” And the struggle has been costly. In some cases we had to denounce ideas that alien cultures imposed upon our faith; and distance ourselves from those who clung to such notions. More often today, we witness sadly our loved ones turning away. They do not want to worship with us.

But our worse crimes were committed when we strayed from the message. We set out to announce the gospel to the western hemisphere but brought along the institutions of slavery. We believe that Jesus is fully God and fully human, but feared the volatility of our sexual impulses. We love Jesus as the Son of Mary but despised their Jewish people. The list is indeed endless.

So should we abandon the message of God’s pure and overwhelming love? Should we suppose God doesn’t really care if there are homeless, starving or dying persons in our streets? Should we suppose there is no God who might care?

Rather, we must confess our sins and keep to the course God has given us. As Saint Paul said to Timothy , “We must preserve the deposit of faith both in season and out."

Christians are held to higher standards because our standards are higher. If a Confucian is rude or a Daoist, obsessive-compulsive no one is scandalized by that. But the Christian should be patient, generous and reverent. Although they do not know it, the whole world is watching, as Saint Paul said:

Creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.