Saturday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060912.cfm

For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine
but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity,
will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth
and will be diverted to myths.

Sometimes I think Christianity is a poor excuse for a religion. If you want a really good religion, Hindu is what you want. Hindu has thousands of deities and every village in India has its own special gods. There are stories of a supreme god but no one is especially interested in that one. As befits their experience of human authorities, if you want to get something done you don’t go to the topmost god; you approach your own local, more accessible god. These minor deities manage very well the day-to-day divine labors. Things like healing the sick, protecting children and finding better work are their bailiwick. 

There’s also room for many diverse opinions and unlimited creativity in Hindu religion. If you have a quarrel with your god you can move to another village and worship their gods. Your god might miss you but there won’t be much he can do about it. They don’t travel very far. And if you want to make up some fabulous myths about your God, perhaps to update your religion just a bit, there’s no harm in that. We alter clothes; why shouldn’t we alter our beliefs? People in India have been doing that for thousands of years.

But Christianity clings to the same revealed doctrines century after century, and gets downright testy when someone proposes a little altering here and there. “Perhaps” they suggest, “it’s time to admit Jesus only appeared to rise from the dead.” Or, “The bread isn’t really transubstantiated into the Body of Christ. It’s really just bread and we think of Jesus when we eat it.” And, “His mother was a dear woman but probably not a virgin. When else has anyone claimed a virgin birth and been believed? Such things just don’t happen.”

Don’t you think we’d be perceived as friendlier, more conciliatory and approachable if we allowed people to keep their peculiar notions so long as they worship with us? Who really cares about those deeper truths anyway, so long as we’re saved and we all make nice? Isn’t that all that matters?

Saint Paul didn’t think so. He struggled every day of his life, when he was free and when he was imprisoned, to preserve the deposit of faith as it had been given to him. He had no patience with the wild fantasies and insatiable curiosity of people who wanted religion on their own terms. He insisted on belief in Jesus, which is demonstrated not by arguing but by prayer, fasting, almsgiving, faith, hope and love. 

When people remake it to fit their own fancies religion can be interesting and perhaps exciting; but true faith in Jesus Christ can take you to the very heart of reality where the truth shines and God abides. It is no easy journey, and certainly not for the faint of heart. But because God has given us an insatiable curiosity for Truth and a huge impatience with nonsense, we press on toward the goal.