OK… OK…
So, it’s been several days since I posted something. Had a busy end of the week and lots went by that I wished I had commented on. Ah well.
Something I do want to explore is something I heard on Radio Replies on Friday. Radio Replies is a great, old Q&A program with 2 priests. Anyway, Friday’s session was a series of questions about why Catholic countries tend to turn on the Church whereas Protestants don’t do this. It was an interesting series of questions.
The reason why the Church is rebelled against and suppressed where the Protestants don’t is because the Church is Truth. Consistent, unchanging truth. Protestantism is not. At one time all Christians denounced divorce, contraception and abortion, but now you can find Protestant churches that accept these. As the program put it, why bother with the Protestant churches when they don’t matter?
Why don’t they? Because they look at what man wants and figure out a way to make it work. The Catholic Church looks at what God wants and sees how we can do that.
I don’t know about you, but that struck me so powerfully. It made me think of many televangelists and other TV preachers today. You see them in the Word of Faith movement, also called Name it and Claim It Gospel and the Properity Gospel. They go through Scripture and pull out all kinds of stuff to support the pursuit of wealth and prosperity. They never seem to talk about sacrifice or death to self or submitting to the Will of God.
One I know of actually has said that God wants everyone to have that Mercedes and big house. There seems to be any sense of what the proper use of money is. Don’t get me wrong. I have no desire to be dirt poor. I used to have a burning desire to be rich and have all the toys. I even used to say, “He who survives with the most toys, wins!” After all, what use are all the toys if you are dead? There’s a lot of truth in that, that I never realized.
At the same time, I also believed that money is just a tool. I thought the money was the means to the lifestyle. Now I realize that it’s ALL Mammon, not just money, but the pursuit of material things exclusive of all else. I see this a lot in certain strains of Evangelicalism and other groups. It seems as though they have forgotten that you can receive your reward here rather than after you die. Remember the parable of the rich man and Lazarus?