Well I'm currently starting my second semester of law school and I can already feel the urge to ignore my own blog mounting. I think I'll try to promise myself that I will post at least once a week.
In just one semester of law school you encounter quite a lot of original sin. What I mean is that you encounter the inherent wretchedness of mankind. Loving the law means you appreciate the natural limitations of human beings. We need laws because we are so imperfect and so awful to one another. Yet, we are also great. The greatness of humanity can be seen in the mere fact that we create laws to combat our own wretchedness, but even more profoundly it is seen in our art, creativity, heroism, etc. We are simultaneous wretched and great. We are a strange mix of good and evil. Everyone of us.
Many skeptics sneer at the doctrine of Original Sin, which I find quite odd because it is probably the most empirically verifiable claim of Christianity: everyone deep down knows that we have a moral standard and that literally no one lives up to it. When was the last time you lied, sneered, jeered, backstabbed, ignored, or dismissed another human being? You probably won't have to think very far back. Even the saints knew they were sinners.
For my part, even as an atheist, I readily accepted the basic claim of original sin. It seems obvious to me that human nature is corrupted. All you need to do is turn on the news to see this.
One of my first "aha!" moments in becoming Catholic came when I realized that Christ is the only real answer to Original Sin. Christ is the only way we can reconcile our inherent wretchedness and our inherent greatness. I realized that human beings cannot erase sin on their own. Again, no human being lives up to his own moral standard (he may believe he does, but he is always wrong. It is usually an illusion created by pride). No amount of moral teaching can stop us from sinning. We need outside help. This is one of the many ways in which Christianity is totally unique. For Christ is not just a moral teacher, (although He is also the perfect moral teacher) He is the perfect priest. His death on the Cross and His Resurrection are miracles. Miracles which free us from sin, which we cannot accomplish on our own. This claim of Christianity, and especially the Catholic emphasis on this priestly function, makes Christianity different than any other religion that has ever existed. It is totally and beautifully unique.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Divine Revelation and the path to monotheism
Happy New Year everyone! I haven't posted in several days so I thought I'd give it a go.
Looking over my posts I noticed that I have barely touched on why I chose Christianity as opposed to some other religion. It certainly did not happen over night. In fact for several months there was this period where I merely manifested a vague assent to the existence of some supernatural entity. This did not last long because it left so many loose ends and I was still quite curious, so I did a little of religion shopping.
Two things I want to make clear though: (1) I am not an expert in world religions. Whatever I say about them is from my own experiences, perceptions, amateur knowledge, and brief interactions. (2) "Choosing" a religion might not be the best way to describe the process. It is difficult to articulate properly, but the mental "choosing" is only half of it. In reality, God chose me as much as I chose him. The work was 50/50. Again, it is difficult to properly articulate how this works because it is ultimately part of the Mystery of God. I remember going to the first RCIA (Rite of Christian Initian for Adults) meeting and thinking "Wow, this is quite uncomfortable, and I'm far from being totally convinced. I should probably just quit and practice my own private spirituality. It can't be all that different, right?" Yet, for some reason I kept coming back. Ultimately, I think becoming Catholic for me was a combination of exercising my own free will and divine intervention. Many of the other Catechumens in my group also described a similar feeling when we finally got baptized.
One of my starting points in my "search" for a religion was the necessity of divine revelation. For me, "God" as a concept was very intuitive (as it is for most people), but also quite difficult to explain accurately, much less completely. But the basics were there; I knew that God established and reigned over the Mysteries of life: the meaning of life, moral behavior, beauty, creativity, and comprehension. I was aware of the need to fill these categories, but I was also aware of how much human philosophy disagrees over them. People on their own cannot comprehend God; we need help. God is so much higher in a metaphysical sense that most of the information about Him would have to come from Him. It is true of most any form of creation. Most of the information a dog has about people comes from people trying to plant that information inside the dog's head. A dog without a person's intervention would know very little about people and even less about how to please them. This relationship holds true in the hierarchy of being, so God would have to tell us about Himself. Thus, I concluded the necessity for divine revelation. I also figured that God was a personal God, because if He weren't, there would be little reason for caring about Him even if you knew He existed. In other words, it came fairly intuitively that God would at least have some interest in us. The combination of the necessity for divine revelation and the quasi-corollary that God was a personal God left me confidently rejecting pantheism (such as several varieties of Hinduism) and the vague "spiritual philosophy" religions of the East like Buddhism and Confucianism.
As a final note, anyone interested in a deeper treatment of comparative religions and the uniqueness of Christianity, I suggest reading books by Dr. Peter Kreeft who is a Catholic professor of philosophy at Boston College and has a remarkable knowledge of world religions.
Looking over my posts I noticed that I have barely touched on why I chose Christianity as opposed to some other religion. It certainly did not happen over night. In fact for several months there was this period where I merely manifested a vague assent to the existence of some supernatural entity. This did not last long because it left so many loose ends and I was still quite curious, so I did a little of religion shopping.
Two things I want to make clear though: (1) I am not an expert in world religions. Whatever I say about them is from my own experiences, perceptions, amateur knowledge, and brief interactions. (2) "Choosing" a religion might not be the best way to describe the process. It is difficult to articulate properly, but the mental "choosing" is only half of it. In reality, God chose me as much as I chose him. The work was 50/50. Again, it is difficult to properly articulate how this works because it is ultimately part of the Mystery of God. I remember going to the first RCIA (Rite of Christian Initian for Adults) meeting and thinking "Wow, this is quite uncomfortable, and I'm far from being totally convinced. I should probably just quit and practice my own private spirituality. It can't be all that different, right?" Yet, for some reason I kept coming back. Ultimately, I think becoming Catholic for me was a combination of exercising my own free will and divine intervention. Many of the other Catechumens in my group also described a similar feeling when we finally got baptized.
One of my starting points in my "search" for a religion was the necessity of divine revelation. For me, "God" as a concept was very intuitive (as it is for most people), but also quite difficult to explain accurately, much less completely. But the basics were there; I knew that God established and reigned over the Mysteries of life: the meaning of life, moral behavior, beauty, creativity, and comprehension. I was aware of the need to fill these categories, but I was also aware of how much human philosophy disagrees over them. People on their own cannot comprehend God; we need help. God is so much higher in a metaphysical sense that most of the information about Him would have to come from Him. It is true of most any form of creation. Most of the information a dog has about people comes from people trying to plant that information inside the dog's head. A dog without a person's intervention would know very little about people and even less about how to please them. This relationship holds true in the hierarchy of being, so God would have to tell us about Himself. Thus, I concluded the necessity for divine revelation. I also figured that God was a personal God, because if He weren't, there would be little reason for caring about Him even if you knew He existed. In other words, it came fairly intuitively that God would at least have some interest in us. The combination of the necessity for divine revelation and the quasi-corollary that God was a personal God left me confidently rejecting pantheism (such as several varieties of Hinduism) and the vague "spiritual philosophy" religions of the East like Buddhism and Confucianism.
As a final note, anyone interested in a deeper treatment of comparative religions and the uniqueness of Christianity, I suggest reading books by Dr. Peter Kreeft who is a Catholic professor of philosophy at Boston College and has a remarkable knowledge of world religions.
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