Unfailingly Soothing Presentations of Christianity: What's Missing Therein?

There is a certain approach taken by some Catholics who are engaged in the work of evangelization that is very puzzling. And this can apply to priests or laymen. I've seen it in regard to both.

It's puzzling not so much for it's content--what it says--but for what it doesn't say, what it leaves out.

What is left out in such an approach as I have in mind? Simply, the cross.

There are good people, both lay and clergy, engaged in Catholic evangelization of a sort that focuses without exception always on the nice things, the warm-and-fuzzy aspects of Christian discipleship. In this approach, Jesus is always the tender one who soothes us and says soothing things to our heats. We are always the good ones, trying our best, messing up at times, but nonetheless basically striving in most respects to be like Jesus.

What's wrong with this? After all, Jesus, indeed, is full of mercy and compassion. He loves every one of us with a power and intensity we can't imagine. He is tender and merciful. It's true. But, if this is the only aspect ever mentioned about our Lord's relationship to us as we navigate life trying to serve Him, something huge is missing. The cross.

There is suffering in human life. It's a reality we cannot escape. The question I am concerned with here, is whether we will invite grace to inform and transform all aspects of our life--including our sufferings--or if we only see being a Christian as something unrelated, detached, set apart, from the deepest sorrows of life.

Jesus does indeed look tenderly upon us in our sorrows. But we forget from where He is gazing--He sees us (or, saw, in one great event both time-bound and eternal in the shock wave it sent through creation) from the cross. His passion--His free embrace of undeserved suffering for the sake of loving us so demonstrably, of pouring Himself out for us, of opening His heart for our benefit in a way that we cannot take lightly--was not a closed event meant only for Him to know in secret. Jesus' loving gaze upon the world from the wood of the cross was an open event. From that one place in time, He looked out upon the entire world, gazing into all human history past, present, and future, and invited us in to His open heart. He tenderly shares with us the grace to permit our hearts as well to join Him in giving ourselves in love for the sake of others.

It is a great absence and a great deficiency to share an enthusiasm for a relationship with Jesus Christ without also consciously seeking to help people freely accept Jesus' invitation to unite our sufferings to His Passion. In this way, our sorrows and pains become folded in to the greatest spiritual event in the history of the cosmos--the Redemption of mankind.

When we accept the grace to unite our trials big and small to the cross of our Savior, our pains take on a powerful meaning. They become little points of heat that help us to play a real role in welding the souls of those we love more strongly to the heart of Jesus. Our self-giving perhaps, with grace may become more meaningful and free when chosen in the midst of pain. It's not the suffering here that is good, but the personal act of welcoming the invitation to make it an offering of love for others.

The cross changes everything. Every single moment of pain, sorrow, trial, suffering, is potentially through grace a gathering point of spiritual power bringing our souls into Christ's salvation of the world.

Now, in heaven, Jesus no longer suffers. He is risen from the dead! But that monumental event of His suffering on the cross still looks out to us from that point; this spiritual lightening bolt began a re-creation of mankind that continues to reach out from the cross through all of time to today, tomorrow, and every day until Christ comes in glory.

It's a re-creation that He, because He loves us, wants us to freely participate in with Him. He has made available the grace we need to be able to join with Him in the greatest act (the salvation and sanctification of souls) that has ever happened.

When well-meaning evangelists speak to other Christian souls only about soothing things, they are missing an essential aspect of Christian life. They fail to invite us to allow Jesus to bring us into His heart poured out for the world on the cross. Such an overly safe approach runs the danger of reducing followers of Christ to mere passive recipients of salvation, rather than calling us to live according to the immense and unbelievable dignity of being welcomed to take a place in Christ's heart even as this great Heart suffered in love for the world.

The Scourge of Niceness

Have you ever been in a conversation where there are differing, even opposing, points of view, and then someone squashes the conversation by accusing the participating interlocutors of "attacking" each other and in so doing violating charity?

I would like to call this, "The Scourge of Niceness."

Now, to be sure, there are plenty of occassions when a disagreement among adults can become heated and the conversation most inappropriate--a violation of charity toward one's neighbor.

But, some people make the mistake of finding every firm disagreement--i.e., every argument--downright sinful. This is not so. This is a consequence of placing the value of maintaining an external appearance of niceness (meaning in this case never deliberately opposing the ideas of another) over and above the value of allegiance to the truth.

Any argument should be engaged with respect for the opposition. Shouting an opponent down, ad hominems, or other displays of disrespect should have no place among Christians. But to care enough about the truth to engage in an argument--if the setting permits this without violating prudence--shows a genuine form of love for your opponent, for yourself, and for Christ (who is The Truth).

The Scourge of Niceness is false charity. Provided we maintain personal control and keep respect for all involved, entering into an argument--making our points with firmness and vigor but without any malice--is a virtue highly important for the health of society. Who wants everyone going around avoiding every debate for the sake of keeping up (false) appearances? No, true charity actually demands--when prudence judges the time and place are right--that we have an obligation to seek out the truth with our fellow man. And at times this means having a good argument.

Not to contend together for the sake of truth out of a misplaced notion of niceness is to take too lightly the gift of human reason. It is a form of casual indifference to the great gift of the intellect which God has given us. Often this gift in order to see as far as possible into the truth of things must be exercised in the context of charitable yet vigorously-pursued argument. With grace, we can do this. Let us not be afraid. Down with the scourge of niceness!