What we think is the right road
I don't know and, frankly, I don't care if God exists. I leave that to poets, priests and preachers. Anyway, it's not as though I see God and talk with Him every day. It's not as if He gives me a raise at work or sorts things out for me when I have a tough time with my friends and family. If God exists – and you can't prove it by me – then He is utterly irrelevant to me. I don't get my joy from God, and I don't have to obey some ancient stuff about doing His "will," whatever that is. I have more important things to worry about.
But it's the wrong road
There is no such word as "deusapathy" – meaning indifference about and lack of concern over the question about God's existence and meaning for us – but there should be. Persuading people that God exists means far more than citing Psalm 14 (or 53) that the fool says in his heart that there is no God. Modern atheism and agnosticism now increasingly concede the existence of God, but refuse to accept God's sentience. That is, they accept a kind of unconscious and uncaring God – a god (deliberate lower case) whom they see as, well, "the Force."
This "modern god" sits in the heavens utterly unconcerned about the fate of human beings. Because that god doesn't care about us, why should we care about him? This is the old notion of Deism on steroids, for these people accept reason up to a point, but deny the revelation. They accept the scientific but deny the miraculous. They accept the natural but deny the supernatural. They accept the historical but deny the providential.
Deists thought of God as a clockmaker. He wound things up and then let them run, without governing or intervening. Heresies have a way of cropping up again and again, and deusapathy is just another iteration of Deism, which was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Cardinal Robert Sarah writes, "Contrary to what we may think, the greatest difficulty of men is not in believing what the Church teaches at the moral level; the most difficult thing for the postmodern world is to believe in God." He continues, "Western societies are organized and live as though God did not exist. Christians themselves, on many occasions, have settled down to a silent apostasy."
Cardinal Sarah teaches that "we no longer know who man is once he detaches himself from his Creator." In separating himself from God or in expressing disdain for the divine, he says, "Man intends to recreate himself; he rejects the laws of his nature, which become contingent. Man's rupture with God obscures his way of looking at creation. Blinded by his technological successes, his worldview disfigures the world..., and man is the one who must give them meaning."
In fact, we are not architects who design the world and its meaning. We are, rather, archeologists who discover meaning (see, for example, Judith 8:12-14; Job 38:4-7). There will always be a war in own souls, for we either become God's or we seek to become gods. When, in the corruption and moral stupor of deusapathy, we no longer care about God, about doing His will and about living according to His teaching (defined in and by the Church), then we are effectively seeking to make God conform to our wills and our ways, to make Him in our image.
Remember how God calls Samuel, who wakes and says, "Speak; your servant is listening" (1 Sam 3:10). We have superciliously replaced that passage by telling God: "Listen; your master is speaking." And so the psalmist tells us of God's judgment: "My people would not listen to me: Israel would not obey me. So I let them go their stubborn ways and do whatever they wanted" (81:11-12 GNB).
Again, there is nothing new under the sun. The core of modern political ideology is the ghost of the centuries-old heresy known as Pelagianism, which denied original sin and taught that human beings can achieve salvation through our own sustained efforts. That is a lie (cf. John 8:44). It is certainly true, though, as Our Lord teaches, that "without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). A corollary is that, without God, we can (and will) do anything. As the Russian writer Dostoevsky put it, "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted."
Catholic philosophy has long held that we can demonstrate God's existence through natural reasoning. Properly taught, political science teaches its students that, without God, there are no moral and practical standards to guide, guard and govern us. Without cathedrals to worship God, we build gulags and concentration camps and abortion facilities to butcher humans.
Cardinal Sarah writes that "the most profound misery is the lack of God." We are – it is stunning to realize this – stronger than God: if we tell Him to depart from our lives, He obeys! That is precisely what deusapathy and sin are: telling God that we do not care about Him and that we will believe and behave according to our own wishes, constructing our personal Tower of Babel. Is it historically demonstrable that the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23)? Yes, it is. In God's will is our peace – a key reason never to be apathetic about the One who is Love.
Deacon James H. Toner serves at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro.
Reading the headline above, I'm certain you are ready to grab a red pen and correct the typo, but wait: There's a reason for it. I'd like you to think about what it takes to be a good listener, and why we should listen more carefully to others.
Throughout the Old and New Testament there are many passages advising us to use our ears, not our mouth. One that comes to mind is Proverbs 12:15: "The way of fools is right in their own eyes, but those who listen to advice are the wise." And in James 1:19-20: "Know this, my dear brothers: everyone should be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, for the wrath of a man does not accomplish the righteousness of God."
We can be better listeners when we exercise humility, especially so that we can be receptive to hearing the Word of God.
During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches in Matthew 7:24-29, "'Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.' When Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes."
The most touching words that encourage and motivate me to listen to what my Savior has to say are in John 10:28-29: "My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father's hand."
In conclusion, think about James 1:22-25: "Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like. But the one who peers into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres, and is not a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, such a one shall be blessed in what he does."
God is calling us to act on His Word. Don't fall into the devil's trap by hearing today, then forgetting it all tomorrow.
Barbara Case Speers is a writer who lives in Hickory.