To Hell With You? Not If We Can Help It!

The doctrine of Hell is one that is easily distorted into portraying Christians as gleefully awaiting non-Christians to be sent there, while thinking that we have a free pass where what we do doesn’t matter. While it is true that some Christians have so missed the point about what they are called to be that they do think this way, it is an aberration which perverts what Christianity really believes.

Far from being a cruel belief invented by a vindictive people in a way that contradicts the concept of a loving God, the concept of Hell recognizes that:

• God created us with an immortal soul
• God created us with free will to choose Him or to reject Him
• If we misuse free will in a way which rejects God, our immortal soul has to exist somewhere that is the logical result of that rejection

So, Hell is not an issue of “don’t steal that cookie or you’re going to burn forever!” It’s a reality of, “If you choose to reject God, that decision has eternal consequences if you do not change your ways.” Peter Kreeft describes four major errors which leads people to think Hell shows that Christians are judgmental: 

Those who have been hurt by the misuse of this doctrine often seem to think that those who believe in hell:
 

1. want hell to exist (as if doctrines were not facts but desires);

2. want humans to go there (as if Christians could want what the Devil wants!);

3. self-righteously exclude themselves from its dangers (as if Christians were Pharisees instead of saved sinners); and

4. coolly and detachedly discuss this ultimate holocaust and horror (as if missionaries were making maps of the ocean instead of throwing out the life boat).
 

All four assumptions are false, of course—in fact, hellish distortions. If Christians follow Christ, they will give anything to save humanity from hell, because that is what Christ did.
 

The third cavil above is the most devastating, if true—but it is not. Christian teachers have repeatedly made the point C. S. Lewis makes to conclude his chapter on hell in The Problem of Pain: “In all our discussions of hell we should keep steadily before our eyes the possible damnation, not of our enemies nor our friends ... but of ourselves. This chapter is not about your wife or son, nor about Nero or Judas Iscariot; it is about you and me.” That is the proper use of the doctrine of hell.

[Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 309.]

So, when we stand up and say something is morally wrong, we’re not acting out of hatred of sinners any more than the person who puts a “Danger! Bridge Out Ahead!” acts out of hatred for motorists. Indeed, if the distortions Kreeft listed were true, we wouldn’t be warning people against sin. We’d be watching with smug satisfaction and take bets on how each individual was going to crash and burn. But such behavior is actually monstrous in the eyes of Christians who understand their faith.

The fact is, the Church did not invent Hell. Jesus is the one who warns us about Hell and warns us to turn back to Him. If we’re faithful to Him, we will carry out that mission on informing people of the danger and trying to turn them to the one who can save them—even if it makes us unpopular in the process. So when you call Christians “hateful,” ask yourself this: If we really hated you, would we go through all the discomfort of being hated by letting you know what we believe would benefit you? Does that make any sense? Something to keep in mind.

Yes, Jesus Does Love Us All...But Do We Love Him Enough to Respond?

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Love and Hell

Hell is Not Contrary to God’s Love

One of the things people in modern times find hard to reconcile is how God can be love (1 John 4:16) and the existence of Hell. The general assumption is that Hell is an arbitrary, disproportionate punishment tacked on to a crime—something like shooting a person for jaywalking. Because of this, it is assumed that God, being “good” (in an undefined way) would not really send them to Hell for their own actions. Maybe Nazis, but not “good” people. I suspect this is where the whole “God doesn’t care about X!” attitude comes from.

But this is to miss the point about what Hell is about. It is not an arbitrary sentence to a crime like, “If you commit theft, I will punish you with Prison.” It is more like, “If you jump off of a cliff, you will die.” In other words, Hell is the logical consequence for choosing to do what goes against what God has called us to be. As Peter Kreeft put it:

Take as an example God’s command to Adam and Eve not to eat the forbidden fruit. If this is a positive law, it is like a mother threatening to slap her child’s hand if he takes a cookie. If it is a natural law, it means that if we eat the forbidden fruit of disobedience to God’s will, divorcing our will and spirit from God’s, then the inevitable result will be disaster and death, for God is the source of all joy and life.
 

In a natural law ethic, virtue is its own reward and vice is its own punishment. Virtue is to the soul what health is to the body. It has its own intrinsic, necessary and unchangeable structures, such that all good deeds help the doer as well as the recipient and all evil deeds harm the doer as well as the victim.
 

The punishment of hell is inevitable, by natural law. Any human soul that freely refuses the one Source of all life and joy must find death and misery as its inevitable punishment.

[Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 293.]

Essentially the Scriptural passages of Hell are not there as a threat, but as a warning. If we know that what we want to do goes against what God commands, and we choose to do that evil anyway, we are choosing something that will cause harm to our relationship with God. Because we have an immortal soul, it stands to reason that what damages our relationship with God will have consequences after we die.

Thus we see the concept of Jesus saying “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Those who turn away from their sins and towards God with His help can be saved. Those who refuse to turn away from their sins have turned their face from God, and so long as they do so, they cannot be saved. When one thinks of it this way, we can see that the defensiveness of those who say “God doesn’t care about X!” really want things both ways. They want to be able to reject God when it suits them without the consequences of that rejection. But since Hell is a logical consequence of rejecting God, and not an arbitrary punishment, people who want the Church to declare certain things are not sins are actually wanting the impossible. 

What Follows From This

Once we understand this, then the point of evangelization and speaking out against sin is clear. In doing this, Christians are not being intolerant or judgmental. They seek what is good for others. As the future St. John Paul II put it:

This is a “divine” feature of love. Indeed, when Y [he] wants the good “without limits” for X [her], then properly speaking he wants God for her: God alone is the objective fullness of the good, and only he can satisfy every man with this fullness. Man’s love through its relation to happiness, that is, to the fullness of the good, in a sense passes as close to God as possible.

 

[Karol Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, trans. Grzegorz Ignatik (Boston, MA: Pauline Books & Media, 2013), 119-120.]

To love someone is to desire their happiness through what is truly good—and that true good is God. To desire a “good” for the beloved that goes against what God has designed us for is destructive. So Christians, in desiring that all people be brought to Christ, is not being hateful in saying things are sinful and endangering the soul[*]. They love the sinner and desire their greatest good, which is their being in right relationship with God.

Being human beings and sinners, we recognize that we may express ourselves poorly. We may lose our tempers or become frustrated. These things do hide the love of God from those we are trying to show it to. Popes like St. John Paul II and Pope Francis have expressed apologies for this failing by members of the Church—including those who were in positions of authority.

But it is important to remember that despite these sins and failings which mar the message we give, the Christian message is motivated by love and not hate. That message is both a warning—that our sins alienate us from God, and a promise—that God loves us and wants us to turn back to Him. It is important to remember this and not lose sight of it when the messenger expresses himself or herself poorly.

_________________________

[*] Oh sure, I recognize (sadly) that there are people who miss the point of the Christian faith and think that hostility to the person who commits sin is the same as speaking out against evil. But Christianity, properly lived, rejects this because they recognize that we are called to love each other as Jesus loved us (John 13:34), and even when we think the actions of a person are wrong, we are still called to love the sinner.

We Cannot Set God the Father and God the Son Against Each Other

Introduction

If I were to describe the behaviors of some Christians who support the changing long held Christian moral beliefs, the term modernist comes to mind—though not in the sense that radical traditionalists abuse as an epithet—thus stripping it of any meaning.

Modernism is defined as “a tendency in theology to accommodate traditional religious teaching to contemporary thought and especially to devalue supernatural elements.” In other words, modernism is an attempt to deny or downplay the inconvenient truths that God has commanded, but modern society finds objectionable. Thus, the Christian who tries to reduce miracles to fortuitous coincidences or tries to turn “thou shalt not” into “It is OK” is guilty of modernism.

Tragically, there has been a surge in the number of Christians who openly seek to twist the meaning of Christian moral obligations since Obergefell, and there seem to be a growing number of Christians who are willing to accept their arguments because they do not like the idea of of themselves or loved ones acting in a way that Christian belief calls sinful. It’s not for me to judge the culpability of the Christians who buy into the argument, but it is not being judgmental to say that these compromises are certainly against what God has commanded and that those Christians who confuse their compromising the truth with being compassionate. We need to remember that even when loving the sinner, we cannot compromise on the truth.

Jesus Is God and We Cannot Separate Him From God in the Old Testament

One common justification for rejecting unpopular moral teachings is done in trying to separate the God of the Old Testament from Jesus Christ in the Gospel. God in the Old Testament is seen as harsh and judgmental, while Jesus in the Gospel is seen as loving and non-judgmental. But that vision of the two are wrong for several reasons—the first of which is the very fact that it divides One God into two beings where one is considered bad, and the other good. That’s basically gnosticism.

In fact, if we profess to be believing Christians, there are some principles we must accept…in fact, to deny them makes us heretical:

• We believe in One Triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—who has existed eternally.
• Therefore Jesus has always been God the Son.
• From this it follows that one cannot divide God into separate beings or claim that what God taught, Jesus repudiated.
• Once we recognize this, the Christian cannot use the “Jesus never said anything about X” argument without (knowingly or not) denying the Triune and eternal nature of God.

It is important to recognize these facts, because, after Obergefell, people are trying to bully Christians into abandoning their moral objections to “same sex marriage” by saying “Jesus never condemned homosexuality.” To make that claim, one has to either deny the Trinity or deny the authority of Scripture when it disagrees with one’s personal behavior. So, let’s look at that next.

The Authority of Scripture is God and We Do Not Have the Right to Overthrow It

Protestants and Catholics both recognize the authority of Scripture, though they have different ideas on what that authority means. Generally speaking, we hold that the Bible was divinely inspired, while making use of the talents of the human authors, so that it is free of error. The Catholic Church, in the Vatican II document Dei Verbum, describes it this way:

11. Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19–20, 3:15–16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him² they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.⁴

 

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind” (2 Tim. 3:16–17, Greek text).

So, we have to realize that since God inspired the authors to put into the Scriptures what He wanted put there, we are not free to simply pick and choose what we think is out of date. We have to understand the context of the words and the culture which the author shared with the original audience. We also have to understand that, despite the fact that the human authors wrote over a period of thousands of years, God inspired all of it, and we cannot simply pick out a section to support what we would like to be taught.

The Jewish Law and Divine Accomodation

What causes so many misunderstandings is the fact that we forget that everything in the Bible ultimately points to Christ. In the Old Testament, this means laying the framework, building the nation where Jesus can be born. This brings us to the concept of Divine Accommodation—that in teaching us, God moves from the simplest concepts to the more complex—as we grow more able to understand (See Galatians 3:23-24). He had to prepare us for receiving Christ by creating a framework. In Christ, the Law is fulfilled. That doesn’t mean the “thou shalt nots” can become “it’s OK if you want to do it.” But it does mean that the elements of the Law which were pointing to the fulfillment of Christ can be set aside—the ceremonial law, dietary law and legal strictures on what to do to transgressors—but the moral obligations of God’s teaching remain. This is what Acts 15:1-29 was affirming in saying that the Gentile Christians were not bound to keep the Law and why St. Paul took so stern a stance against those who tried to implement the circumcision and kosher laws.

What we need to keep in mind is, the legal codes of the Jewish Law were not the sudden imposition of barbarism on a genteel people. They were restrictions on how the Jews could behave in comparison to how their neighbors behaved. Yes, reading the laws of Exodus and Leviticus may sound offensive to our ears. But when one compares them with the neighboring nations, those nations did worse things on a regular basis. In other words, God wasn’t giving the Jews free rein to run wild. He was forbidding them from running wild.

Moreover, once you look at Jesus teaching the crowds “You have heard it said…but I say unto you…” He actually takes the law to a higher level. It’s not enough to avoid doing evil. We have to avoid harboring it in our hearts. So, when critics try to cite the other laws in Leviticus to deny the condemnation of homosexuality, they haven’t refuted the Christian moral teaching…they’ve merely shown they do not understand how God gradually brought His teaching to us, turning us away from evil and towards good as our minds could comprehend it. Christ is the final fulfillment of the Law. There won’t be any further revelation beyond Christ (contra the Muslims and Mormons)—we’ll just apply His teachings to new situations. In doing so, we will never see God’s teaching go from “X is a sin” to “X is not a sin.” If it ever appears to be otherwise, it merely shows we have misunderstood the essence of what was condemned.

To discuss each of the issues would take too long and cover too much ground. For example, I do not have the time to discuss St. Paul discussing Sin, Law, Gentiles and Jews in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. Suffice to say, if you want to know how Christians view the relationship of the Old Testament legal code in comparison to the teachings of Christ, you need to study what Christianity teaches on the subject and not merely assume that the Church must have gotten it wrong just because you don’t understand it. That’s an argument from ignorance fallacy.

Conclusion

It is vital to remember, that we cannot try to set God the Father against God the Son, the Trinity against each other to justify our own behavior. Nor can we try to set one part of the Bible in opposition to another. There is no conflict between Father and Son because God is Triune. There is no conflict between Old and New Testament because God inspired both. When a conflict appears, it is actually a conflict of our own understanding.

Because Sin Is Real: The Truth America Forgot

If you read the works of the saints, or their biographies, you can see that they were aware of a truth that America has forgotten—sin is real and it alienates us from God. Instead, America (or, rather the whole of Western civilization) has a bad habit of presuming that God “doesn’t care” about the action we do that falls under the category of sin. As a result, we have an understanding about sin that is both self-contradictory and has nothing to do with the reality:

• When others do something we dislike, we have no qualms about acknowledging it as a sin.
• When we do something that is a sin, we refuse to acknowledge it as a sin and call it an arbitrary decision made by human beings that doesn’t matter to God.

In other words, while people are perfectly willing to denounce others, the fact is that, instead of thinking rationally about the good or evil of our actions we contemplate doing, we rationalize the things we already do to avoid thinking about whether they are good or evil or rationalize a reason not to do what we ought to do.

This mindset actually convicts the person before God—because we call the actions of others “sin” or “wrongdoing,” we acknowledge that there is a good which must be lived and an evil which must be avoided. But because we refuse to apply this knowledge to ourselves, we show ourselves to be hypocrites and evildoers.

When we think of it this way, the proper way to interpret Matthew 7:1-5 suddenly becomes a whole lot clearer:

¹ “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. ² For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. ³ Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? ⁴ How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.

If we refuse to acknowledge our own sinfulness, we become unfit guides for helping others avoid sin—having that beam in the eye. Unfortunately, because everyone seems to think that sin is affiliated with those we disagree with, but not ourselves, that is in essence a refusal to repent. If we get angry at the Church for saying that it is sinful to commit fornication, adultery, homosexual acts, contraception, abortion, etc., and claiming it is not a sin to do these things then, by refusing to stop doing them, we show to God our refusal to repent and turn back to Him.

In other words, the sin of the pharisee is not limited to the religious zealot. It is committed by every person who refuses to say ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ (Luke 18:13b).

Unfortunately, people like to misinterpret Matthew 7:1-5 to mean that any person who says “X is a sin” is disobeying Jesus. But if that were a true interpretation, then it would certainly be disobeying Jesus to accuse them of being judgmental. But anyone who takes the time to read Chapter 7 of Matthew can see that Jesus certainly does not forbid us to say that actions are evil. In fact, near the end of the chapter, Jesus also says:

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,* but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ ²³ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you.* Depart from me, you evildoers.’ (Luke 7:21-23)

Indeed, elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt 18:15-17), Jesus tells us about admonishing sinners:

¹⁵ “If your brother* sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. ¹⁶  If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ¹⁷ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church.* If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.

These teachings of Jesus show that “Don’t say X is a sin” is a false interpretation. In fact, if we love Christ, we keep His commandments (Luke 14:15) and if we reject the Apostles and their successors we reject Him and His Father (Luke 10:16). That is a message which is widely forgotten today by a people which thinks that the only moral obligation is being nice to those we think deserve our being nice to.

Our nation has forgotten the reality of sin as something that rejects God and harms our neighbor. In replacing it with “be nice to each other,” it has perverted the Christian message to the point that it accuses actual Christians of behaving in an “unchristian” manner. Not for bad behavior (which unfortunately does exist among who profess a belief in Christ) but for following their faith and saying “X is wrong!"

Until America recognizes the difference between rejecting evil and actual intolerance it will continue to justify evil while praising itself for “being nice."

When Law is Based on Logical Fallacies: Christian Bakeries and Begging the Question

After Obergefell, we all knew this was going to happen but we hoped it wouldn’t. An Oregon bakery who refused to provide a “wedding” cake back in 2013 for a lesbian couple because of a religious belief was fined $135,000. The basis of this decision is that the couple who runs the bakery “unlawfully discriminated” against the plaintiffs. Reading the articles on the topic and the comments down below said articles, the widespread belief is that the bakery deliberately discriminated against the couple on account of their sexual orientation. So, that is the assertion to be proven.

The problem is, nobody attempts to prove the charge that discrimination and bigotry were the motive—the fact that the Kleins opposed "same sex marriage" is seen of proof of bigotry. Any other possible motive such as Christian moral ethics is automatically rolled back into the original charge of discrimination. The only way that one can avoid being guilty of bigotry in the eyes of the law and the media is to support “same sex marriage."

I imagine Aristotle would be appalled. What the government is operating under is nothing more than the begging the question fallacy. A principle is assumed to be true when it actually needs to be proven. Thus whatever action is done, it is assumed (but not proven) to be done on account of that principle. Aristotle put it this way:

[W]henever a man tries to prove what is not self-evident by means of itself, then he begs the original question. This may be done by assuming what is in question at once; it is also possible to make a transition to [40] other things which would naturally be proved through the [65^a] thesis proposed, and demonstrate it through them, e.g. if A should be proved through B, and B through C, though it was natural that C should be proved through A: for it turns out that those who reason thus are proving A by means of itself. This is what those persons do who suppose [5] that they are constructing parallel straight lines: for they fail to see that they are assuming facts which it is impossible to demonstrate unless the parallels exist. So it turns out that those who reason thus merely say a particular thing is, if it is: in this way everything will be self-evident. But that is impossible.

 

[Aristotle, “ANALYTICA PRIORA,” (64.2.25–65.1.9) in The Works of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross, trans. A. J. Jenkinson, vol. 1 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1928).]

In other words, with all the cases that allege “discrimination” against same-sex couples, these cases assume facts that have not been proven and all the examples cited as “proof” depend on the claim being proven true—which it has not been. In other words, instead of our legal tradition of “innocent until proven guilty,” this begging the question stands it on its head, making the Christian business owner “guilty until proven innocent."

What is happening here is very much akin to what St. Justin Martyr spoke against in the 2nd century AD:

For from a name neither praise nor punishment could reasonably spring, unless something excellent or base in action be proved. And those among yourselves who are accused you do not punish before they are convicted; but in our case you receive the name as proof against us, and this although, so far as the name goes, you ought rather to punish our accusers. For we are accused of being Christians, and to hate what is excellent (Chrestian) is unjust. Again, if any of the accused deny the name, and say that he is not a Christian, you acquit him, as having no evidence against him as a wrong-doer; but if any one acknowledge that he is a Christian, you punish him on account of this acknowledgment. (First Apology, Chapter IV).

Like 2nd century Rome, people assume from the fact that a person believes that a marriage can only be between one man and one woman as “proof” of his being a bigot without investigating into his motive for acting. Let’s restate that to show the injustice: Instead of investigating each individual accused to see if charges of wrongdoing are valid, the Christian is presumed to be guilty. Like 2nd century Rome, we have made Christian belief a crime where the only defense is to renounce that Christian belief. In effect we have a situation here which is remarkably similar to Ancient Rome—where those who refuse to follow edicts they believe to be morally wrong can be punished for doing so in spite of the fact that the Constitution recognizes freedom of religion as a right the government cannot violate.

Even an anti-Christian should recognize this: once we accept this as a valid tactic to use against those we dislike, it becomes easy for others to use it as a tactic against their enemies, using the same fallacy and the same injustice, unless one rejects expedience and requires judgments to be based on justice—instead of using the legal system and bureaucrats to punish those who are unpopular.

This is the danger of making begging the question into a precedent to judge Christians who say “I will not do what goes against my obligation to know, love and serve God.” If you will not listen to our moral objections, then at least behave rationally and realize that justice must be based on proving intolerance in each case and not merely assume that the belief is based on intolerance.

We Must Stand Up For Right When Society Goes Wrong—Because We Are Christians

‘Isa: So you have no universal law, no higher law, no higher standard than culture, right?

Libby: Right. We don’t claim to have a private telephone line to heaven, like you.

‘Isa: So you can’t criticize your culture, then. Your culture sets the standard. Your culture creates the commandments. Your culture is God. “My country right or wrong.” That doesn’t sound like progressivism to me. That sounds like status quo conservatism.

Libby: You’re confusing me. You make everything stand on its head.

‘Isa: No, you do. Or your media do, and you’ve been suckered by them. It’s a big lie; it’s pure propaganda. If you just stop and think for yourself for a minute, you’ll see that it’s really just the opposite of the media stereotypes. Only a believer in an absolute higher law can criticize a whole culture. He’s the rebel, the radical, the prophet who can say to a whole culture, “You’re worshipping a false God and a false good. Change!” That’s the absolutist; and that’s the force for change. The Jews changed history more than anyone because they were absolutists—the conscience for the world, the Jewish mother who makes you feel guilty about not calling her, not calling on God, not praying. Or guilty about vegging out in front of the TV instead of going out and getting an education and getting a job and changing the world.

Libby: Not fair! The relativist is for change too.

‘Isa: But he has no moral basis for it. All a relativist can say to a Hitler is, “Different strokes for different folks, and I like my strokes and I hate yours.” The absolutist can say, “You and your whole society are wrong and wicked, and divine justice will destroy you, inescapably, unless you repent.” Which of those two messages is more progressive? Which one is the force for change?

[Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 75.]

Introduction

Being a Christian today—at least one who takes a position contrary to what is currently favored culturally—is becoming an unpopular and potentially dangerous stand to take. While society is stressing the importance of being nice, and not saying anything negative about someone we disagree with (except when directed against said Christians), we are unpopular because we say “This is wrong, and cannot be done.” To which, the world says “Stop judging, you bigot!” (completely unaware of the self-contradiction). The impression one gets is that society would be perfectly willing to welcome us back into the fold if we would stop being so obstinate and go along with what they hold.

The Problem

If the society was the source of determining what was right and wrong, then it would be foolish of us to be countercultural. Under such a view, whoever rejected the mores of society would be a hateful person. But this is where the problem lies. Christianity cannot accept society as the source of determining right and wrong. Indeed, we know that societies have a bad habit of going very wrong. In America, our mistreatment of American Indians and African-Americans give us examples of behavior that cannot be considered good even though society once favored it. The totalitarian dictatorships of history give us examples of behavior we cannot condone. So there has to be a source for determining right and wrong which is outside of society. Otherwise, when a new group is in power, people will find themselves without grounds to protest actions they find offensive. And society, in the name of freedom, is rapidly undercutting the pillars that support freedom. They do this by saying, “Stop trying to push your values on us!” while pushing their values on others.

It is only when the people of a society is willing to investigate why a thing is right or wrong and then seek out the right while rejecting the wrong, that it can bring about justice while rejecting injustice. But that is precisely what the people of society are not doing. Instead we have an emotionalism that holds that people should be allowed to do what makes them happy, but that concept of “happy” is based on what makes them feel good. The problem is, some forms of pleasure affect others in a negative fashion. Other forms of pleasure are harmful to the person who pursues them in the long run. But when someone stands up and says, “This is actually harmful,” he or she is shouted down as “intolerant.” The label is not a refutation of the objection, but everybody assumes that it is.

The Christian Mindset

The informed Christian, on the other hand, starts from the perspective that the all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good God designed the universe and everything in it (which does not require a belief in “creationism”). God may be above reason, but is never contrary to reason. From this perspective, God designed His universe in a way that reflects His goodness. As a result, when we try to do things in a way which goes against this design, it is harmful. Maybe that harm is immediately apparent—such as attempting to defy gravity. Other times it takes time to discover—like people who abuse drugs and alcohol not discovering the harm before it is too late.

The point is, the Christian moral code is not an arbitrary ipse dixit invented by a cranky God or made up by a celibate priesthood. The Christian certainly follows God’s commandments because of love for Him (John 14:15), but the reasonableness of God’s teaching is apparent in the cause and effect of what His laws order us for and how rejection of those laws cause harm even for the person who does not believe God exists (physical, psychological and social effects).

That’s not to downplay the very real harm a person does to his or her relationship with God, which is even more serious than the physical, psychological and social effects. But it does show that the Christian’s objection is not based on “Because God said if you don’t do this, you’ll burn in hell!” Rather it is based on, “If you do this, you will destroy yourself spiritually, physically, psychologically and socially and we do not want you to cause your self-destruction."

What Follows From This

Once a person realizes this, the falseness of accusation of “pushing your values on us” is exposed as untrue. The Christian is not trying to force people into adopting a creed. He or she approaches the world from the perspective of trying to do what is right, and challenging the world to stay away from things that are harmful. When we push for society to be good, it is because we recognize that a bad society is harmful to the well-being of each individual and to the cohesion of society as a whole.

And, of course, the Christian protest is true. Society is falling apart. Family ties are collapsing. The individual is considered primary, and anything that dares to suggest that the individual’s desires cannot be elevated at the extent of harming others or disrupting society as God designed it is met with hostility.

Because of What We Are, Christians Must Act

So, even though our stands are increasingly unpopular and misrepresented (it’s easier to hate someone who is misrepresented as acting out of intolerance or other bad will), the committed Christian will not “go along to get along.” Our Lord has tasked us with a mission:

¹⁸  Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

The consequences of rejecting what God has commanded will be alienation from God in the most important aspect, but will affect the other parts of our life as well. For us, standing by while a person destroys their life is akin to standing by while a person drowns. If we could have done something (even if our aid is rejected), but did not, we share in the blame:

¹ The word of the Lord came to me: ² Son of man, speak to your people and tell them: When I bring the sword against a land, if the people of that land select one of their number as a sentinel* for them, ³ and the sentinel sees the sword coming against the land, he should blow the trumpet to warn the people. ⁴ If they hear the trumpet but do not take the warning and a sword attacks and kills them, their blood will be on their own heads. ⁵ They heard the trumpet blast but ignored the warning; their blood is on them. If they had heeded the warning, they could have escaped with their lives. ⁶ If, however, the sentinel sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the sword attacks and takes someone’s life, his life will be taken for his own sin, but I will hold the sentinel responsible for his blood. 

⁷ You, son of man—I have appointed you as a sentinel for the house of Israel; when you hear a word from my mouth, you must warn them for me. ⁸ When I say to the wicked, “You wicked, you must die,” and you do not speak up to warn the wicked about their ways, they shall die in their sins, but I will hold you responsible for their blood. ⁹ If, however, you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, but they do not, then they shall die in their sins, but you shall save your life. (Ezekiel 33:1-9)

Our speaking out to the world can only go so far, and if a warning is unheeded, we cannot help that. But if we do not warn when we should warn, we do evil. 

The Obligation to Search For Truth Remains

Now, the person who rejects this Christian view is not free to go on doing as they like. Each person has the obligation to seek out and live according to what is true, not what is pleasurable. You might say you reject Christian teaching. But on what basis do you reject it? Do you even understand the teaching you are rejecting? Or do you merely associate it with “being mean?” The problem with that is sometimes there is no time for niceties when it comes to shouting a warning—HEY! WATCH OUT! Sometimes the individual lacks the social graces in expressing the truth. But these are not legitimate reasons to refuse to see if the claim is true.

It is not enough to say, “Well I don’t see anything wrong with this!” That’s the argument from ignorance fallacy—just because you don’t see anything wrong with it, doesn’t mean nothing is wrong with it. Each person has the obligation to examine their life and see whether what they do is good or evil. In doing so, they must reject the evil.

Unfortunately, that is seldom done. Many people just go along with an injustice being done, saying “I didn’t know!” or “What could I have done?” But I think we should consider the final lines from the 2004 movie, Downfall:

Traudl Junge: All these horrors I've heard of during the Nurnberg process, these six million Jews, other thinking people or people of another race, who perished. That shocked me deeply. But I hadn't made the connection with my past. I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn't know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn't an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things.

Conclusion

The obligation of each person is to seek out and follow the truth. The reason we are Christians is because we believe we have found the truth—a truth beyond us and above us which guides us to be what we are called to be. Because we possess this truth, we will continue to let people know what it is that we offer. And it is not just a negative, mocking “you’ll be sorry if you don’t listen to us…” warning either. We want people to know and share in the good we have found. Benedict XVI said, in 2005:

Anyone who has discovered Christ must lead others to him. A great joy cannot be kept to oneself. It has to be passed on.

In vast areas of the world today there is a strange forgetfulness of God. It seems as if everything would be just the same even without him.

But at the same time there is a feeling of frustration, a sense of dissatisfaction with everyone and everything.

People tend to exclaim: “This cannot be what life is about!”. Indeed not. And so, together with forgetfulness of God there is a kind of new explosion of religion. I have no wish to discredit all the manifestations of this phenomenon. There may be sincere joy in the discovery. But to tell the truth, religion often becomes almost a consumer product. People choose what they like, and some are even able to make a profit from it.

But religion sought on a “do-it-yourself” basis cannot ultimately help us. It may be comfortable, but at times of crisis we are left to ourselves.

Help people to discover the true star which points out the way to us: Jesus Christ! Let us seek to know him better and better, so as to be able to guide others to him with conviction.

[Benedict XVI, August 21, 2005, Homilies of His Holiness Benedict XVI (English) (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013).]

Out of love of God and love of neighbor, we let people know about the truth. Not for our benefit of course. We’re not on a commission basis. We share because we want you to share in the treasure we have found (Matthew 13:44-47). We want you to avoid the pitfalls which can keep you from receiving it.