My phone on my desk is blinking some sort of strange alien Morse code at me. It has been doing that since I sat down this morning…approximately 45 minutes ago. Incidentally, I can’t use the phone (inbound or outbound) because it thinks it is the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO for short). There have been brief relapses where it seemed to regain its composure and actually showed the time and date on its little screen. Since I have graduated college I have been working with phones similar, if not identical, to the one sitting on the desk next to me and I have never seen one have a nervous breakdown like this one seems to be having. Oh wait…its seizures have stopped, but the time is incorrect. Perhaps it thinks it was in a time warp or something of that nature while it sat there blinking all over the place. Hmm, I now find myself slightly obsessed with whether it will relapse back into its terrible blinking fits or whether it has made a full recovery (well, almost full, the time is still wrong).
…
I apologize. I just took some time out to text message someone who is about to start their end of term exams and may or may not have needed a little cheering up. In that time, the phone on my desk flipped out for a brief while and then just returned to the state it was in before. Maybe it took a subconscious journey or had an out of body experience that took it to Colorado. And on this magnificent journey to Colorado it changed its clock to adjust to Mountain Time. Upon returning from this mind trip (can you say mind or do you have to say something else like circuit or processor) it forgot it was just a dream and left the time as it would be in another state.
Speaking of mind trips and out of body experiences…ok, maybe not, but it was a good segue. Last night we finally celebrated my birthday as a family by going out to eat together. I am increasingly reminded by my friend Fernando and my brother that I need to find someone (i.e. a close friend of the opposite sex, a significant other, a lady friend, etc.). Nothing makes that more apparent than when we do family dinners and there are an odd number of people. To me, sometimes, five is the loneliest number. Not that I feel alone with my family or that I feel like a fifth wheel…far from it. But it does remind me that I don’t have someone. Not to mention the fact that it is my 25th birthday, after all, and the last relationship I was in put me on a timeline to be married this summer. I now find that I don’t have anyone and I don’t really have prospects and I am getting older, more tired, and sadly bigger (fatter) every day. Of course I can change the fat thing, which is on my list of things to do, and I can change the tired thing, which I have already begun working on, but I can’t change the getting older thing.
Don’t get me wrong…25 is still very young and I have a lot of life left to live (at least I hope so), but I am not getting anything accomplished in my current position. I know I have said this before and complaining about it isn’t going to change anything, so I won’t. It’s just hard to find an “ideal” woman with what society gives people to work with. Bars and clubs are a joke. Built more to foster the one night stand than the long term relationship, modern bars are just the epitome of the base culture we live in. I am not saying that I won’t go to bars/clubs because I have and will and do enjoy going from time to time. But for a guy in his mid twenties it can be dangerous due to the abundant amount of money chasing skanks and of course the “cougar” phenomenon. Call me old fashioned…but what ever happened to the ice cream social or the block party? What happened to meeting that special someone at church or in the grocery store?
I feel like the woman of my dreams may be just like me…sitting at home enjoying her own company or the company of close friends, not going out because it is expensive and often uncomfortable.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Catholic Answer Series: A Debate Over Christ's Meaning of Righteousness
In Matthew 5:20 Christ instructs his followers, "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven." This is an important, though often misunderstood verse when employed in Protestant-Catholic discussions of justification.
Some Catholics cite the passage, but leave the impression that the Catholic Church teaches we must attain righteousness by our own efforts: God gives us a certain amount of grace to make of it, by our own power, what we will. To Protestants, this sounds (understandably) like semi-Pelagianism [the belief that original sin did not taint human nature (which, being created from God, was divine), and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without Divine aid].
Most Protestants misunderstand the passage, in my opinion, because they try to rob it of its moral force. Jesus, they claim, is revealing the futility of trying to achieve righteousness through good deeds. They say he's really contrasting the false righteousness of good works with the true, merely imputed, declaratory righteousness that comes through faith alone.
Both interpretations of the passage miss something. The pseudo-Catholic view is wrong because the Catholic Church rejects semi- Pelagianism…the belief God does half and we do half…as forcefully as any Protestant church.
The great Thomist Garrigou-Lagrange (quoted in Louis Bouyer's The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, p. 53) summarized the Catholic position when he observed that "in the work of salvation all is from God, including our own co-operation, in the sense that we cannot distinguish a part as exclusively ours, which does not come from the author of all good." From the Catholic point of view, God initiates our salvation by his grace, but he doesn't stop there. Our works of obedience which follow the start of God's salvific action in us are also the work of grace. This is what Paul means in Philippians 2:12-13 when he says we're to work out our salvation and yet reminds us that "it is God who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work." Or as Augustine put it, when God rewards our merits or works, he crowns his own gifts to us.
The common Fundamentalist use of Matthew 5:20 also misses the mark. Jesus isn't contrasting imputed righteousness with the righteousness of good works. He's contrasting the external righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees with the interior righteousness that proceeds from the heart and which is to characterize his followers. Jesus is telling his disciples how to be righteous…not how to look righteous. This is illustrated in Matthew 5 in Christ's teaching about anger and murder (Matt. 5:21-26), lust and adultery (Matt. 5:27-32), oaths and truth telling (Matt. 5:33-37), retaliation (Matt. 5:38-42), and the love of enemies (Matt. 5:43-48). In each of these areas, the concern is for internal righteousness and sanctity surpassing external performance.
The same principle applies to Christ's treatment of the three characteristic forms of Jewish piety in Matthew 6:1-18: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. Jesus doesn't deny these are righteous deeds or good works. His concern is that such acts be done authentically--that is, because of the love of God, not merely "that people may see them" (Matt. 6:1). Although Christ is interested in heartfelt obedience rather than mere external performance, nowhere does he say external performance is unimportant or that genuine works of obedience shouldn't be considered righteous deeds before God.
In fact, his warning to "take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see" suggests just the opposite, as do his admonition in Matthew 6:33 to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" and his teaching that we must do the will of the Father to enter the kingdom (Matt. 7:21).
How, then, does Jesus teach his followers to surpass the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? By obeying God from the heart, not simply with the lips. This is not some sort of imputed, extrinsic, "looking-at-the-believer-through-Jesus-colored-glasses" righteousness. No, it's the result of a grace-created interior transformation in which believers can grow through authentic obedience (1 John 3:7) as true children of God (Matt. 5:45).
Some Catholics cite the passage, but leave the impression that the Catholic Church teaches we must attain righteousness by our own efforts: God gives us a certain amount of grace to make of it, by our own power, what we will. To Protestants, this sounds (understandably) like semi-Pelagianism [the belief that original sin did not taint human nature (which, being created from God, was divine), and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without Divine aid].
Most Protestants misunderstand the passage, in my opinion, because they try to rob it of its moral force. Jesus, they claim, is revealing the futility of trying to achieve righteousness through good deeds. They say he's really contrasting the false righteousness of good works with the true, merely imputed, declaratory righteousness that comes through faith alone.
Both interpretations of the passage miss something. The pseudo-Catholic view is wrong because the Catholic Church rejects semi- Pelagianism…the belief God does half and we do half…as forcefully as any Protestant church.
The great Thomist Garrigou-Lagrange (quoted in Louis Bouyer's The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, p. 53) summarized the Catholic position when he observed that "in the work of salvation all is from God, including our own co-operation, in the sense that we cannot distinguish a part as exclusively ours, which does not come from the author of all good." From the Catholic point of view, God initiates our salvation by his grace, but he doesn't stop there. Our works of obedience which follow the start of God's salvific action in us are also the work of grace. This is what Paul means in Philippians 2:12-13 when he says we're to work out our salvation and yet reminds us that "it is God who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work." Or as Augustine put it, when God rewards our merits or works, he crowns his own gifts to us.
The common Fundamentalist use of Matthew 5:20 also misses the mark. Jesus isn't contrasting imputed righteousness with the righteousness of good works. He's contrasting the external righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees with the interior righteousness that proceeds from the heart and which is to characterize his followers. Jesus is telling his disciples how to be righteous…not how to look righteous. This is illustrated in Matthew 5 in Christ's teaching about anger and murder (Matt. 5:21-26), lust and adultery (Matt. 5:27-32), oaths and truth telling (Matt. 5:33-37), retaliation (Matt. 5:38-42), and the love of enemies (Matt. 5:43-48). In each of these areas, the concern is for internal righteousness and sanctity surpassing external performance.
The same principle applies to Christ's treatment of the three characteristic forms of Jewish piety in Matthew 6:1-18: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. Jesus doesn't deny these are righteous deeds or good works. His concern is that such acts be done authentically--that is, because of the love of God, not merely "that people may see them" (Matt. 6:1). Although Christ is interested in heartfelt obedience rather than mere external performance, nowhere does he say external performance is unimportant or that genuine works of obedience shouldn't be considered righteous deeds before God.
In fact, his warning to "take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see" suggests just the opposite, as do his admonition in Matthew 6:33 to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" and his teaching that we must do the will of the Father to enter the kingdom (Matt. 7:21).
How, then, does Jesus teach his followers to surpass the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? By obeying God from the heart, not simply with the lips. This is not some sort of imputed, extrinsic, "looking-at-the-believer-through-Jesus-colored-glasses" righteousness. No, it's the result of a grace-created interior transformation in which believers can grow through authentic obedience (1 John 3:7) as true children of God (Matt. 5:45).
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