The Lord God is a jealous God. He is concerned about those who cleave to medical science as their savior. He sees how fear of disease and death reigns in the hearts of those who He loves. Because they live in this fear instead of in Him, He is concerned over all the ways that they allow themselves to be manipulated. Under the spell of algorithmic social enchantments, He knows that many are losing the only firm ground that can bear the weight of human existence. With no grounding, He sees how the changing winds of each new political fashion or social agenda blow his children this way and that.
The culturally and politically powerful find the current state of affairs advantageous: never let a good disaster go to waste they whisper to themselves. Indeed, the possibility of God's existence dethrones the absolute claim governments want to make over human affairs. This is why secular polemicists revel in interpreting science as a weapon against God.
We have all personally experienced how, when this weapon is politicized, it becomes simply a tool for social manipulation. It is the survival of the fittest when scientists and psychologists replace priests and bishops. The end justifies the means if science says so.Threats, dire forecasts, and moralizing drive us to the crystalline utopias of scientific fantasies. All the while whole populations go neglected and abandoned - and to dare to question this is worse than heresy. Case in point: If someone approaches holy communion in a manner that does not conform to public policy, we have seen ministers dutifully withhold the sacrament. If however the communicant is policy compliant, no matter the sins on his hands, far be it from the minister to deny. After all, it is reasoned, science knows that there are more culturally acceptable causes than life in the womb. Such abuse of science sews fear, hubris and ambition, but never firm hope or lasting peace. Science is human and the truly human needs the one true God.
God takes the side of the poor and vulnerable. He accomplishes his purpose right under the smirk of the arrogant. In the end, a certain respect for reality and humanity's place in it will be recovered. In light of how God is working in our midst, the Church does not pose a simplistic choice between God and science. True science has a secular character but it is not reducible to a propaganda tool for secularism. Science is not opposed to truth and God Himself is Uncreated Truth.
If those whom we love are subject to grave threat, instead of clinging tighter to the work of our hands, the Almighty is teaching us to let go and cleave to Him by faith. Only when we learn to revere the Maker of Heaven and Earth, and praise His wonders, can all our clever machines serve their proper purpose.
The Church exists to remind the world that God is real, that he made humanity to offer Him praise, and that, though we rejected this reality and lost ourselves in our own fears, He has come to bring us hope. This is the real world and to believe otherwise is to risk being imprisoned in what appeals to the imagination. The preaching of the the Body of Christ must dispel the myth that the merely material actually suffices for the spiritual needs of the heart. Indeed, the Mystical Bride must not be afraid to witness how a purely secular existence is empty compared to what the Lord would have for us.
The Truth from above humbly reveals Himself to humanity in our scientific discourse, if we accept its limits. If medicine reveals an evil threat, science does not absolve us from doing something to relieve the plight of others. Instead, what we learn can prick our conscience and pierce our heart until we relieve the plight of our neighbor.
If the Lord wants science to see all it has the power to behold, the Conquerer of Death also points us to all the new possibilities beyond those horizons. Eyes no longer subject to death help us find that pathway into the heart that can raise a soul from death to life. God is ever ready to re-establish human dignity, even when it seems most lost. And by this hope we are saved. No matter the violence or the turmoil, Uncreated Truth continually brings the world to rest on a tender mercy far beyond the calculations of the clever and mighty.
"The Church exists to remind the world that God is real, that he made humanity to offer Him praise, and that, though we rejected this reality and lost ourselves in our own fears, He has come to bring us hope." These lines are the essence of Anthony Lilles' beautiful and theologically easy to understand message, thank you. In these times of sexual scandals and misunderstanding of God's intent for human sexuality, I would only ask the readers to use Lilles' guiding words in this area of human prayer: "He made human sexuality "to offer Him praise." To deny this is to blaspheme using our sexual language. AMDG, Gonzalo T. Palacios, author of "Mary, the Unwed Mother of God."
ReplyDelete