The best kind of controversy

A few weeks ago, on Wednesday, I encountered a woman holding a sign that said “JESUS SAVES U”.  I was encouraged when she first asked me if she should try to “prick the conscious of a cold-blooded murderer.”  When I said yes, she asked how I felt about abortion.  She was surprised to find that I was pro-life, and proceeded to inform me that there are two abortion clinics in the area.  

“Well, let’s pray about it!” I said.

She nodded, and invited me to pray right there.  But after I had made the sign of the cross, she interrupted me.  “Are you Catholic?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am.  I’m on my way to Mass right now!”

“Oh, you should read the King James Bible.  The reasons I disagree with the Catholic church are that y’all pray to the saints and to Mary, and thou shalt call no man ‘father’ except the Lord.  The Bible don’t say anything about popes or priests or anything like that.”  I said that prayers to saints are really just asking the to pray for us and with us, just as she had asked me to pray with her.  She listened, but she wasn’t really interested in a dialogue at that moment, and she pretty quickly transitioned into a prayer.  Extending her hands over me, she prayed, “Dear Lord God, please increase this child’s knowledge of Your truth.  She is a religious girl, she is seeking You, she is going to Mass in the middle of the day.  I ask you to bless her and help her to feel Your presence today.  Increase her faith and her knowledge of You, Lord God!”

As she prayed over me, I got goosebumps all over and I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit around us.  “Thank you so much,” I said when she was finished.  “God bless you!”

“I can’t accept your blessing because I don’t believe in your God, but have a great day!  And read the King James Bible,” she said, smiling.

All of the complaints she listed to me about the Catholic faith centered around her concern that we give too much glory to people and not enough to God Himself.  Although I believe she is misinformed about Catholic theology, this is exactly the right concern.  In the Catholic faith, we pray to saints, and for Heaven’s sake we worship the flesh and blood of Jesus in the form of bread and wine.  It is either exactly correct—or it’s idolatry.  And idolatry is, I think, God’s greatest concern.  He spends significant portions of the Old Testament fighting to keep the hearts of His chosen people, but they keep betraying Him and worshipping other gods, starting new churches, and doing things their own ways instead of having faith in His ways.

UPDATE:  My dear friend Zach has corrected my italicized words about the Eucharist—indeed, we are worshipping the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ present in the bread and wine!  And thank you, Zach, for providing a Biblical reference to explain this correction:  1 Cor. 14-22.

The Catholic faith is either the closest thing to the Truth that you can find on earth, or it is absolutely spiritually dangerous!  There is no middle ground.  What we do at Mass should be very controversial.  We believe that through transubstantiation, the soul of Jesus becomes present to us in bread and wine in the same way that it was present when He was walking around on earth 2000 years ago.  If it is, we're encountering God physically—for real!  If it's not, then we're treating something that isn't God like it is God.  Either one is a big deal.

Just as Jesus Himself is either God or the devil.  Again, there is no middle ground.  He can’t just be a “nice guy”.  Not if we take the Bible at its word for what He said and did.  He performed supernatural healings and instructed His followers to give their entire lives, their very souls to Him—to put Him as a priority even above their families and friends.  Nobody should ask us to do that except God, so anyone else who does is speaking with the voice of the devil.

Peter Kreeft describes this very well in his book Jesus Shock.  It’s a short book about how it should be impossible to be “neutral” about Jesus Christ.  Almost everything He does and says is absolutely shocking and controversial.  It’s a message I think our non-confrontational world needs to hear.  

That’s not to say that everyone needs to have such extreme love/hate reactions to Catholics and/or Christians as people—just our dogma.  The woman who prayed over me clearly loved me.  She also acknowledged that I was seeking God’s love.  She believed she was providing me with important discipline that would help my relationship with Him to grow.  And she did this without being patronizing or rude.  She condemned the practices of my faith, but she did not condemn me.  In fact, she encouraged me!

This amazing, Godly woman was able to communicate in loving words that she believed that my faith was spiritually dangerous.  We need more people like that in this world!