Nicole Demille writes of the perils faced by believers who desire to bring others into the faith while not offending them and the seeming futility of that 'while not':
I find New Year's resolutions to be at worst tedious and insincere, and at best added pressure on people who are already feeling enormous pressure from a dozen forces a day. I seek humility, that most elusive of qualities, in 2014, and I seek Truth in all things. I also pray in 2014 to see, to really see what is before me and what the world and the Foe are trying to hide from me. And to connect all these: to have the humility to empty myself of the need to be liked and approved, to share the Truth that I see, even as doing so becomes increasingly more perilous. There is peril and there is peril. Americans don't face much in the way of grave peril when sharing the Gospel. But we do face social and possibly professional peril, familial peril, and no smallExcellent stuff. Read it all. And perhaps understand what I'm attempting to do but likely failing more often than not. Carry on.measure of distress as we watch ourselves rejected and dismissed as holy rollers, judgmental religious nuts, idealists, ideologues, Jesus Freaks, dinosaurs, uneducated rubes, Bible clingers, and hypocrites. How does a person face such outright and widely promoted labeling? How do we resist caving into the temptation to "go along to get along"? The Catholic body of teaching, if adhered to strictly, is bound, without any shade of doubt, to clash violently with the paradigms of our modern media, our families, and our co-workers. I've written before about the near impossibility of belonging to a political party if one is truly Catholic. That's because I've been buffeted on both sides, even when trying my level best to "speak the truth in love." Speak on the death penalty and watch the narrowing eyes, or watch the comments pile up on Facebook. Speak on abortion and watch that first group smile with approval while another group rises up to condemn you as a misogynist, an antiquarian, and wish a venereal disease on you. "But I see!" you cry. How can you not speak of what you see? If you take your blinders off, if you see Christ in each person, if you love each person as you are called to love him or her, then you have a holy obligation to share the Truth! What a conundrum. What a lonely life it can be. And how we can be accused of pride when in fact what we are doing is attempting invisibility, to eradicate ourselves and let Jesus fill us up with His law and His authentic love. That authentic love HATES sin. Yes, a paradox. Surely you've heard of them. Modern thought doesn't like them. We are commanded to hate what is evil. We are commanded to warn our brother of the oncoming truck before it runs him down. And as we warn him, we are pelted with stones from our ostensibly tolerant society. So: a self-examination. Are we speaking the Truth for the right reasons? Are we representing Christ or are we representing a political ideology? Are we defending the Holy Mother or are we defending our pride in our own traditions? Are we sharing truth to save souls or sharing truth to earn our way in to Heaven? Are we warning our brothers and sisters about their sin in order to set them firmly on the road to earthly peace and eternal bliss, or are we obsessed with being right and being PROVEN right, which is the OPPOSITE and ENEMY of humility? I guarantee you that if your interior motivations are "off" by one degree, you will be unsuccessful in sharing the Truth with anyone. No one has been won to the Truth by being called names or told he was too uneducated to speak about Jesus. No one has converted her heart because you called her a whore or trumpeted your own record of chastity. So before you read on, know this: if you in your heart do not truly love your neighbor as you love yourself, you have to go back on the game board to the beginning square. Start over; do not pass go, do not collect any souls.
measure of distress as we watch ourselves rejected and dismissed as holy rollers, judgmental religious nuts, idealists, ideologues, Jesus Freaks, dinosaurs, uneducated rubes, Bible clingers, and hypocrites. How does a person face such outright and widely promoted labeling? How do we resist caving into the temptation to "go along to get along"? The Catholic body of teaching, if adhered to strictly, is bound, without any shade of doubt, to clash violently with the paradigms of our modern media, our families, and our co-workers.
I've written before about the near impossibility of belonging to a political party if one is truly Catholic. That's because I've been buffeted on both sides, even when trying my level best to "speak the truth in love." Speak on the death penalty and watch the narrowing eyes, or watch the comments pile up on Facebook. Speak on abortion and watch that first group smile with approval while another group rises up to condemn you as a misogynist, an antiquarian, and wish a venereal disease on you.
"But I see!" you cry. How can you not speak of what you see? If you take your blinders off, if you see Christ in each person, if you love each person as you are called to love him or her, then you have a holy obligation to share the Truth! What a conundrum. What a lonely life it can be. And how we can be accused of pride when in fact what we are doing is attempting invisibility, to eradicate ourselves and let Jesus fill us up with His law and His authentic love. That authentic love HATES sin. Yes, a paradox. Surely you've heard of them. Modern thought doesn't like them. We are commanded to hate what is evil. We are commanded to warn our brother of the oncoming truck before it runs him down. And as we warn him, we are pelted with stones from our ostensibly tolerant society.
So: a self-examination. Are we speaking the Truth for the right reasons? Are we representing Christ or are we representing a political ideology? Are we defending the Holy Mother or are we defending our pride in our own traditions? Are we sharing truth to save souls or sharing truth to earn our way in to Heaven? Are we warning our brothers and sisters about their sin in order to set them firmly on the road to earthly peace and eternal bliss, or are we obsessed with being right and being PROVEN right, which is the OPPOSITE and ENEMY of humility? I guarantee you that if your interior motivations are "off" by one degree, you will be unsuccessful in sharing the Truth with anyone. No one has been won to the Truth by being called names or told he was too uneducated to speak about Jesus. No one has converted her heart because you called her a whore or trumpeted your own record of chastity. So before you read on, know this: if you in your heart do not truly love your neighbor as you love yourself, you have to go back on the game board to the beginning square. Start over; do not pass go, do not collect any souls.
