“If You Do Not Live What You Believe, You Will End up Believing What You Live.”

That from Fulton Sheen, quoted in this excellent piece by Deacon Branson Hipp:

There is a scene I am always struck by in C.S. Lewis’ work The Great Divorce, where two friends, one dwelling in heaven and the other in hell, are discussing their loss of faith in college, and the slow process that led up to it. The damned soul firmly maintains that his opinions on religion, while possibly wrong, were honestly formed, and therefore did not merit condemnation. Then his old friend replies:

“Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man’s mind. If that’s what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.”

I have seen a good number of people drift away from their Catholic faith as they got older, began college or entered the work force. When I ask gently why they no longer practiced their faith, the response is usually a shrug and an “I guess it just sort of happened.”

Slowly, going to church slips away as we get busy:  there is too much going on and too much to do (…and surely a loving God understands?). When we completely stop going, we also stop thinking about Christ or the faith.  Less and less do we value the beliefs of that outdated, overly-institutional, and most likely corrupt church, and we take on the values of the outside world without questioning them. Next thing we know, it has been years since we have stepped foot in a church, and since we have received forgiveness and the Lord in the Eucharist. And now? The distance is too great, it has been too long, and we are too sluggish. And, frankly, life is a mess. We are sinking in the mire and there doesn’t seem to be a way out.

Fulton Sheen once said, “If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live.” As the practice of the faith slips away, so does belief, exactly like the lost soul in The Great Divorce. I have noticed in my own life that falling away from God is a lot like gaining weight: It happens slowly over time, and we don’t really notice it or think about it until we are shocked at what we see in the mirror. It happens easily, without the slightest resistance or blatant red flag. Where was my warning? How did it come to this?

I pray you'll read the rest.

I do.