I frequent a number of liberal blog sites. Recently I came across a liberal argument on moral issues that went something like this:
Things go wrong. Just because someone chooses not to martyr themselves or makes a choice to protect or defend themself first doesn’t make them selfish or bad. Choices are relative, neither bad or good and no particular action will make you holier.
I’ve thought about that for a while and bounced it off of Mr. Pete. I think the thinking there for a Christian has some flaws in it.
The only unequivocally true statement there is the first sentence. Things will go wrong. Count on it. I reject the notion that you can’t know for sure how you would act in a particular situation until you are faced with it. I particularly reject it the older you get. If you are a person of faith and principal, and if you have the ability to learn from your past mistakes, then the older you get you can more or less anticipate how you will react to tragedies and hardships. St. Peter denied our Lord three times when his own butt was on the line, but he learned from that error and in the end he died for our Lord. He learned from his mistake and corrected it.
I think as parents we can help prepare our young people to develop their moral convictions and help them to practice putting those into action before they actually happen. I speak to my older children about things in the news all of the time, and how people reacted to them, and whether they think they were right or not, and how they would handle the same situation if it presented itself to them. I think this type of roll playing gets them prepared to think about such things more personally and helps them prepare for the inevitable. We also talk about t.v. shows and movies, and what the characters do and whether it was right or not, and put ourselves into those situations as well. This makes for good family discussion but it also helps the children exercise that part of their intellect in a more concrete fashion. They get to think about tricky situations before they are faced with them.
The second sentence I also had a problem with. God doesn’t necessarily call us to martyr ourselves and in fact saints, like St. Thomas Moore, looked for moral and practical ways to keep the faith and avoid martyrdom if at all possible. What if St. Thomas had signed Henry VIII’s paper and avoided his execution? Who could blame him? Probably no one. That would be the human thing to do, to save himself. But he would be a mere footnote in history now and not the brave courageous man of principal, as well as great saint that he is known for today. Heroes are people who have learned to put themselves last for the sake of others and our books of saints are full of such people. Mother Theresa, Father Damien, the Cure D’ars come to my mind immediately of such selfless folks. So clearly a martyrdom of sorts is good and is unselfish. I don’t think it can be argued convincingly otherwise!
And I reject the last sentence completely. We are what our choices make of us, and each choice is either one towards holiness, or not. The Gospel of St. Matthew tells us that the choice not to follow Jesus is not a holy choice and does not lead to heaven:
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
and what is the will of the Father?
Jesus tells us in Luke9:23
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
Those are the daily hardships that happen to us according to our station in life but they are also the things that “go wrong.” How we handle those things certainly can help us grow in holiness, provided we pick up those crosses and carry them.
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