By Father Rich Tomkosky
Something hit me recently. I was listening to some Catholic speaker and he said, “God loves us unconditionally.” I have heard that many times over the years, as I am sure you have as well, but this time it hit me: I don’t think that’s true. So, I started doing some research and my intuition was right.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say God loves us humans unconditionally (it turns out that it is a notion of feel-good modern pop psychology that people have projected onto God – as there has to be a mutual free response and reciprocal self-giving for relationships to be truly loving: see in marriage, with parents and children, with friends – otherwise it is dysfunctional, codependent, abusive in various ways; Jesus also says we are to love our neighbor as ourselves – again a conditional thing – if we don’t love ourselves rightly in God we can’t truly love others).
But back to God, throughout the Bible we are told, that only a person who has accepted the gift of faith from God and lives it with integrity can please the Lord. God loves us immensely and wants us to be in union with Him, but the condition is we have to accept His teaching and put it into daily practice by prayer, by following the 10 Commandments and all the teachings of our Catholic faith. Only in Heaven will there be unconditional love.
Tied into what I just said, Scripture point out that loving our neighbor means speaking the truth to others and ourselves, even when it is unpleasant to do so – but hopefully we do it in a humble and attractive way – since our God and our faith is based on the objective truth of what God has revealed for our salvation.
God gives the prophet Ezekiel the mission of speaking the truth of God’s religious and moral standards to the people; and in fact, God tells him that the salvation of his own soul depends on whether he warns the people or not (see my role as a Pastor of souls, mothers and fathers and their children, etc.). The results are not what should concern us – that is God’s business (as Saint Mother Teresa once famously said, “God calls us to be faithful – not necessarily successful.”); God simply gives us the mission to live and speak the truth of His ways to others. We “speak” to them by all that we say, think and do. This is not any easy task by any means, esp. in our day. Pray for courage.
We live in a time of what the recent Popes have called an age of moral and spiritual relativism, meaning that many people in our day do not believe in objective standards of religious and moral truth outside of what they decide in their own minds. You often hear statements in our culture which reflect this mentality of relativism: that may be true for you, but not for me; speak my truth, we must be “tolerant;” don’t judge, don’t preach, etc.
Because of this spiritually/intellectually deficient modern mentality, we who are believers are often tempted to give into the moral/spiritual relativism of our time and/or not to speak the objective truth of God to others, which we have been given through the gift of our Catholic faith, especially when it deals with doctrine and morals: e.g., the need of holy Mass and regular reception of Confession, the truth about abortion, sexual morality, euthanasia, getting married in the Church, etc. But in the end, it will be to our detriment, for if we don’t speak up now, we will answer to the Lord for that when we die – bad. We must speak the truth because people’s salvation is at stake!
We are called to love the sinner, but hate the sin; not justify the sin because we love the sinner, especially when the issue is difficult: drug and alcohol abuse, someone living the homosexual lifestyle, couples living together with sexual intimacy – but without the benefit of the Sacrament of Marriage, married couples not following the Church’s teaching on contraception/ sterilization, etc. It is SUCH a temptation to just “go along to get along,” to “keep the peace” – BUT that is a false charity which never helps anyone in the end.
And remember how we say things is as important as what we say. Pray to the Holy Spirit to help us witness to the truth in an attractive way, hopefully, and to know when to speak and when not to speak: and especially to always pray and offer silent sacrifice/penance for the conversion of souls as Our Lady of Fatima asks us to do on a daily basis, but with a gentle firmness – following Jesus’s pattern of fraternal correction in the Gospel: see especially the true event of the woman caught in adultery (John 8: 1-11). He says I do not condemn you but go and sin no more! God bless you.
Father Rich Tomkosky is the Pastor of Saint Thomas the Apostle Parish in Bedford and Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Beans Cove.
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