Empty Idols

"What fault did your ancestors find in me that they withdrew from me, went after emptiness and became empty themselves?" Jeremiah 2:5

One of the most overlooked Commandments is the first: "You shalt not have other gods besides me." Exodus 20:3. And on the surface, this would seem to be alright. There is no glaring problem with polytheism in the world today. Zeus and Hermes are becoming rather thin for lack of sacrificial offerings these days. Chances are, if you are religious in today's world, you believe in a single god, whether you are Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.

But the real problem is that we take the words that Moses received on Mount Sinai too literally and fail to apply them to contemporary reality. "Gods" do not have to be of Olympian stock. False divinities can also take the forms of money, ambition, and even technology. When a man choses to pursue the accumulation of wealth to the point that it hinders his pursuit of God, he sins against the first commandment. Worshiping idols can take a plethora of forms.

I want to specifically address one of the most dangerous modern idols in today's world: technology. Technology is not inherently evil. When used correctly, it can improve standards of living, relieve the pains of the suffering, and cure diseases. But technology is very easily used for sin, and I'm not simply talking about specific acts of sin like pornography. Technology, specifically smartphones, are very dangerous idols. When you get the chance, look up from your phone and look around you. Chances are, about half of the people you will see, no matter where you are, will be actively engaged in some sort of activity that involves their phone.

Smartphones are the premier in false idols. Not only are they worshipped, but they can interact with their worshippers. Baal is very jealous. The development of technology has progressed to the point that smartphones have the illusion of life.

More than that, smartphones are dangerous because of their versatile and self-contained nature. They can connect you to friends through texting and social media, you can access the Internet, play games, and listen to music all in a device that fits in the palm of your hand. The smartphone can become it's own reality. Why would you have to leave the safety of your iPhone if it has an app for your every desire? Any possible whim you could have can be satisfied by one of millions of apps, many of which are free. This engenders the attitude that life is all about entertainment. Things become useful solely to the extent to which they can provide a few hours or even a few minutes of meaningless fun.

This is an attitude that is directly in conflict with the Truth of God. God does not want us to be trapped in our smartphones. He wants us to interact with the people whom He placed around us, and not just on Twitter. He wants us to work for the salvation of sinners, not a new high score.

Deus Volt!  

A Memorial Day Post: Service

Today is Memorial Day, the day upon which Americans honor the sacrifice and service that has been offered up by countless men and women of the armed forces, or at least, they are supposed to do so. Right now, I see a total lack of respect for the service of our soldiers. Instead of providing support to American heroes, cowards prefer to attack them. They fail to recognize the nature of their sacrifices. Celebrities and politicians sit back in comfort and condemn the acts of violence that soldiers perform, ignoring the difference between a soldier and a criminal. The difference is that soldiers do not fight for themselves. They fight to defend the people they left behind and safeguard the liberty of their nation. The job soldiers have to do might not be nice work, but it is work that has to be done.

The Bible is rife with examples of soldiers. The Old Testament is practically filled with them. Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, Gideon, the list goes on and on. These men exemplify the inherent virtue of the soldier. They take upon themselves the greatest sacrifice: killing and being killed, in order to free their people from bondage, to defend their nation from transgressors who defile the law of God. Judas Maccabeus is one of my favorite biblical figures. His story has clear parallels to today's situation. The Bible tells us that the successors of Alexander the Great decided to suppress the people of Israel by forcing them to violate the commandments of God. Many succumb, those few who do not are killed. But the priest Mattathias, along with his family, refuse to bow to sin. When a royal official comes to Mattathias and tries to convince him to partake in blasphemous sin, Mattathias replies:

 "Even if all the nations that live under the rule of the king obey him, and have chosen to obey his commandments, every one of them abandoning the religion of their ancestors, I and my sons and my brothers will continue to live by the covenant of our ancestors. Far be it from us to desert the law and the ordinances. We will not obey the king's words by turning aside from our religion to the right hand or to the left." (1 Maccabees 2:19-22)

Mattathias and his sons were soldiers of God. They offered up their lives to serve God and their people, even if the political environment did not favor such behavior, much as it does not today.

Dishonor is being done to our soldiers. They are being left behind by politicians who only want the votes of a majority. Go to any major city and walk the streets. Chances are, you will see a homeless veteran. These men and woman suffer from their sacrifices. Many face the crosses of PTSD or TBI. Suicide rates for returning soldiers continue to rise. If you watched the news in recent months, you will have seen news about the VA scandals: veterans with urgent medical needs were left to die.

We need to honor our soldiers. We need to support them just as they supported this country while putting their lives on the line. We need to respectfully bury the martyrs of freedom and honor their memory. We need to tend for the wounded and the hurting soldiers who return from the battlefield to the home. We need to show a little respect.

Deus Volt!  

A Brief History of the War for Souls

Since the creation of Adam and Eve, the Earth has been a battleground. Satan and the forces of evil have been fighting against God and the Heavenly Host of Angels and Saints ever since the Fall.

In terms of strategy, the Devil is trying to seduce and kill as many souls as he can. God wants every soul that He created to go to Heaven, but at the same time, He respects their free will and allows them to make their own choices.

The Devil is fighting a war of attrition. He is trying to steal away souls from God, as many as he can. At the same time, however, his best tactic is that of stealth. Satan is most deadly when no one believes in his existence. His blows are whispers of temptation and discord. Only rarely does Satan resort to direct action. He would prefer to sit in the shadows and nudge souls away from God.

The best way to describe how Satan kills souls is to draw a comparison to the process of addiction: already a demonic process. All Satan needs is the smallest of faults for an opening. He looks for a chink in our spiritual armor and that is where he strikes. But like the coward he is, Satan does not fight fair. He waits until we are at our lowest, physically and spiritually. He strikes when we are tired, hungry, angry, or depressed. Satan prefers to kick us when we are already on the ground. Small sins become larger and larger faults which we overlook. It is denial. The first and hardest step is to admit that we have a problem. Satan wants us to justify and defend our problems until they look insignificant or excusable.

God, on the other hand, relies on our weakness. He does not take advantage of our lowliness, rather, He embraces us for it. If the Devil is fighting a battle of attrition, God has already won the war through a preemptive strike. In a  word, God sent His special forces: Jesus, down to Earth to strike the Devil a finishing blow. The Redemption was the height of asymmetric warfare. The war for souls was won in an instant: when Jesus died for our sins. Christ dashed to pieces all the hopes of Satan. He stormed the stronghold of Hell, rending the gates of Acheron with his Godly might.

The war for souls has already been won. So where does that put us now? Obviously, the Second Resurrection has yet to occur. Spiritual warfare is still continuing. There is still sin. There is still death.

What we are engaged in now is a rear guard action of sorts. The Devil knows that he has lost the war, yet he continues in his arrogance to fight. While there are still souls that can be seduced, Satan will persist to seduce them.

Our objective, therefore, as the Militia Christi, is to finish off the forces of Satan and rout the culture of death. We can take confidence in the fact that the victory is already in our hands. Jesus is already the victor. But victory does not mean that we should balk in our vigilance. Just as the Devil will continue to steal souls, we must continue to save them. Until the Second Resurrection, we must continue to fight. We must make the Earth ready for God's return. We must annihilate the last remnants of Satan's evil and the culture of death.

Deus Volt!

Nietzsche and Relativism

A lot of the world's moral problems can be traced back to relativism. The Oxford English dictionary defines relativism as "The doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute." Relativism is the new truth, the prevailing ideology across the public education systems and modern life in general.

Relativism allows justification for all manner of evils. It blurs the lines of morality and personality. If someone does not "feel" that what they are doing is wrong, than it must not be wrong.  Relativism is the ultimate expression of individualism. It gives the individual unlimited power: the power to decide its own good and evil.

But truth is not "feeling." Truth is not conventional. It is not convenient. Truth is.

The fact that one person believes a ball is orange and another believes it is red does not change the reality that it is in fact blue.

The simplest definition of truth is this: God is truth. God in His ineffable wisdom has decided what truth is. He alone determines good and evil. It is the height of folly to believe we have the power to make that determination ourselves.

God says that marriage is between a man and a woman: "male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). He says that life begins at conception: "before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I dedicated you," (Jeremiah 1:5). Disordered desire cannot change the truth of marriage. We cannot project our own imperfections upon an eternal institution founded by God. A litany of denial cannot erase the truth that life begins at conception. There is no justification for murder, and abortion is just that.

So where did the world go wrong? How is it that truth has been forgotten and stomped upon? Of course, all sin and disorder can be traced back to the Original Fall of man from Eden. But the misconceptions of relativism have only seemed to get stronger and stronger in recent decades. A large part of this movement can be traced back to the school of thought characterized by one man: Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a philosopher at the turn of the twentieth century. He was an ardent and outspoken atheist and cynic. His work is best summed up in a single book: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  This book mocks the rhetorical style of the Bible to further Nietzsche's views. He was a heavy proponent of relativism. He stressed the importance of the individual will and selfishness. He believed that the greatest good was oneself. For Nietzsche, there was no truth. "'This- is now my way- where is yours?' thus I answered those who asked me 'the way.' For the way- that does not exist!" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book III, On the Spirit of Gravity )

The only way we can respond to these existential lies is to follow THE truth. We must counter falsehoods with the unity of God-given truth.

To learn the truth, we must study the Scriptures and the works of the Saints. We must gird ourselves with the righteousness of God's truth.

Deus Volt!  

Tolerance and Love

 "Tolerance is the virtue of a man without conviction."
- G.K. Chesterton

Tolerance. It's a word we hear a lot today. The cry for tolerance is deafening. People must tolerate political differences, religion, sexual orientation, drug use, and morality. If you do not show tolerance, you are swiftly ostracized as a bigot, or worse, a fundamentalist.

Now, there is little wrong with tolerance in itself. As Catholics, we should look past race, religion, and other differences to see the Christ inside of everyone.

The problem comes when we are asked to tolerate sin: to allow the "marriage" of homosexual couples, to respect a woman's "right" to chose death for the human child in her womb, and to stay silent as debauchery, pornography, and vulgarity are protected as expressions of free speech.

No, sin must not be tolerated. It CANNOT be tolerated. The works of the Enemy should not stand unmolested. We should vigorously attack the manifestations of sin within the bounds of God-given authority. We need to hate sin.

Does that then mean that we should hate the sinners too? The junkies, the gangsters, the abortion clinic workers, the immoral rappers, the arrogant businessmen and politicians? Don't they deserve to be punished for what they have done? Shouldn't we avoid them so as not to compromise ourselves?

Brothers and sisters, the answer lies in Scripture. When Jesus saw the adulterous woman who was about to be stoned (John 8), he did not praise the actions of the crowd as being just. Nor did he stand by as her sentence for death was carried out. Jesus confronted the crowds with the inconvenient truth. "'Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.'" (John 8:7). Jesus turned the mirror back onto the crowd. They were just as guilty as the woman, perhaps even more guilty. The less publicly scandalous sin of pride is far more deadly than the sins of the flesh.

So we should love the sinner. Jesus Himself ate with tax collectors and prostitutes (Luke 7:40 is a fine example of this). Jesus looked beyond sin and saw the light of God within them, no matter how hard they tried to hide it. He embraced them, not for their sinfulness, but for their brokenness. Jesus is a Healer, and not just of physical maladies.

Indeed, some of the greatest saints began as the lowest of sinners. Saint Augustine lived with a woman out of wedlock and embraced the heresy of Manichaeism. Saint Francis was the modern equivalent of a frat boy. He went to parties and dances without number. They were not damned for their sins. They were saved and redeemed by their repentance and the unfathomable mercy of God.

But if we are to love the sinner, should we then tolerate sin? The Word of God has an answer for this as well. Upon entering the Temple in Jerusalem during His ministry, Jesus saw the people who were "buying and selling" (Matthew 21:12). They were defiling the Temple. This is the only time in the Gospels where Jesus became angry.  He "overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold doves" (Mark 11:15). What we must remember, however, is that Jesus did not attack the sinners themselves. He attacked the devices of sinfulness to end their defilement of the Temple.

Therefore, we must love the sinner, but attack the instruments of sin. Our war is against the culture of death. We are trying to save the sinners, not to condemn them. Love the sinners and hate the sin.

No, we are not called to tolerate sinners. We are called to do so much more.

Deus Volt!

The Call to Arms

In the year 1095, Pope Urban the II called for a Crusade in response to the threats that the Church faced in his age. Hundreds of thousands of faithful headed his call and joined the ranks of the militia Christi.

Today, the Church is faced with far more existential threats to its Message. There are foes on every side, from relativism to drug abuse. This is a world consumed with war. Do you see it? The culture of death is striving to overthrow the Truth of Christ.

This is not a battle fought with conventional weapons over lines in the sand. This is a war for souls. The Enemy's goal is to turn aside and deceive every last soul in Creation. Satan does so with the false wages of sin. His ammunition is the snares of temptation and vice. Since the beginning of his existence, man has been in the midst of a battle for the preservation of his soul. He fights against temptation every second of every day of his life.

Throughout history, this war has raged on. There have been sinners and there have been saints. There have been heroes and there have been monsters. Every man has to wrestle with pride, with lust, with anger. The Israelites faced the same challenges as the Jesuits. In a sense, it is the same today. Certainly, the world appears to be a different place than it was centuries before. But at the core, in his soul, man is still the same.

While our fight is the same, the conditions have changed. The culture of death has replaced a culture of life. The field of battle is no longer in our favor. In the Middle Ages, we still sinned the same sins as we do today. The only difference is that in the Middle Ages, we knew that we were indeed sinning. The culture of death has perverted the concept of morals through the hands of men like Nietzsche and Freud to the point that there is no right and wrong, only what the individual deems best.

The culture of death's cunning goes beyond shifting philosophies. It has penetrated global culture. Relativism and sin have crept beyond the halls of intellectuals into households. This began in the 1960's with the counter culture movement. Drug abuse and sexual permissiveness went beyond being problems, they became normalized, accepted behavior.

Today social media, politicians, scientists, YouTube stars, celebrities, and athletes are all contributing to the moral decay of our world. One needs only to watch the news or look through Twitter to see the effects of this. What people say no longer needs to be meaningful or true, it only needs to be entertaining.

How does the Church of God respond to this cultural crisis? The culture of death is stealing away souls who have been conditioned to feel no remorse if what they are doing "feels" right. We need to teach the world the difference between what is really right and wrong. We need to bring the light of the Gospel into a world that has been overwhelmed with darkness.

That is the purpose of this blog. The Crusade for Truth is a place for Catholic soldiers to gather. It is a base of operations of sorts in this our spiritual warfare. Here we can gather strength and inspiration, learn and share tactics, and encourage each other.

Deus Volt!