The Problem With Apologetics

Frank Summers, one of FMC’s founders, once told me that apologetics didn’t lead people to Jesus.  It was during our first conversation, he told me that apologetics and missions didn’t mix.  Missions was about Evangelization and the Good News whereas apologetics was about winning an argument.  I argued with him on a number of topics early on in our relationship and this was one of them. I used to be convinced that he was wrong yet after years of being in the mission field, I have come to appreciate his wisdom and experience. 

The root problem with apologetics is that it ends up placing us in an adversarial relationship with those whom we are trying to love.  In apologetical discourse, one is normally trying to gain a point as it were or make the other stumble.  It is about giving answers, deflecting challenges to one’s faith.  Yet missions is about relationships.  It is also about opening up to an experience of God in another person.  It involves a humble acceptance of one’s own limitations. 

Evangelization isn’t about gaining points or numbers, it isn’t even about augmenting the number of people in church on Sunday.  Evangelization is entails the “initial ardent proclamation by which a person is one day overwhelmed and brought to the decision to entrust himself to Jesus Christ by faith”. (Evangelii Gaudium 215) This is a deeply personal and unique experience and doesn’t always follow formulas.  I have discovered that men especially are more easily impassioned to defend some dogmatic position than listen to another’s experience.  We don’t debate relationships.  What we can do is share our perspectives and beliefs and often we also can learn from others.

Furthermore, God won’t be boxed in.  Just as we can and do have different relationships with the same person so, also each person has a unique unrepeatable experience of God.  We need to be open to the different ways God relates to others including non-Christians.  We can’t judge another’s experience of God’s love.  Their experience is valid.  Our experiences of the transcendent aren’t the same even among Catholics who profess the same creed and that’s proper and good.

In the end, we need allow God to speak to the person and attract them to the truth.  It’s not about winning souls or a debate.  It’s about sharing in an experience of God’s love and looking for how God is expressing his love in another. God is asking us as a Church to make his love known in the world not to shield itself from every misunderstanding. “A Church worried about defending her good name, who struggles to renounce what is not essential, no longer feels the passion of bringing the Gospel into today’s world. And it ends up being a beautiful museum piece rather than the simple and joyful home of the Father. Ah, the temptation of museums!” Pope Francis

“Why Doesn’t He Have To Do That?” -One Of My Kids, Everyday

I have learned so much about the spiritual life by watching and reflecting on my children. For example, if the kids have to clean up their room (which they don’t like to do surprise, surprise) they seem more caught up in what their siblings (usually the younger ones) are not doing than what they themselves should do. One will ask, “Why do I have to do that?  What about him?” 

Formation and Songs at the Ezekiel Center

What’s worse, I have caught myself asking God the same questions. The very fact that I ask has revealed to me some surprising truths about my actions.  Sometimes I am more annoyed or angered at another’s persons faults or I complain to God about the unfairness of my life.  It’s frequently at that very moment that I come to realize I am acting out of obligation or fear.  When I find myself angry in church at someone else’s actions, I sometimes think that deep down I don’t want to have to act the way I am acting but I feel obliged to do so or afraid at the consequences if I don’t.  Have you ever secretly rejoiced in another’s suffering because you knew they would not have suffered like that if they had acted as you did?  I have.  This “neighbor-distraction” brings unhappiness and a false sense of spiritual entitlement.

As a contrast, in our family, if we are going to do something fun or particularly enjoyable my kids have the opposite response.  They rarely consider what the neighbor kids are doing.  When it’s ice cream, they are caught up in the moment but when its church they feel mistreated because the neighbors don’t have to go. 

In my relationship with God it goes something like this: 

“Why do I have to go to Church? He’s not going?”

“Why do I have to give to the poor, they should go work like me.”

“Why do I have to apologize she is more at fault.”

But I notice when it is something to my advantage I’m aren’t really concerned with another.  And when God offers me his generous love I rarely think to ask:

“Why did I get forgiven she didn’t?”

“Why do I get to take communion they don’t”

“What makes me any more worthy than him?”

When I realize that I am treating my religious experience more as a chore than as an opportunity for intimacy with God, I try to remind myself that God is present with me at that moment and I ask him to draw me close to his heart.  The Carmelite Brother Lawrence once wrote, “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess GOD in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.”  I want to possess God that way. Don’t you?

God please help me to experience each moment as a moment with and in you, an opportunity to experience intimacy and friendship with you.  I know I can’t out give you, you have always given me more than I have given up.”

Candle Defense in the School of the Cross

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1

During my first few month of living in Mexico, I decided to attend a men’s retreat called the School of the Cross.  Since I was only just beginning to learn Spanish, I didn’t understand much of what was going on and I couldn’t communicate well with anyone.  Our first night, after dinner, we were given candles and led to the inner courtyard of the retreat house.  Soon afterwards, our retreat leader, a priest named Roberto, entered the courtyard carrying the kindled Pascal candle.  As in the Eucharistic Vigil, we lit our candles off the Easter candle as we sang a song.  Father passed through the midst of us sharing his fire with us and before long, the entire place was bright with the flames of a hundred or so men. 

            Then Father Roberto began speaking to us.  While he was speaking (I couldn’t understand almost anything he said) a second priest and some of the men who were working on the retreat staff passed among us and put out our candles one by one.  Before long all was dark again except the Pascal flame.   Father asked why we let our lights go out.  Although I am not a hundred percent sure what that activity was supposed to teach us, it was only last year (ten years later) that this event became significant to me. 

            We have struggled over the years in our mission life with those inside the Church, especially clergy, who seem to want more to put out our lights than light them.  Sometimes I have seen people within the church who would rather others walk in darkness and ignorance or at the very least follow their own small light instead of watching the light of the world increase within the community. They would rather a controlled burn than a flame that will catch the world on fire.

As I reflected on this event in my life, I realized that it wasn’t the other retreatants nor those outside the center who were threatening our lights, but rather the other priest and those who worked the retreat who were putting them out.  In my life, I have experienced the most persecution, misunderstanding and judgement from those who work within the church.  Oftentimes in mission, our creative initiatives have been viewed as suspect at best and at times, we have experienced downright hostility.   I didn’t realize that their hostility wasn’t an indication of God’s desire.  I remember that at first, if a priest or bishop suggested or petitioned something, I assumed it was the voice of God.  I remember once we had a wonderful flourishing ministry in Peru.  It was our first Ezekiel Home. 

Our pastor asked us to leave that ministry and our town and move out to a distant village.  If I had been more prudent (and a bit more courageous), I would have told him that that I didn’t believe that was a good idea because we were leading an entire community of missionaries.  Teresa and I needed to be available to them.  Instead of this, I just said yes believing that the voice of the pastor was the voice of God.  Now I realize it wasn’t a great decision.  We should have stayed and developed our ministry. We could have served our FMC fledgling community better.  We didn’t guard our flame.  Looking back on all these experiences I have come to appreciate how much we lay people have to offer our struggling Church.  I look forward with anticipation to the upcoming Synod on Synodality.  I know that if we allow the Holy Spirit to enflame our Church with the fire of God’s love we will have to also defend it—even at times against those we love within the Church.

“Fine, Then Now You’re Not My Best Friend!”

I don’t have a context
For that kind of love
I don’t understand
I can’t comprehend
All I know is I need You

Matt Maher

                I don’t know about your family, but in our home, the youngest kids tend to pledge friendship when they are happy with someone and then take it away when they are displeased or annoyed.  My youngest son Silas (bless his heart) typically runs up to me, hugs me and tells me how much he loves me, finally bestowing upon me the coveted title of being his “best friend”.  I actually have a recording of him saying, “Daddy, you are my best friend and not mommy.” (I bribed him to say it.) I know it’s pitiable that I need the recording but he frequently says “mommy is my best friend and not you dad”. 

Routinely it goes like this:

“Daddy, you are my best friend. I love you.” 

“Thanks Silas, I love you too and you are also It my best friend.” 

“Daddy…”

“Yeah, Silas, what’s up?”

“Can I have a dollar and then walk to the store by myself and buy candy?”

“No, Silas.”

“But I’m staaaaarving!”

“Well, you have to eat your lunch.”

“I don’t want to eat this.”

“I know, but you can’t just eat candy.”

“Fine, then now I’m not your best friend, only mommy.” 

Alternatively, how about this one:

“Do I have to take a nap?” (This after 30 minutes of screaming and crying for no obvious reason)

“Yes, Silas”

“Then now you’re not my best friend.” 

(On a real bad day, he may even add, ) “I don’t even love you now.”

Obviously, he does this to get me to behave the way he wants.  It’s funny at times to be honest.  Teresa and I sometimes have to leave the room so we don’t laugh in front of him.  What isn’t so funny is how similar this childish manipulation technique creeps into my relationship with God.  I used to believe that God also promised me love, communion and friendship :

• 

“as long as you ….come to Sunday Mass Jonathan” 

“I don’t feel like it.  I am tired and angry and just want to stay in bed.  I will go tomorrow.” 

“Fine, then I am not your best friend. You willingly missed my celebration”

Or:

“Jonathan, don’t talk that way about Father so and so”

“But I can’t stand him, he is so …” 

“Fine, then now I’m not your best friend, that’s gossip.”

I have discovered that I am not alone in this way of imagining God.  In many of the communities we visit, people think that God will be faithful to you if you are faithful to God.  God will love you, protect you, etc.  if you do some religious act or act uprightly.  It’s actually how even some adults behave.  “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”  Although I technically reject this idea when phrased like that, this false image of the childish god has often poisoned my relationship with Jesus.  Even in the Church, this image of the vengeful punishing God is commonplace. .For example, when struggling with habitual sin one can be friended and unfriended various times in a week if we take serious the way some in the church talk.  I remember going to confession various times in one week just to be able to maintain my friend status with God and not be unfriended and cut off permanently. 

This morning in prayer I read:

Luke 11:51-56 When the days for his being taken up^[y] were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, ^52 [z]and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, ⁵³ but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. ⁵⁴ When the disciples James and John saw this they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” ⁵⁵ Jesus turned and rebuked them, ⁵⁶ and they journeyed to another village.

Notice the difference between Jesus and the disciples.  The disciples want those who reject Jesus to be condemned and burn yet Jesus rebukes them.  Although the disciples were God’s chosen representatives they misunderstood his mercy and unconditional love.  They thought of God’s love as based upon receiving Jesus.  They believed in the God whose love is conditional.  A god who is immature.  I say immature because a mature person forgives even when unasked, is patient with those who offend or annoy, and continues to be kind, even to enemies.

Jesus disassociates himself from the attitude expressed by his disciples that those who reject him are to be punished severely. It took my 42 years to finally understand this.  We have a God who really does practice what Jesus preached.  We have a God who really does love unconditionally.  I hope someday my son Silas will be just like our God, who never stops being my friend, even when I fail to do all he requires.