Practical Apologetics: The Geometry of Faith

 Once upon a time I was a teacher in a (more or less) Catholic school, where I was occasionally called upon to teach an introductory theology course to the bright-eyed young men & women of the ninth grade.  Of the roughly 16 students per class there would usually be 2-3 Catholic students whose families attended Mass at least weekly, and a like number of non-Catholic Christians who were regular church goers.  The rest were raised in a secular environment, ranging from occasionally religious to explicitly atheist.  

     I soon found that most of these young people, even many of the regular church attendees, had been so indoctrinated into a materialist way of thinking by teachers, mass media, and society in general that I found it difficult to explain even basic religious ideas.  It was almost like speaking a foreign tongue.  Some of these students were fans of the then-popular "new atheists" (Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.), and most had been affected to some degree by "scientistic" thinking, that it, the idea that scientific explanations were the only serious or valid explanations. I found that I had to get them outside of these narrow ways of understanding reality before they could even begin to understand the purpose of or the need for religious faith.

      Many of my blog posts grew out of discussions with these students, including some republished here ("Has Pascal's Wager Really Been 'Debunked'?", "God's Existence Isn't A Dark Matter").  The post below is another of these, in which I try to get my students to look at the world from a different - ahem - angle . . .

[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]          

Ireland, Post-Christianity and Eternity

     My, how the world has changed. The dust is still settling from the referendum in Ireland last week in which voters repealed the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which protected the right of unborn babies to live.  The outcome was a bitter disappointment, but not really a surprise.  Perhaps more surprising to many of us (although it ought not to have been: see below) was the margin of the pro-abortion victory: 67%-33%, a thunderous landslide. Ironically, the amendment was voted in by the same margin just 35 years ago, except in 1983 67% of Irish voters cast their ballots in favor of protecting unborn life. The dramatic reversal reminds me of the tune played by the British military bands when they surrendered to George Washington’s ragtag Continental Army at Yorktown: “The World Turned Upside Down.”

Crowd in Dublin cheers abolition of Irish pro-life amendment (AP)

    Clearly, much has changed in Ireland over the last three and a half decades, and there are certainly plenty of local factors that have played a role in the change.  I don’t believe, however, that the change is a purely Irish one, or even largely local. Despite a strong historical identification with Catholicism, the Emerald Isle has been following the same secularizing trend that has captured the rest of Western Europe.  According to research done by the Pew Center, only 37% percent of Irish attend religious services weekly or monthly; that’s better than any other Western European nation other than Italy, but it’s still well under half of the population (and it has been shown that oftentimes people are untruthful on this question, exaggerating church attendance figures). A larger figure, 41%, report they “seldom or never” go to church.  Only 19% pray daily, 24% believe in God “with absolute certainty”, and only 69% believe in God at all.

     The Irish are only marginally better, if at all, than other Europeans in these categories. We see similar trends in the United States, where, according to the Barna Group,

The pattern is indisputable: The younger the generation, the more post-Christian it is. Nearly half of Millennials (48%) qualify as post-Christian compared to two-fifths of Gen X-ers (40%), one-third of Boomers (35%) and one-quarter of Elders (28%).

     The entire western world is abandoning Christianity, and at a rapid rate. Needless to say, these changes carry some very concrete consequences. Pew also reports, for instance, that the higher the level of religious commitment, the more likely a person is to be involved with charitable organizations and, in fact, every sort of community group (except athletic ones).  Arthur Brooks details similar findings in the United States in his book Who Really Cares?  These numbers show that fewer believing Christians means less charitable giving, less involvement in charitable causes, less self-sacrifice for the good of others; in other words, if I may be blunt, a more selfish, self-centered society.  This de-Christianizing trend intensifies over time, because the more disconnected they are from any practice of religion, the harder it becomes for people to recognize even the largely material goods provided by the Church: Barna reports that

When the unchurched were asked to describe what they believe are the positive and negative contributions of Christianity in America, almost half (49%) could not identify a single favorable impact of the Christian community, while nearly two-fifths (37%) were unable to identify a negative impact.

Pew reports similar outcomes in Europe. This is despite the massive amount of wealth, material and effort Christians have put into helping the poor and disadvantaged over the past two millennia.

From The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah

     Given all that, we should not be surprised that Christian moral teachings, particularly those that demand self-sacrifice or denial of powerful desires, are less popular than ever, and rapidly becoming less so.  From the very beginning of time the Tempter has been whispering in our ears that “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5), if only we would give in to our desires, instead of following the path of self-denial.  How hard is it to resist him when we have no faith, or perhaps only a shallow faith, to fortify us?  How much harder now that the institutions that dominate our culture, which in the past reinforced morality, have today switched sides, and take Satan’s side in the debate (take note: every major political party in Ireland endorsed repeal of the 8th amendment)? Small wonder, then, that Pew's figures show the people of once Catholic Ireland favoring legal abortion by a margin of 66-30% (those who self-identify as “highly committed Christians” are the only group in which a majority opposes it).  Consequently, small wonder that Irish voters abolished the protection of unborn life by roughly the same margin.

     Well then, where does that leave us?  Am I saying that we are going to Hell in the proverbial handbasket?  Ultimately, no, as our Lord has promised us that “the gates of Hell will not prevail” against his Church (Matthew 16:17). “Prevail”, however, is statement about where things will end; a lot can happen in the meanwhile, not all of it good. The fact is that an enormous amount of damage can occur, to individual souls and to entire populations, before our wayward society comes to its senses.

     Very often it is the damage itself that helps bring about the change.  As St. Paul tells us, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:48). The familiar phrase “hitting rock bottom” applies here.  This is a very important concept in Alcoholics Anonymous and related 12 Step groups.  An alcoholic “hits rock bottom” when the damage and pain caused by his drinking become so severe and painful that he has to admit his life is beyond his control, and that he needs to turn to God to save him from his self-destructive desires.  Our culture, it would seem, needs to hit rock bottom before it begins to turn back to God.  Who can say how long that will take, or how many souls will be lost in the process?  I am painfully reminded of Adam Smith’s remark that “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”  We should also not forget that the followers of Muhammed are not standing idly by while what was once called  “Christendom” breaks itself to pieces.

     However that may be, formerly Catholic Ireland’s embrace of the abortion license is a sign of what is happening throughout the historic heart of the Christian world.  There is no longer a Catholic Ireland . . . there's no longer a "Catholic" anywhere in Europe or North America (with the possible exception of Poland, and that probably not for long).  Earlier this week I republished a blog post about a radio address delivered almost half a century ago by a German Theologian named Joseph Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI).  Fr. Ratzinger foresaw a world slipping ever further into Godlessness.  In that increasingly hostile environment, Christ’s Church would become smaller - perhaps much smaller.  It would, at the same time, be a Church purified by adversity, more faithful to the Gospel, and more essential than ever:

We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man's home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

That is increasingly the choice before us if we wish to follow Jesus Christ: a small, unfashionable, and even persecuted Church, one which “will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members” than we might be used to, or be comfortable with.

     It is also clear that we will need to commit ourselves ever more faithfully to live lives worthy of our Lord.  Christ tells us,

"You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men. (Matthew 5:13)

 Whatever else might have been happening, the failures of prominent Catholics in the Irish church played a role in the triumph of legal abortion there, a living example of how damaging “salt that has lost its taste” can be.  If hope to do any better ourselves, we will need to rely more than ever on the help Jesus Christ offers us in the sacramental life, because the world of the future will need the Church, more than it ever has, to be a “light to the nations” (Isaiah 49:6).

Zambians attending Mass (www.southworld.net)

     One bright spot I haven’t yet mentioned: while the historic heart of Christendom collapses, the faith still burns brightly on the periphery, particularly in Africa.  As Europe and North America increasingly revert to mission territory, I fully expect our brothers in Christ to the South will be there to help us find our way back.  However difficult things become, Christ will provide a way.  

     That, of course, is our brightest spot: the Salvation that Christ has promised, which is the foundation of Christian Hope.  Short term, the future looks grim, and we need to accept that and prepare ourselves for it. While the present defeat in Ireland is a stark sign of how far we have fallen, however,  it is not a reason for despair.  After all, the Lord has given his word:

There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever and ever. (Revelation 22:3-7)

Fr. Ratzinger's Prophecy

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 26 May 2014. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI 

    I have often heard mention of an observation made by Joseph Ratzinger long before he became Pope Benedict XVI in which he anticipated a “smaller, purer church”.  I was reminded of the this remark last week as I was wrapping up my post on St. Julia of Corsica [here], and reflecting on the fact that we seem to need to suffer many smaller defeats on the way to enjoying Christ’s final victory over sin and death.  I was curious to find out exactly what the future Pope said, and when and where he said it.

     I found that the original statement came as the last of a series of addresses that Fr. Ratzinger, at that time a professor of Theology at the University of Tübingen, delivered over the radio in Germany in 1969 [I can no longer find the full text of Fr. Ratzinger's address online, but it is included in the book Faith and the Future, published by Ignatius Press].  His prophetic vision of a “smaller, purer Church” (someone else’s paraphrase, I think, because I don’t see that wording in the original text) was broadcast on Christmas day.  It makes interesting reading going on fifty years later.

     Fr. Ratzinger starts out saying that “The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and live from the pure fullness of their faith.”  Ah yes, a call to personal holiness: that sounds good. “It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods . . .”  Hmmm, sounds like time for some self-examination.  “nor will it issue”, he says

from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality.

So far, so good.  The future of the Church lies with those who are ready to make a deep commitment to self-sacrifice, who aren’t looking for easy answers.  But how does this lead to a smaller Church?  He goes on to explain:

We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist; who does not stand on the sidelines, watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of men, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.

In other words, the corporal works of mercy may be an essential part of Christianity, but they can’t be the sole or primary focus of the Church (“I’ll show you the faith that underlies my works” James 2:18), since there are secular agencies and individuals who can perform them just as well.  Who needs the Church, if you can get the same somewhere else?  The thing that only the Church can provide is the encounter with Jesus Christ through his sacraments.  Everything else, Fr. Ratzinger says, will be burned away, but much like the man St. Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3:15, who “will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire”, what remains will be pure metal:

From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge - a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members . . . But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world.

     This fire-tempered, more faithful Church, Fr.  Ratzinger says, will stand as a refuge for those driven to “horror” by the spiritual poverty of a now Godless world.

     The future Pope wraps up with a peroration that is both grim and hopeful:

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man's home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

It isn't easy to follow Christ's Standard

      Fr. Ratzinger’s “prophecy” can be misunderstood.  Some commentators seem to believe that he is advocating a much smaller Church.  Not so.  He is looking at the “Signs of the Times” and extrapolating from them, tempering his predictions with the knowledge that Christ has promised that the Gates of Hell will not prevail against his Church (see Matthew 16:17).  The past half century has certainly developed just as Fr. Ratzinger suggested it would.  Church attendance has fallen as the weakly committed no longer feel the social pressure to attend Mass, the number of priests has plummeted, and most religious orders have shrunk dramatically.  At the same time, religious orders grounded in a traditional understanding of the doctrines and disciplines of the Church are growing, and we have seen an explosion of lay evangelization unlike anything the world has seen in a long time.

    It seems to me that Fr. Ratzinger’s vision of the near future of the Church, much like Paul VI’s admonitions in Humanae Vitae [here], has been more than confirmed by events since, and should serve as a serious warning of what is to come.  Christ’s final victory is guaranteed, but individuals and whole nations can be lost before its consummation.  We all still need to choose whether we’ll follow Christ’s Battle Standard, or Satan’s.

Never Underestimate the Power of Prayer

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 21 December 2015. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

The Anti-Prayer Warrior

The Dalai Lama, anti-prayer warrior

            Recently I have been pondering an old saying: "Never underestimate the power of prayer".  I had just been reading about the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan religious leader who has been (interestingly enough) urging people not to pray for France or for the victims of the recent Islamist terror attacks in Paris (a theme that has been echoed, much less gracefully, by some secular sources after the similarly motivated mass slaughter in San Bernadino, California).
     Bemused by the apparent incongruity of a renowned religious leader discouraging prayer, I tracked down this news article, which quotes the Dalai Lama as saying:

We cannot solve this problem only through prayers. I am a Buddhist and I believe in praying. But humans have created this problem, and now we are asking God to solve it. It is illogical. God would say, solve it yourself because you created it in the first place . . . We need a systematic approach to foster humanistic values, of oneness and harmony. If we start doing it now, there is hope that this century will be different from the previous one. It is in everybody’s interest. So let us work for peace within our families and society, and not expect help from God, Buddha or the governments.

            To be fair, the concept of an omnipotent Creator God who really hears our prayers appears to be foreign to the tradition in which the Dalai Lama was formed; we should not expect him to embrace a Christian concept of prayer. At the same time, St. Peter tells us to “to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15), and therefore it is proper to point out several false assumptions implicit in the Buddhist leader’s remarks, which are amplified in their cruder expression on the front page of the New York Daily News (picture below).

Ora et Labora

            First of all, the detractors of prayer seem to be suggesting that praying will somehow keep us from taking whatever concrete actions might be appropriate in a given situation, as if “Pray for Paris” means “Pray, and don’t do anything else.” Perhaps they’ve never heard the expression “Pray like everything depends on God, but work like everything depends on you” (or, as St. Benedict put it, Ora et Labora, "pray and work". In any case, nobody I know is proposing prayer as a substitute for action, so this is a (not very sophisticated) straw man argument. In the case of the people at the Daily News, it seems mostly an excuse to slam politicians they don’t like for not supporting gun control laws the newspaper promotes (one might point out that these policies were already in place in both France and California, and did nothing to hinder either attack).

            There also seems to be a misunderstanding, whether genuine or disingenuous, as to what such prayers are intended to do. Nobody is suggesting that God will restore the earthly lives of the innocent people murdered in Paris or San Bernadino in response to our prayers, or is expecting a deus ex machina whereby God simply steps in and solves our problems for us, as the Dalai Lama suggests. That is not to say that we discount the possibility of miraculous intervention (see below), but our prayers in response to human tragedies, for the most part, address things that are beyond the reach of any laws or “systematic approaches” we can enact in this world: prayers for the souls of the dead, and prayers that God bring healing and peace to the hearts of those among the living who are suffering from the tragedy (and in the case of suffering caused by evil-minded people, we pray for the conversion of the perpetrators hearts). Beyond that, we ask for the gift of God’s Grace, his divine assistance to give us the wisdom to know what we ourselves should do . . . and the strength and courage to do it. If the conclusion of that prayerful deliberation is that, for example, the application of armed force is advisable, we are happy to pray for the salvation in the next world of those on whom we are waging war in this one (we Christians are a Both/And People).

            Not that any of those things are likely to deter those pushing the “For God’s Sake, Don’t Pray!” theme, because their real (but generally unspoken) argument is that prayer is futile, that it can accomplish nothing, except maybe to give the people offering the prayers the excuse that they have done their part and can leave the real work to others. This assumption most of all we should not allow to go unchallenged; we should not underestimate the efficacy of personal witness to the power of prayer, particularly when we have seen for ourselves that prayer can have powerful, and, yes,  on occasion even miraculous results.  I had a powerful reminder of this truth with the last couple of days. 

The Power of Prayer

     Here's how it happened. When I first came across the Dalai Lama's anti-prayer pronouncement I was considering how I might respond.  As I was pondering I stepped out into the hallway and ran into a colleague who started talking to me about another staff member who was being treated for cancer. Our co-worker's situation reminded him of a close family member of his who had also been suffering from late stage cancer, and who had been given less than two weeks to live. He described how he, as he put it, prayed for his relative, and with her, and over her as she slept. His suffering kinswoman was still alive after two weeks; shortly after that she was cancer-free, and she is still alive and healthy today, more than a dozen years after the doctors told her she had barely enough time to get her will notarized and say good-bye. How interesting that this man, who had no idea what I had just been reading, and with whom I had never before discussed religion or prayer at all, should choose just that moment to share his personal testimony to the miraculous power of prayer.  I suppose it could have been merely a coincidence, but if so, what a coincidence!
            Another example from my personal experience is Benedicta McCarthy, a young woman with whom, and with whose family, I was acquainted some years ago. 

Benedicta McCarthy at St. Theresa Benedicta's canonization mass

Benedicta had swallowed an entire bottle of Tylenol when she was a toddler, overwhelming and destroying her tiny liver.  Her father, a Byzantine Rite Catholic priest, organized a prayer campaign for her as she lay in the hospital.  Amazingly, the doctors who had observed a hopelessly damaged liver in the morning found a perfectly sound and healthy organ that same evening.  The Vatican's Congregation for Saints ruled Benedicta's inexplicable (to non-believers) recovery as a miracle attributed to St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, for whose intercession Fr. McCarthy and his family and friends had been praying. This miracle was cited at the Saint's canonization in 1999.

     If we want an example more relevant to the threat of jihadists, we can look to the unlikely victories of Christian armies fortified by prayer over powerful Muslim aggressors at Lepanto in 1571 or Vienna in 1683. Let the Dalai Lama and the Daily News take note: Don Juan of Austria and Jan Sobieski did not stay home, secure in the expectation that God would smite the foe in their absence. Rather, they went forth to battle knowing that the Lord would answer their prayers only if they did their own part as well.

            Prayer works: we have seen it happen. Really, aren’t the people putting their faith in fantasies those who are relying on purely human “systematic approaches” and laws to do what such things have never done, that is, perfect human nature? So by all means, let’s pray. Let’s pray for Paris, pray for San Bernadino, say prayers for the healing of the people suffering from the ugly crimes committed there, and for the conversion of those who seek to commit such crimes. Finally, let us pray for all of us, and all humanity, that we may be willing to turn to our Lord and let our actions be informed by his grace and guided by his will.

The Satan Club: One H*** of an After School Club for Children

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 7 October 2016 . To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

There's A New Club In Town

    Here’s some happy news: the Nehalem Elementary School in Portland, Oregon, has approved a “Satan Club” for its young (i.e., pre-teen) students.  The club is sponsored by a group going by the felicitous name of The Satanic Temple. Does that, or does it not, sound uplifting?

Charming illustration from "Educatin With Satan" website

    I don’t doubt that there are some people who do consider it good news that there will be a club upholding the Prince of Darkness as a role model for youngsters.  In particular, some of a more secular bent may appreciate that this puts those of us in with, shall we say, more traditional religious views, in something of a bind.  After all, aren’t we always carping about religious freedom, and complaining about efforts to exclude religious belief from the public square? Don’t we claim that government has no business deciding what is legitimate religion and what is not?  Are we not, in fact, hypocrites if we try to prevent the satanists from sharing their enthusiasm for Lucifer with the boys and girls at Nehalem Elementary School?

Keeping The Satan In Satanism?

    The answer is, I think, simpler than it might at first appear.  We absolutely ought to oppose as strenuously as we can anything as poisonous as a “satan club” in schools, and no, there is nothing whatsoever hypocritical about it.  Consider the following:

    The satanists themselves make it clear that they are not really a religion.  For instance, The Satanic Temple is also trying to install an after school club in the Seattle, Washington area. The Seattle Times (story here)  quotes Tarkus Claypool, campaign manager for the group in that area, as saying: “We don’t worship a deity . . . We only see Satan as a metaphor for fighting religious tyranny and oppression.” This is a fairly common trope among Satanists, one you might have heard before.  There was a similar quote in the original Fox News article about the Oregon satan club.  That quote has since been removed, perhaps because the spokesperson in Portland also added that most satanists are really atheists, which tends to undercut even further their claim to religious status.

Illustration from the "Educatin With Satan" site

    So, if the satanists don’t really believe in Satan, what is the purpose of their club? “Our curriculum is about teaching them logic, self-empowerment and reasoning”, according to Claypool,  “The most Satanic thing about it is in the healthy snack — we have an apple.”  Finn Rezz, speaking on behalf of the newly-approved Nehalem group in Oregon, adds that, in addition to “science and rational thinking”, the club will promote "benevolence and empathy for everybody."

    If only that were true.  After all, if  all they wanted to do was to promote rational thinking, why not a “Reason Club”? Why not a “Science and Empathy Club”?  Those are perfectly legitimate viewpoints. Why not even an “Atheists Club”?  However much we believers might dislike it, the same laws that allow Christian clubs on school grounds also protect the nonbelievers.  The Satanic Temple has chosen a different route, however, and their choice of the Prince of Lies as their public persona tells us what they’re really about; it has nothing to do with reason or benevolence.

The Devil Is In The Details

    To begin with, let’s talk about Satan.  He has a track record: he’s been a public figure, so to speak, for millennia.  If you were to go out on the street and ask people at random what the Devil represents, what responses will you get?  Most people will, of course,  answer "evil", "sin", "death", "corruption", etc.  How many do you think will say “a metaphor for fighting religious oppression”?  There may be a few, perhaps, but a very few indeed. No, Lucifer’s image has remained true to the source that introduced him to us, the Scriptures.  There we read:

He who commits sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. (1 John 3:8)

He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

How rational is it to hold up as a paragon of “reason” a figure who is the enemy of truth, a born liar who hides his true nature?  How appropriate a personification of “empathy and benevolence” is someone known as a murderer who seeks to “devour” the unwary?  My purpose here is not to make a Biblical argument against the satan club, I’m simply pointing out who and what its patron has always been known to be, and what he actually represents. One doesn’t need to believe in the truth of the Bible to recognize that Satan represents the exact opposite of what the satan club claims to promote.

Reason and empathy? A science Lab?  Botticelli, Dante's Inferno Canto XVII

"By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them"

    In fact, their choice of the universally acknowledged personification of every evil as their public face brings to mind another applicable scripture passage: “You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit.” (Matthew 7:16-17).  That’s just common sense, isn’t it? And what are the "fruits" of the satan club advocates? Do the satanists act like people committed to reason, love, and kindness, and do their own self-explanations emphasize any positive message of their own . . . or are their fruits of a different kind?  Let us look again at what they say about themselves.  Seattle satanist Tarkus Claypool says of the satan club, “It’s designed to be a counterpoint to the Good News program.” Portland Oregon’s Finn Rezz says that their satan club "will be held on Wednesdays once a month at the same time as the Good News Club."  In fact, if we look at the FAQ page from the satanists “Educatin With Satan” website, we find that they really have more to say about this “Good News Club” than they do about their nominal patron demon, and certainly more than they do about reason, science, benevolence, empathy put together.  In several places they cite the Good News Club as their reason for being, and they even advise those who might wish to establish a satan club (my bold):

Please keep in mind that The Satanic Temple is not interested in operating After School Satan Clubs in school districts that are not already hosting the Good News Club. However, The Satanic Temple ultimately intends to have After School Satan Clubs operating in every school district where the Good News Club is represented.  

Seattle area Satanic Temple members (Seattle Times photo)

    Now, if their reason for existing were really simply to spread reason and goodwill they’d want to do that everywhere, don’t you think?  By their own admission, their true purpose is to antagonize the Good News Clubs.

Good News: What's Not To Like?

 

    What are these Good News Clubs that so exercise the good people at the Satanic Temple? The Good News Clubs are a ministry of the Child Evangelism Fellowship.  From CEF’s website they appear to adhere to a fairly traditional Evangelical Protestant understanding of Christianity.  They describe the purpose of their Good News Clubs as follows:

Our ministry teaches morals and respect for others, helps build character, strengthens families, assists schools and encourages children. We frequently receive comments of support from school officials, bus drivers and parents which complement the positive change in the behavior of the boys and girls who attend Good News Clubs. Our mission is to serve the children, their parents, the school and the community.

They also give a succinct explanation of their methodology:

Photo from CEF website

. . . trained teachers meet with groups of children in schools, homes, community centers, churches, apartment complexes, just about anywhere the children can easily and safely meet with their parent's permission. Each week the teacher presents an exciting Bible lesson using colorful materials from CEF Press. This action-packed time also includes songs, Scripture memory, a missions story and review games or other activities focused on the lesson's theme.

As with all CEF ministries, the purpose of Good News Club is to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and establish (disciple) them in the Word of God and in a local church for Christian living.

Here and in numerous other places they emphasize that they only meet children with their parents’ permission, and do not seek to supplant their family’s church. Also, while they are straightforward in proposing sin as something that infects everyone, they at the same time emphasize Christ's saving love and forgiveness: "Now, because of what Jesus has done for you, you can have your sins forgiven. Read on to see how!"

J'Accuse!

Most fair-minded people, even if they take issue with the Child Evangelism Fellowship on some points of theology and ecclesiology, would have a hard time objecting to this program. Perhaps you won’t be surprised that the Satanic Temple doesn’t take a positive view.  On their FAQ page they say:

[T]he twisted Evangelical teachings of The Good News Clubs “robs [sic] children of the innocence and enjoyment of childhood, replacing them with a negative self image, preoccupation with sin, fear of Hell, and aversion to critical thinking . . . ”

Forgive me for observing that this angry, accusatory smear seems neither rational nor objective, nor terribly benevolent or empathetic.  In fact, it reminds me of nobody so much as the satan clubs’ standard bearer, of whom I observed in an earlier post:

For this reason he is called “the Devil”, from the Greek διάβολος (diabolos), which means “slanderer, perjurer, false accuser, and can also mean “deceiver, one who misleads”.  It derives from the verb διαβάλλω (diaballo), whose original meaning is “drive through”, or destroy.  Satan seeks to destroy us, eternally, by using falsehood and deception to separate us from God.

Isn’t that just what the satan club is about?  They pose as “angels of light” with their talk of empathy and science, but it’s clear by their own words and deeds that their true agenda is to disparage and harass a particular Christian group, and separate Christian children from the religious beliefs of their families; the only plausible reason to choose as their public face Satan, the personification of mindless hatred, untruth, and evil from the Christian Scriptures, is to taunt and insult Christians; their stated policy is to form their clubs only where they can target the Evangelical Christian Good News clubs.  Clearly, their purpose is not to promote a religion they assure us they don't believe, and they manifestly don’t model the virtues they claim to advocate.  They are in reality a hate group dedicated to denying Christian students the right to exercise their own right of free expression in their own clubs.  Far from being hypocrites, we have solid legal and moral reasons to work to deny them access to public facilities.