The Scandal of Gloomy Christians

By: Thomas Reese

December 14, 2009

Does thinking about your religion make you happy or sad?

One of the greatest scandals of Christianity is that Christians are often gloomy. They go around with frowns on their faces.

Why are they are unhappy? Some are unhappy because they see sin and evil everywhere. They see God as a strict judge who will punish us in Hell fire for the slightest slip. They never smile; they are often afraid and scrupulous.

Other Christians are gloomy because they see the world going to hell in a handcart. We have flu epidemics, a deep recession, gridlock in Congress, global warming and a culture that worships sex and money. Lots to be gloomy about.

St. Paul, on the other hand, tells the Philippians, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I say it again. Rejoice!"

Why should we rejoice? Paul tells us that we should rejoice because the Lord is near! The Lord is coming, fear not, dismiss all anxiety from your mind. He is coming.

Now gloomy Christians get nervous when they hear that the Lord is coming because they see the Lord coming like ICE agents, breaking down the door to make an arrest.

But when St. Paul says the Lord is coming, he means his friend Jesus is coming. He is coming to establish his father's kingdom, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. This is something worth rejoicing about.

How we look at God is important. We often talk about God as a parent. But what kind of a parent is God? Some parents raise their children by the use of rewards and punishment. "If you are good, you get dinner; if you are bad, you are locked in the basement. If you are nice, Santa will bring you presents, if you are naughty, you get nothing."

A certain amount of reward and punishment is necessary in raising children, but what I am talking about here is the extreme where the parents really don't care about the child but only care that the house is quiet.

God is not that kind of parent.

When children are born, they are incapable of being good. Yet their parents love them. So too with God, he loves us unconditionally before we ever choose between good and evil. He does not tell us, "I will love you if you keep my commandments." His first words to us are simply, "I love you."

Gloomy Christians object when we talk about God's love because they think it will permit people to ignore the commandments and be immoral. For very immature people this may be true. If it were not for the risk of going to jail, some people would shop lift. Some twisted people even exploit those who love them.

On the other hand, a normal person responds to love. If someone loves you, you don't hurt them, you do things that will please them, you respond to that love. Right after St. Paul tells us to rejoice, he says, "Everyone should see how unselfish you are." Persons who know they are loved are unselfish, persons in love are unselfish.

God, like a good parent, loves us and hopes that we will respond to his love. But we can say no, just like any child can reject the love of its parents.

Like a parent, God sometimes threatens and cajoles but the motivation is always love, it is always for the good of the child. If a child behaves simply out of fear and not out of love, that child is going to be a problem. Sooner or later it will grow up and loose it's fear and then there will be hell to pay.

During our life on earth, God is showering us with love and asking us to respond. He tries to guide us, but like children we have a certain amount of freedom to reject him. When we die, God looses control just as parents lose control when a child grows up. At death we can choose to embrace God or flee him. To flee God is to flee love; to flee love is to choose hell, but it is our choice not God's. God comes to us with open arms.

So when St. Paul says, "the Lord is coming," he is talking about a happy event, the arrival of a loved one, not the arrival of a bill collector.

There is a second reason that we should rejoice that the Lord is coming. We rejoice because victory is at hand. When you read a novel or watch a movie, often the heroes go through all sorts of terrible experiences but you always know that everything is going to work out in the end. The good guys will win. As Christians we do not rejoice because we think everything is fine. We are not blind to reality. We are not blind to the bad things in our world or our church. We rejoice because the Lord is coming.

Our faith in the resurrection, our belief that Christ will come again, is a belief that justice and love will triumph. The good guys will win. Christians are romantics at heart. We can rejoice in the most difficult circumstances, even in the face of death, because we believe in the resurrection. We believe that Christ will come. This is why Paul tells the Philippians to rejoice even though their situation is not that happy.

But this hope is not a passive hope. It is an active hope because it is the job of the Christian to work against all odds for justice and peace, to help build the kingdom of God, to make ready the way of the Lord. Every time we respond with love, the Spirit of Christ bursts into our world.

During Advent we are not simply getting ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus. More importantly, we are celebrating the fact that Christ will come again. We are celebrating our hope and our belief that he will return in glory to establish his Father's kingdom. This is a hope that makes us unselfish in our love, so that as John the Baptist says, we can share our clothes and food with those in need.

During Advent, we rejoice in God's love for us. We rejoice that Christ has come, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. This is the source of our hope and joy.

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