I feel like I am the only one in my family, and possibly the state, that cares about theological truth.
I have a sister, who is much older than I. She is 48 and I am 29. She was baptized Catholic, but was never really practicing. She then got caught up in some non denom churches and Baptist church’s, whatever was making her feel good at the time I guess. She got involved with them when I was around 10, so I at that time didn’t really care about religion or God and never really said anything anyway. However, I recall her coming over to the house and trying to evangelize my parents and I to ‘follow Christ’. She would talk about it all the time. It never really bothered me and she was always allowed to speak and never told to ‘shut up’ or any of that sort.
Well, over time, she started to really calm down with it, and eventually rarely brought it up at all. She still would claim to be a ‘Christian’ over the years, but never like she was that 3 to 4 years of being active in her church’s.
So now there is myself. I spent most of my life loving God but never really taking it seriously. Then around 2007, I really began to desire God. So I spent a lot of time researching, reading the Bible. Since we live in the Protestant country, most of the theological stuff I was reading was Protestant in nature. I never rejected my Catholic faith but my theology was very much ‘ad hoc’ and I would go with whatever ‘seemed right’. Well it didn’t take long for me to discover in my research that my dear old ‘boring’ Catholic Church was actually Christ’s Church. So what did I do with that? Well, I could ignore it and treat Jesus as a quick high to make me feel good, or I could actually LOVE Jesus and go to the place He prepared for me.
Okay, so now I am home with Christ in The Church. Now I know what the truth is. And the most incredible thing happened…everyone started hating me or thinking I was crazy. Sadly, even my own Catholic mother tends to tell me to ‘keep it quiet’ when I talk to her. My gay Uncle disowned me for going to Chik FilA and private messaged me on Facebook demanding I tell him where I stood on gay marriage. He questioned me as if he were running his own inquisition with his own authority. I very gently, but very unambiguously told him that I do not support gay marriage and I told him why. I even tried to tell him that ‘we are both Catholics’ and I could not believe something contrary to what the Church teaches. He told me he doesn’t belong to the Catholic Church anymore and he found a church that doesn’t ‘hate’ which is apparently the Episcopal Church.
He disowned me, and hasn’t spoken to me since. I told him I loved him about 20 times during our conversation and he didn’t tell me once that he loved me. Then he proceeded to slander me on Facebook in front of full view of my family by saying things like, I supported gays being beaten and that I was horrible for going to Chik FilA. Not a single family member came to my defense. It wasn’t that I needed it or expected it, but I do feel that had the shoe been on the other foot and I was the one attacking him for living a homosexual lifestyle, I am pretty sure the family would have rallied around him against me publicly. I have also lost other friends due to my return to the Faith and to my willingness to talk about it and defend it.
Then there is my sister. The one time, 24 hour evangelist, is now a ‘live and let live’ Christian. However, she is still an evangelist. She is now in the ‘church of crossfit’ and constantly preaches about proper diet. So if you happen to be brave enough to drink diet soda around her, be prepared for some fire and brimstone. Of course, I don’t have much issue with this, and I listen to her when she makes me feel like I am heading to the 9th layer of hell because of my diet iced tea.
Because Christ is tending to be the center of my life, I speak a lot about cultural issues of the day and about theological truth. These are the things that interest me. My sister doesn’t like the Catholic Church and will sometimes say things that are sort of inferring that the Church and myself are the dreaded, ‘judgmental’. My sister will acknowledge most sins as sins, but won’t speak too much on them nor inform others who disagree that they are sins. But the one ‘sin’ my sister will go to bat for every time and get he excommunication papers ready is the sin of being ‘judgmental’. And the sin of being judgmental is pretty easy to commit in her book. All you have to do is say something is a ‘sin’ and you have then committed the sin of being judgmental and ipso facto, you become a terrible person.
So I started asking her questions about her beliefs. I started explaining my own beliefs to her. And it seems while my sister is very kind when you are listening to her and ‘yessing’ her to death, she doesn’t fare to well when you start questioning her and especially having answers to her objections.
One day she said that “Catholic” isn’t in the Bible. I answered her objection and explained to her how early the term is and actually what it means. My answer was reasoned, well thought out, pretty iron clad in my estimation. And her reaction is always to huff and puff, accuse me of starting arguments, and strangely after he bringing these things up most of the time tell me that she doesn’t like talking about these things. I don’t know what she expects me to do? When she or someone says something about the Faith or Christ that is not true, I am going to offer an answer. And every time I do, no matter how I put it, she always gets loud, interrupts me when I’m trying to say something like a child and yells at me that she is “NOT LISTENING”. Last time she did that, I told her that she could not listen and shut down if she wants to, but I am going to speak anyway.
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