Scrupulosity

[stmax]

I have a friend who is discovering God and has a lot of fervor. Somehow, he believes that every activity which doesn’t directly lead to someone’s spiritual growth is not worth doing and should be avoided. He is talking about cutting out all recreation from his life. I want to explain to him that God wants to have free time and rec to stay mentally healthy.

1. is this true that we should cut out everything that doesn’t involve christ?
2. If not, how can explain to him that he can still do on non faith related things from time to time. (examples of his activities: Choir, videogames, lacrosse)

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

I have a friend who is discovering God and has a lot of fervor. Somehow, he believes that every activity which doesn’t directly lead to someone’s spiritual growth is not worth doing and should be avoided. He is talking about cutting out all recreation from his life. I want to explain to him that God wants to have free time and rec to stay mentally healthy.

1. is this true that we should cut out everything that doesn’t involve christ?
2. If not, how can explain to him that he can still do on non faith related things from time to time. (examples of his activities: Choir, videogames, lacrosse)

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Answers:

1. No
2. His mistake is seeing God Only inside Himself (subjectively). But God is outside Himself (objectively). The Bible says that the Heavens (Sky) and the Earth are full of Your Glory (God). Explain him the contemplative prayer of St. Igantius: “See God in Eveything”, in a flower, in a child, in lacross, in game, in your lousy neghbor, in the boring old woman, in the naughty teen, in heroism, in Steve Jobs (RIP)…

 

[Bookcat]

I have a friend who is discovering God and has a lot of fervor. Somehow, he believes that every activity which doesn’t directly lead to someone’s spiritual growth is not worth doing and should be avoided. He is talking about cutting out all recreation from his life. I want to explain to him that God wants to have free time and rec to stay mentally healthy.

1. is this true that we should cut out everything that doesn’t involve christ?
2. If not, how can explain to him that he can still do on non faith related things from time to time. (examples of his activities: Choir, videogames, lacrosse)

Christ is the Logos. The meaning of life and everything. And indeed our “true life”

Such though does not mean that we only do that which is explicitly religious …that we do not live the other aspects of life…that they are somehow not part of the will of God.

Jesus of Nazareth lived 30 years prior to his preaching – an “ordinary life”

 

[Bookcat]

Catechism:

533 The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life:

The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus - the school of the Gospel. First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us. . . A lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character… A lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the “Carpenter’s Son”, in you I would choose to understand and proclaim the severe and redeeming law of human work. . . To conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern their brother who is God.225

 

[JaredR]

Don’t discourage him.

He has found the one thing necessary, so of course everything else is either a distraction to him or no longer interesting. As he matures in the spiritual life, he may realize that we can be present to God even in our leisure time (at all times, really). For now, I say celebrate your friend’s great grace and forgive his imperfect response to it.

 

[domandcarols]

Don’t discourage him.

He has found the one thing necessary, so of course everything else is either a distraction to him or no longer interesting. As he matures in the spiritual life, he may realize that we can be present to God even in our leisure time (at all times, really). For now, I say celebrate your friend’s great grace and forgive his imperfect response to it.

Agreed.