The reason so much of our youth reject Church teaching

[VeritasLuxMea]

I think the answer lies in the once-popular bumper sticker: QUESTION AUTHORITY

People now put their own judgment ahead of everyone else’s. Sure, they accept authority–but only authority that is leading them where they have been convinced on their own that they want to go!

I know, how ridiculous! If people would stop thinking for themselves for just a minute and start obeying the authorities, can you imagine how much better the world would be? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment to keep with my Imam.

 

[JimG]

Ultimately, it does come down to the question of authority. Did Jesus establish a Church to hand down his teachings or not? If he did, the Catholic Church is it. If he did not, there is no point to being Christian at all. One cannot trust someone who ‘discovered’ Jesus’ teachings 300 or 500 or 1000 or 1500 or 2000 years later, saying ‘this is what he really meant.’ It just won’t work and it’s unreliable.

Not only that, but one must toss out the Faith which built Western Civilization. And in fact, a great many are intent on tossing aside western civilization; they will have no qualms about tossing aside the Church Jesus founded along with it.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

I know, how ridiculous! If people would stop thinking for themselves for just a minute and start obeying the authorities, can you imagine how much better the world would be? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment to keep with my Imam.

I understand your point but honestly I think we could use a little more Holy obedience. In fact some orders are founded upon this very principle. Catholics were demanding obediece long before Mohamed came on the scene.

Perhaps we could learn something from that Imam you are on your way to see.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

I know, how ridiculous! If people would stop thinking for themselves for just a minute and start obeying the authorities, can you imagine how much better the world would be? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment to keep with my Imam.

All shall be one. Resistance is futile. @_@

I understand your point but honestly I think we could use a little more Holy obedience. In fact some orders are founded upon this very principle. Catholics were demanding obediece long before Mohamed came on the scene.

Perhaps we could learn something from that Imam you are on your way to see.

The only thing I learned from obedience was insecurity, fear, and how to diminish my own worth short of committing suicide.

Oh. And heartbreak.

I’m sure y’all can keep eating those humble pies. I ain’t stopping you. Just quit asking me to because I’ve poisoned myself with the stuff far too many times already.

 

[EasterJoy]

I know, how ridiculous! If people would stop thinking for themselves for just a minute and start obeying the authorities, can you imagine how much better the world would be? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment to keep with my Imam.

Did the Lord praise Peter for thinking for himself? No. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.” Matt. 16:15-19

We had all gone astray like sheep, all following our own way; But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all. Is. 53:6 If each one thinking for himself is such a great social model, where are the great results? Where are the saints of being a light for yourself?

If you can’t accept that you’re a sheep, not constitutionally suited to finding your own way, you’ll never accept a shepherd. Likewise, the existence of bad shepherds does not logically prove that sheep don’t need one. Conversely, you need to find the self-guiding sheep who are better at eluding wolves than those who are obedient to the Good Shepherd to prove your point.

Biblical Models of Obedience: Abraham and Mary
Biblical Models of Thinking for Yourself:

Let me know who you come up with, and we’ll repeat the exercise with the lives of the saints and quotes from the epistles.

All shall be one. Resistance is futile. @_@

The only thing I learned from obedience was insecurity, fear, and how to diminish my own worth short of committing suicide.

Oh. And heartbreak.

I’m sure y’all can keep eating those humble pies. I ain’t stopping you. Just quit asking me to because I’ve poisoned myself with the stuff far too many times already.

I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. John 17:20-23

 

[EasterJoy]

The thieves posing as shepherds are out there…would that it were not so, but it is so.

A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep. John 10:10-15

He said to his disciples, “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin." Luke 17:1-2

 

[EasterJoy]

If you do not believe in obedience, if you do not believe in regarding others with more esteem than yourself, if you do not believe in being one in the Body of Christ, you cannot live the Christian life.

*If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but (also) everyone for those of others.

Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross*.
Phil 2:1-8

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

If you do not believe in obedience, if you do not believe in regarding others with more esteem than yourself, if you do not believe in being one in the Body of Christ, you cannot live the Christian life.

More and more days go by and I only find more and more inconsistencies in Christian verse.

How can you logically regard others with more esteem when you don’t even know, heck, refuse to know how to esteem yourself? It’s like trying to give grain that you don’t possess. You might as well be handing out air.

You pray that all will come to accept and be one but the same religion tells you that God sometimes just answers no to your desires (just as many religious imply He has said no to mine).

And yet, the Church still claims a right to demand obedience regardless if God answers one man’s prayers and denies another? Who is truly being the selfish one here?

At least I’m honest enough to finally admit he’s a selfish bastard, finally proud of what he is, and finally better off for it.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

 

[EasterJoy]

You. Are. A. Troublemaker.

More and more days go by and I only find more and more inconsistencies in Christian verse.

How can you logically regard others with more esteem when you don’t even know, heck, refuse to know how to esteem yourself? It’s like trying to give grain that you don’t possess. You might as well be handing out air.

You pray that all will come to accept and be one but the same religion tells you that God sometimes just answers no to your desires (just as many religious imply He has said no to mine).

And yet, the Church still claims a right to demand obedience regardless if God answers one man’s prayers and denies another? Who is truly being the selfish one here?

At least I’m honest enough to finally admit he’s a selfish bastard, finally proud of what he is, and finally better off for it.

Honest? And better off? There are people who think they are better off with themselves at the center of the universe, but as for you, I don’t think you believe a word of it.

I think your depression is talking. You do not make any sense. Either that or you’re really angry to have found yourself in a universe in which the ultimate decision-maker is unequivocally someone other than you. I’m not quite ready to buy that.

People who believe that the Church has usurped a position of authority that they don’t think belongs to her is one thing. To believe that God has usurped a position of authority that ought to belong to you and makes decisions that ought to be yours to make, instead, that is on another plane.

OK, so you’re talking yourself out of Christianity, this whole if-God-can-empty-himself-for-the-sake-of-love-so-can-you thing. Surely, though, if you are so much as a deist you have to see the grounds on which God can demand all from you. You have nothing without God. You wouldn’t exist. Nothing around you would exist, let alone anything beautiful or sustaining or that you could love or that could love you back. You’re totally ahead on this game, because you haven’t done anything to deserve anything from the One who owns the whole shooting match to begin with. On what grounds, though, do you make demands on God? How have you managed to put God in your debt? It boggles the imagination. There certainly isn’t a logical shred of defense for it.

 

[EasterJoy]

C.S. Lewis described how a sense of entitlement is not logical, but the opposite!

The Screwtape Letters, Letter #21

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

Yes. A period of sexual temptation is an excellent time for working in a subordinate attack on the patient’s peevishness. It may even be the main attack, as long as he thinks it the subordinate one. But here, as in everything else, the way must be prepared for your moral assault by darkening his intellect.

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own”. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

You have here a delicate task. **The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. **The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon his chattels. He is also, in theory, committed a total service of the Enemy; and if the Enemy appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for even one day, he would not refuse. He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day the Enemy said “Now you may go and amuse yourself”. Now if he thinks about his assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realise that he is actually in this situation every day. **When I speak of preserving this assumption in his mind, therefore, the last thing I mean you to do is to furnish him with arguments in its defence. There aren’t any. **Your task is purely negative. Don’t let his thoughts come anywhere near it. Wrap a darkness about it, and in the centre of that darkness let his sense of ownership-in-Time lie silent, uninspected, and operative.

The sense of ownership in general is always to be encouraged. The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell and we must keep them doing so. Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they “own” their bodies - those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another! It is as if a royal child whom his father has placed, for love’s sake, in titular command of some great province, under the real rule of wise counsellors, should come to fancy he really owns the cities, the forests, and the corn, in the same way as he owns the bricks on the nursery floor.

We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun - the finely graded differences that run from “my boots” through “my dog”, “my servant”, “my wife”, “my father”, “my master” and “my country”, to “my God”. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of “my boots”, the “my” of ownership. Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by “my Teddy-bear” not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but “the bear I can pull to pieces if I like”. And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say “My God” in a sense not really very different from “My boots”, meaning “The God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit - the God I have done a corner in”.

And all the time the joke is that the word “Mine” in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In he long run either Our Father or the Enemy will say “Mine” of each thing that exists, and specially of each man. They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong - certainly not to them, whatever happens. At present the Enemy says “Mine” of everything on the pedantic, legalistic ground that He made it: Our Father hopes in the end to say “Mine” of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest,

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

There are people who think they are better off with themselves at the center of the universe, but as for you, I don’t think you believe a word of it.

No I actually do. You say otherwise? What proof do you have? You’re just a poster on a message board and I’m in a country that’s far, faaaar away from yours.

Unless you’re gonna tell me my heart-broken guardian angel has come whispering words to you about what I had been through since the last time I was active on these boards, you really have no right to presume what I believe about myself.

In fact, nobody does.

I think your depression is talking. You do not make any sense. Either that or you’re really angry to have found yourself in a universe in which the ultimate decision-maker is unequivocally someone other than you. I’m not quite ready to buy that.

Depression? Sorry but I chucked that out last year along with whatever significance religion used to hold it in place.

What you see now is a man who no longer feigns to believe his life is for gods and demons to amuse themselves with in their so-called ‘spiritual war.’ It’s quite liberating to know that actually. No longer do I have to waste my time blaming and waiting for some force outside myself to change my life when I’ve had the power to do that all along.

People who believe that the Church has usurped a position of authority that they don’t think belongs to her is one thing. To believe that God has usurped a position of authority that ought to belong to you and makes decisions that ought to be yours to make, instead, that is on another plane.

Did I say God? I said the Church. Nice of you to try and blur the distinction but I’m not gonna buy it this time. I don’t really care for what people say ‘God’ thinks and besides, I’ve ceased throwing all my bets on divine intervention.

OK, so you’re talking yourself out of Christianity, this whole if-God-can-empty-himself-for-the-sake-of-love-so-can-you thing. Surely, though, if you are so much as a deist you have to see the grounds on which God can demand all from you. You have nothing without God. You wouldn’t exist. Nothing around you would exist, let alone anything beautiful or sustaining or that you could love or that could love you back. You’re totally ahead on this game, because you haven’t done anything to deserve anything from the One who owns the whole shooting match to begin with. On what grounds, though, do you make demands on God? How have you managed to put God in your debt? It boggles the imagination. There certainly isn’t a logical shred of defense for it.

Yes well, I’m not the one claiming to speak on God’s behalf and why I shouldn’t live my life the way I want it. That’d be you, actually. You may be right that I wouldn’t have anything without Him but I don’t see how that gives any person a right to presume how He works in my life.

I don’t care to speak for God, in case you didn’t get the hint. I speak only for myself. And speaking only for myself, I’m more cut out to be a wolf than a sheep.

 

[Cmc1972]

No I actually do. You say otherwise? What proof do you have? You’re just a poster on a message board and I’m in a country that’s far, faaaar away from yours.

Unless you’re gonna tell me my heart-broken guardian angel has come whispering words to you about what I had been through since the last time I was active on these boards, you really have no right to presume what I believe about myself.

In fact, nobody does.

Depression? Sorry but I chucked that out last year along with whatever significance religion used to hold it in place.

What you see now is a man who no longer feigns to believe his life is for gods and demons to amuse themselves with in their so-called ‘spiritual war.’ It’s quite liberating to know that actually. No longer do I have to waste my time blaming and waiting for some force outside myself to change my life when I’ve had the power to do that all along.

Did I say God? I said the Church. Nice of you to try and blur the distinction but I’m not gonna buy it this time. I don’t really care for what people say ‘God’ thinks and besides, I’ve ceased throwing all my bets on divine intervention.

Yes well, I’m not the one claiming to speak on God’s behalf and why I shouldn’t live my life the way I want it. That’d be you, actually. You may be right that I wouldn’t have anything without Him but I don’t see how that gives any person a right to presume how He works in my life.

I don’t care to speak for God, in case you didn’t get the hint. I speak only for myself. And speaking only for myself, I’m more cut out to be a wolf than a sheep.

You are not as free to as you claim to be, but if you wish to be delusional go ahead and be. At some point you follow a code that was not developed by you but you only borrowed bits and pieces that you have convinced yourself makes you free of dogma. We all live in a illusion that is self created. The difference between you and I is that I have accepted to prayer for guidance and believe the gospel to be the word of God.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

The difference between you and I is that I have accepted to prayer for guidance and believe the gospel to be the word of God.

So you say my delusion is inferior to yours? Yeaap, that’s humble Christianity for ya!

 

[Rau]

No I actually do. …
Depression? Sorry but I chucked that out last year along with whatever significance religion used to hold it in place.
…Did I say God? I said the Church. Nice of you to try and blur the distinction but I’m not gonna buy it this time. … And speaking only for myself, I’m more cut out to be a wolf than a sheep.

Why do you wink incessantly? What does it mean?

 

[Avocadomom]

Ultimately, it does come down to the question of authority. Did Jesus establish a Church to hand down his teachings or not? If he did, the Catholic Church is it. If he did not, there is no point to being Christian at all. One cannot trust someone who ‘discovered’ Jesus’ teachings 300 or 500 or 1000 or 1500 or 2000 years later, saying ‘this is what he really meant.’ It just won’t work and it’s unreliable.

Not only that, but one must toss out the Faith which built Western Civilization. And in fact, a great many are intent on tossing aside western civilization; they will have no qualms about tossing aside the Church Jesus founded along with it.

Playing DA here, but I think our Protestant brothers and sisters would say that the Catholic Church abdicated its role as Christ’s institution when it started “revealing” truth rather than sticking to The Bible. I think they would argue that The Church has overstepped her bounds and has been “making stuff up” for centuries. They would make the case that they ARE obedient to Christ, just not an institution. My Protestant best friend believes that the very early Church looked more like a modern non-denominational church than a Catholic one.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

You. Are. A. Troublemaker.

It’s like a super power of mine.

 

[EasterJoy]

No I actually do. You say otherwise? What proof do you have? You’re just a poster on a message board and I’m in a country that’s far, faaaar away from yours.

Unless you’re gonna tell me my heart-broken guardian angel has come whispering words to you about what I had been through since the last time I was active on these boards, you really have no right to presume what I believe about myself.

In fact, nobody does.

Depression? Sorry but I chucked that out last year along with whatever significance religion used to hold it in place.

What you see now is a man who no longer feigns to believe his life is for gods and demons to amuse themselves with in their so-called ‘spiritual war.’ It’s quite liberating to know that actually. No longer do I have to waste my time blaming and waiting for some force outside myself to change my life when I’ve had the power to do that all along.

Did I say God? I said the Church. Nice of you to try and blur the distinction but I’m not gonna buy it this time. I don’t really care for what people say ‘God’ thinks and besides, I’ve ceased throwing all my bets on divine intervention.

Yes well, I’m not the one claiming to speak on God’s behalf and why I shouldn’t live my life the way I want it. That’d be you, actually. You may be right that I wouldn’t have anything without Him but I don’t see how that gives any person a right to presume how He works in my life.

I don’t care to speak for God, in case you didn’t get the hint. I speak only for myself. And speaking only for myself, I’m more cut out to be a wolf than a sheep.

OK, so as far as you are concerned, there is no god in your life, excepting perhaps you? I mean, if you are in a position to dictate how God* ought to be *running the universe other than the way God *is in fact *running the universe, you’ve pretty much made yourself the judge of God and all of His work. Your servant, God, is not quite up to snuff.

I stand corrected.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

OK, so as far as you are concerned, there is no god in your life, excepting perhaps you? I mean, if you are in a position to dictate how God* ought to be *running the universe other than the way God *is in fact *running the universe, you’ve pretty much made yourself the judge of God and all of His work. Your servant, God, is not quite up to snuff.

I stand corrected.

Well you are talking about a being that you proclaim to have created the human race out of love.

Said race is made in his image and likeness.

So sue me, the simple words of ask and ye shall receive have made more sense in my life than the self-loathing tenets of sacrifice and humility.

Besides, did I say I want to run the universe? I think all I said was that I wanted to run my life. You know? The one I personally experience day to day? That’s the only universe I care about ruling because, it’s been mine to begin with.

 

[EasterJoy]

It’s like a super power of mine.