In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns about opposition. About the pushback that always comes whenever we try to live our Faith.
Some people love the pushback that comes with division. They’re addicted to casting themselves as heroic figures taking a stand against…something.
So they use their beliefs as wedge issues to create it.
Weaponizing their faith to separate people (even fellow believers) into supporters and opponents. Us versus them.
Purity testing so they can brand people as “Christians in name only.”
That’s not what Jesus is talking about. How do I know this? Two big reasons.
First, purity testing is idiotic. Because, as St. Paul tells us, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” None of us can pass the test.
We don’t like admitting it, but none of us deserve any of the graces that God so extravagantly pours out on us. None of us are good enough, on our own (hint – what was Good Friday about?).
God’s extravagance flows out of God’s love for us. Not out of any merit we might think we have.
The most common response to this by fans of purity testing? The silly (and unbiblical) practice of comparing sins.
Claiming that someone else’s sins are worthy of damnation. While smugly lying to ourselves about how what we’re doing is no big deal. Probably not even really a sin.
C.S. Lewis rebuts this nonsense brilliantly in the Screwtape Letters.
“It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is the edge the man away from the Light…Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
The other big reason? Today’s Gospel is part of a larger teaching. The same one where Jesus commands those of us who would follow Him to “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
Sort of the opposite of weaponized faith and wedge issues.
Because “Love one another, as I have loved you” is missing something. Something that we all too readily read into it – Exceptions. Qualifiers. Disclaimers.
The way we live our lives? It’s like we think it says, “Love one another, as I have loved you, except for ___.” And then we fill in the blank with whoever we’re playing us versus them games with.
Why? In a word, pride. The oldest and dreariest sin.
The one that always ends up with us worshipping ourselves.
Whenever we start smuggling in exceptions. So we can feel better about ourselves, by pretending we’re better than someone else. We’ve fallen victim to pride.
And if we keep going down that road?
We’ll soon find that we are the Christians in name only.
