There’s a saying that, “God has no grandchildren.” A parent’s faith does not necessarily cascade into children. But it certainly helps to see good examples, and the power of the Sacraments do imbue marks of faith in people, marks that remain with them forever. There is no better gift for a person than Baptism, as this gift, even if kept wrapped for many years, never decays or withers. The treasure granted in the moment of Baptism awaits the receiver’s decision to open and accept the gift. It waits for them, untainted, like gold. We may teach our children about Christ, and they may accept the gift, but their children, our grandchildren, will be beyond our reach. If not given the gift, they may have to find faith by the breadcrumbs and signposts on their path in life, picking up the seeds of the word, or even discover a way to God on their own. Somehow, and rather amazingly, even grandchildren who are never taught about the carpenter from Nazareth can find their way to this treasure, even if no one tells them about Baptism or teaches them the faith. Grandchildren of no faith background can find this treasure, because it can be found by anyone. If you walk enough of this earth, traverse enough experience, if you chase wealth or power or pleasure, you will eventually trip over this treasure at least once. Your pride will find the uneven earth to trip upon, one way or another. Whether or not you choose to “buy the field” and be filled with joy, that comes down to the individual, and it is a choice. Our intellect and free will make for wonderful and sometimes awful companions in this journey.

A great mystery is how the Church continues through the ages as the empires rise and fall. Hope fades in earthly superpowers after a hundred years, but the Church stands. It withstands assault. It surges. It falters. It is persecuted. It retreats. It persists. It is restored. Even through all of this scandal, what seems impossible, is possible with God. For those who think we are fools to remain, we can’t explain it very well. But perhaps this will help a bit: we can never quit the Church because we know the words that the childlike Peter admitted to Jesus are true, as I quote like a broken record:

“You have the words of eternal life. To whom else would we turn?”

For those that believe God established his Church “upon this rock,” on Peter, and thus believe in the authority and interpretation of the Church, then there is no choice but to remain, to fight for it, to make it better, and to someday be on your deathbed receiving the last rites, if God wills it. The Sacraments are real, they make the invisible things visible. The Eucharist is the “source and summit” of the Church and partaking in that sacrifice, along with regular Reconciliation, makes Jesus alive. I cannot adopt the “Once saved, always saved,” because I believe that the Sacraments are real. To quote Tim Staples, being “Saved” is ongoing. We should say: “As the Bible says, I am already saved (Rom. 8:24, Eph. 2:5–8), but I’m also being saved (1 Cor. 1:18, 2 Cor. 2:15, Phil. 2:12), and I have the hope that I will be saved (Rom. 5:9–10, 1 Cor. 3:12–15). Like the apostle Paul I am working out my salvation in fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), with hopeful confidence in the promises of Christ (Rom. 5:2, 2 Tim. 2:11–13).”

If we are just saved by a one time declaration, then the inevitable corruption and sin that follows is a problem. Consider that Judas was chosen, perhaps even saved, before he wasn’t. Consider also, that of the original twelve Christians, eight percent of Christians were Judas. This will always be the case. It’s probably much higher, since these first twelve were chosen people who surely received high-dosage grace. Further, Jesus himself says that few will find the narrow gate but many will find the wide path to destruction. He added the most chilling line of all when he said that all those who call out his name will not be saved, but instead he will tell them, “I never knew you.” It is not enough to declare faith and then not do God’s will. Jesus said that, I didn’t make it up. You must walk with him all the days of your life, to the end, because “by your endurance you will gain your soul.”

This failure of Christians to live up to the high standard set forth by Jesus and the saints has made it remarkably easy for modern people to doubt or laugh at followers of Jesus, because we create scandal quite naturally. The Church is taking a beating by its own failings, but in reality Christians have been hated from the outset, from the first day the word began to spread on Pentecost. Surely if 3,000 people converted that first day Peter preached in Jerusalem, the rest of the world began hating those same 3,000 shortly afterward. The strange thing about Jesus is that he promised his first followers suffering and hatred, as he himself suffered and was hated. The funny thing about that is how many of us hear those words and say, “Great, where do I sign up?”

All religions have their heroes, villains, false prophets, and horrors. Science has its own laundry list of evil experiments done on real people, as you can read up on studies performed that are every bit as awful and disgusting as what St. Bartolome de las Casas was reporting back to Rome about the Spanish explorers. No one would say, “All scientists are evil,” but you will hear, “All priests are evil” or alternatively “Religion poisons everything.” There are different reactions to different religions, and the reaction to Christianity is typically a total and angry rejection. There are a few reasons for this anger, as I see it.

The first reason is because of the lofty goal of holiness in the Church. The Church pronounces its holiness and then falls short, time and again. Expectedly, its opponents have a party over its demise, thinking surely this scandal will be the event that ends the faith of every follower. The old familiar insults are hurled (such as the classic w***e of Babylon, which is really a great name for an insult, even if ridiculous). You see the atheists and everyone else piling on top, rioting in the aftermath of the bad news. Unfortunately, those partying on the potential grave of the Church will be disappointed.

The Church must be held to a nearly unattainable standard, always and forever, because it can never aim lower than the life of Christ and the mysteries of faith without losing everything else. After all, Jesus is the incarnation of God, fully human and fully divine, and he is the founder and his words the foundation and his apostles and bishops the teachers and keepers of the tradition. Yet these members were, from the start, only human. While striving toward his excellence and perfection, they never achieve it, or not for long. As I’ve mentioned before, “perfection kills” but the never-ending work of “progress, not perfection” must be carried forward when we fall, just as Simon the Cyrene carried the cross with Jesus. Even his fully human self needed help once, and miraculously one of us normal humans had a chance to provide it.

Second, this anger goes right back to the old issue of Jesus being divine. Either he was God, as he said he was, or he was a lying lunatic. If you believe that he was God, then you have no alternative but faith, and if you choose lunatic, then the correct response is anger. This is why the response is so vitriolic against Jesus among those who reject the resurrection. When his followers turn out to be weak and fallen, opponents take it out on Christ by proxy of his hypocrite followers, which feels good when your own religion needs to have a winner and a loser.

What people always forget is that the Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints, so they struggle to understand why it is that people return to the Church even after it experiences an embarrassing failure. Those who understand what a hospital is for go there when they need help, as a hospital is to a church, as sickness is to sin. Anyone who expects to only find saints attending Holy Mass will be seeking a Church that doesn’t exist now, has never existed before, and never will exist. They would have better luck finding the saints they expect to find in an art history book, Butler’s Lives of the Saints, or perhaps a graveyard.

Third, Christians are playing a different game altogether than non-Christians, which causes confusion. As humans, we are wired for competition, strife, and victimization, as that is the religion our instinct wants us to have: a fight, a blaming, a competition, an “us vs. them” mentality, and using whatever means available to get an advantage. That is where we naturally tend to go. It’s why Jesus is so radically different than what we expect from a savior. We expect Thor to come down with the hammer, but we get a carpenter with a regular claw hammer. No, we’re like Bonnie Tyler in 1986 singing, “I need a hero,” asking, “Where have all the good men gone? / Where are all the gods? / Where's the street-wise Hercules / To fight the rising odds?”

We need a hero because we want a loser. For those who worship politics or youth or money or power, there is always a winner and loser in those realms. For science, there is a right and a wrong answer. The most radical thing about Jesus is that he shatters the zero-sum game of the winner and the loser. He takes the impact, he is the scapegoat. He is the clear winner of all things, but he loses on purpose. He takes the burden of our incessant blaming and fighting upon himself. The scapegoating ends with him. Correction: it is supposed to end with him. Quite a few of us Christians have missed this message. We killed God on the Cross. Sadly, we would likely do it again today if he returned in the same manner. But he won’t return in the same manner though, as he has assured us with his own words.

His resurrection should have ended the need for a scapegoat. The victory over death by Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection amends our initial fall from grace. We are no longer in the zero-sum game of winners and losers because Jesus took one for the team, the whole team, for all men and women, so that we may be forgiven for what our creaturely instincts guide us toward. This makes it confusing to those outside of Christianity, because it doesn’t fit the normal mode of how we see the world. It’s radically different.

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