One day it dawned on me, after the long journey of having fallen away and then returning to the faith of a child:

I made the worst trade imaginable.

I had doubts about a few people and some political issues, so I ditched God. I had doubts about something of this world, so I turned away the Creator of it. I saw the faults of some human beings or current events or pain, so I decided to throw out the baby with the bathwater. After all, I wanted knowledge, so I put science in God’s place.

I thought I’d made a good trade.

In hindsight, this is baffling to me. The Herschel Walker trade, which destroyed the Minnesota Vikings for years, was a better deal than what I got in return for my trade. Why? Because I didn’t even get an aging football player, I got a false freedom and false self, or in other words, literally nothing in return. I traded wonder for nihilism. I traded mystery for a fake certainty. At least the Minnesota Vikings had that first glorious day where Herschel Walker ran for monster yardage over the Green Bay Packers, before everything fell apart. The Dallas Cowboys used the trade as the cornerstone to building one of the greatest sports dynasties in NFL history. (But enough on modern sports idolatry before I digress again, let’s move on).

I suddenly knew why there were two trees in the Garden of Eden. One was for knowledge, and one was for life. Somehow I made a bad choice. I passed over the “tree of life” in favor of the “tree of knowledge.”

Out of the ground the LORD God made grow every tree that was delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…

God said, “You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.” (Genesis 2:9-16)

What a shame. To think that we were allowed to eat from the tree of life…and chose otherwise. We traded life for knowledge. This has to be one of the worst trades in history.

The “tree of life” and the “bread of life” seemed to leap out at me from Genesis and the Gospel. It’s like we were given a second chance at life. We were shown a way back to that first Fall, where a new choice could be made by each person, and not just Adam. Once again, we could choose. We could trade that Bread of Life. Or we could believe. We could eat it, and believe it, and live.

That is exactly why the world caught fire with faith in Jesus. He brought back the tree of life, and, oddly, he was the fruit. He offers a new life, and I’m using the present tense on purpose. The presence of a living God is the only one that makes a difference, because a living God can be known and interacted with. A relationship can be formed. Once that occurs, every single instant of your life then changes, because once you believe and eat the Bread of Life, every decision matters and you are no longer just a mind, or just a soul, or just a body (a clump of cells). You are fully alive, activated and full of meaning. You get to undo your personal Herschel Walker trade that the Minnesota Vikings never could!

Clearly the message of Jesus has a staying power unlike anything else, and it’s because of this discovery, this re-do, this leveling-up. With the Enlightenment, the focus on the human, rather than the divine, took giant leaps forward, in revolt against that strange success of Christianity, which had produced the world’s greatest art, music, and architecture. Collectively we’ve chose the tree of knowledge over faith. Faith leads to life, and knowledge leads to enslavement by our desires.

Like most things, success leads to pride and corruption. Familiarly breeds contempt. The message of Christ became so familiar that it bored us, I suppose, so we sought knowledge. Seeing bad examples of Christians flattened out the message. Seeing hypocrites preach morality extracted the gunpowder from the cannon. It’s no wonder that God says, “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.” (Rev 3:15-16) Just as lukewarm coffee lacks it’s reason for existence, so does the Church. The joy of discovering this source of life cannot be served lukewarm.

Given that human beings have always made up the Church’s body, it’s no surprise that pride, envy, greed, lust, and such things infected the Church whenever it came too close to power. Also, these things invaded whenever the church became undemanding of its followers. No one really wants an undemanding Catholicism. It’s ridiculous to watch if it’s not demanding. It’s sad to observe the lukewarm Catholic who is indifferent to the Eucharist, indifferent to Confession, indifferent to the Resurrection. But it is a thing of beauty and joy to see humble man or woman living in observance, who approaches the faith with reverence, obedience, and the faith of a child. If you don’t believe me, you probably haven’t met any yet. These people do exist, and the joy is real.

There is nothing appealing at all of a Church with drunk, horny, and obese followers who live a life of debauchery while they store up treasures on earth. I’m sorry if that sounds crude. There is great appeal, however, to a Church where the rich and poor worship side by side, who fast and pray, who believe in chastity, and who stand equally in line for Confession and the Eucharist. There is great appeal where there are joyful believers working for the kingdom of God, even when - especially when - they realize that their efforts are pitiful compared to what God can do.

That is why you have the repeated cycle of reformers like St. Benedict and St. Anthony of Egypt, and a thousand others, who retreat to a desert or a cave or a monastery to start over. When the culture and the Church turn away from God, God calls his sheep and they hear his voice. The message gets lost in the culture and needs a reset button to return it to what made it grow in the first place, and that is the demands of orthodoxy that led nearly every Apostle to a brutal end.

Once I started to read more from the early era of Christianity, it became clear that what I had known as Christianity did not match up. Not at all. Later, I found that these people still exist - quite a few of them, I just hadn’t met them yet. The undemanding faith I observed around me was not what the early church taught or experienced.

In addition, I learned that this idealized world of Greece and Rome was left behind for a reason. There was nothing ideal about the pre-Christian world. It was a brutal slugfest of might-makes-right. Something better had been found in the Trinitarian God, in Jesus, than that of the serial rapist god named Zeus, who was a useless fertility storm-god. The will-to-power, that awful idea that German philosophers resurrected from the past, was not just a bad product that the Romans were pitching, it was a bad product in every age, wherever it was applied. The will-to-power is always pitched as a solution to our problems, as if it would get our dishes clean, but it’s not a solution at all, it’s a pure acid that eats through whatever it touches.

Other religions in the ancient world didn’t offer anything close to what Jesus did. The same goes for our modern religions. The reason Jesus won over the world is because he has a far better story than Buddhism, Islam, humanism or anything else. But it’s much more than a pitch or a product. He, himself, is the product. He is way, the truth, and the life. That is what is so radically strange about Jesus. That is the whole point of every article on this site/podcast. It’s just so odd, all of it. The pitch, the demo, the purchase, the application, the usage, and the result. All of it is strange. And all of it works as advertised. It does everything. It just works. What else can I say? He is The Way. In his person is the Truth. Through him we get new Life.

(Sorry Mandalorian fans, Jesus was referred to as “The Way” long before Disney tried to make it a Star Wars thing, with proof in Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22. But, then again, cultural appropriation and fake plastic faces is Disney’s whole game, so nothing to see here…moving on.)

In the last few centuries, we were fish swimming in a water called Christendom. We’ve taken for granted that our current ideas sprung to life out of the Renaissance or the Romantics or modern science. But it’s actually the opposite. All of those things only sprung forth because they drank from the river of life. Our modern ideas could have only come to life in the world that Christianity created. We look at the flaws and call it ugly, without realizing how far we have come. Worse, we look at the flaws and lump all Christian actions over the last 500 years into a blob called “Christianity” when there were clearly denominations poisoning the well. We pretend that faithfulness in relationships, helping foreigners, building hospitals, educating youth, being humble, and loving your neighbors came about in spite of Christianity. But the truth is that none of these things existed in the ancient world because of the lack of Christianity. All of the things we celebrate as fruits of modernity only exist because Jesus came here to show us how to live, and inspired joy in millions of his followers to love their wives, to pray for enemies, to heal the sick, and feed the poor.

None of those things came about from any other ideology, except for Judaism. The reason people hate reading the Old Testament is because they think the laws of Israel were brutal and cruel, but in reality they were by far the most humane in the ancient world, not only to women, but also widows, orphans, and foreigners. And Jesus put all that in hyperdrive as he corrected and encouraged all of the good things that modern atheists and agnostics assume came from Enlightenment thinkers.

Taking this Christendom for granted has brought us to a strange place, where we speak like Puritans but sin like Samson. We want our world to be like Burger King, where their slogan is, “Have it your way.” But there is only one king, even over Burger King, who I now consider to be as significant as any other President or Prime Minister. The real King is the one who created Burger King and every other atom in this universe.

While we swim in the waters of Christendom, we have started to deny there is water. First, the mistake of “faith alone” clipped the wings of authentic body and soul Christianity, and now even Faith itself has became the taboo, as many have switched over to “sola ratio,” or “Reason alone.” That is the new sola that our age manufactured. We are like goldfish speaking with our mouths full of water and pretending there is no such thing as water. Faith cannot be admitted, not at work, not at school, not in polite company. Why? Because it means signing our names to superstition and belief in the supernatural. No, we can’t do that. That would be a betrayal of modernity, where psychology and sociology has all the answers, as long as you’re willing to take enough pills and shell out for therapy and adhere to corporate human resources doctrine. Admitting you believe in ghosts and spirits and the Devil is social suicide. Death is, once again, something to fear and by reason alone we must stave off that monster.

We made a crappy trade. Because death no longer brought fear. We only have this life in the “reason alone” worldview, thus we have to save ourselves. It’s always the same problem. Control. We want control, because we can’t surrender to God and trust in the promises of Christ. That is the Herschel Walker trade. We choose knowledge and this life instead of trusting in God, instead of moving back toward the tree of eternal life.

I fell for all the modern fruit. The sales pitch and demo really took me in, and I bought the product. I presumed that everyone from the year 30 A.D. and onward, until we finally got to the Renaissance and Voltaire and Newton and Martin Luther, was little more than a God-fearing idiot under the cruel yoke of power-hungry Popes and bully Kings.

Now, that is not entirely untrue. Corrupt Popes and Christian kings certainly existed, and will exist again. They are human beings. The falls in the Church have been significant and should not be swept under a rug, ever, as the Church must be held to a higher standard because it is the Body of Christ in this world.

The failings of individuals and leaders come as no surprise, however, at least if you understand what “The Fall of Man” actually means. Most people don’t today, as groupings of people get assigned flaws like elitist, racist, ignorant, hateful. The not-so-hidden secret of Original Sin is that everyone has it. All humans have flaws. All people abuse power. All people find scapegoats and cheerleaders, and the only person that didn’t was Jesus, so we try to imitate him. Some, or many, have used God as a means to malicious ends. I’m talking about the televangelists and charlatans that prey on souls under the guise of Christianity. But that doesn’t negate the reason for faith. God exists whether or not someone commits a crime or has a flaw that we don’t appreciate. That’s where we make the bad trade. A clerk who steals from the cash register doesn’t mean we have to burn the whole store down. Or for a more crude example, a pimple on a nose doesn’t mean the nose should be cut off, or that all noses should be removed because they may get a pimple.

The faith and morals of the church still stand, and are true. They are right and just. Time does not alter these truths. What the Church lays out as the guidance on faith and morals remains true, and for those angry about the Church’s position on these matters, the Pope and the priests are simply echoing the words of Jesus and the tradition of the Apostles. Everyone likes Jesus, as long as he doesn’t demand anything from them. But he does demand action from us.

Popular opinion does not alter these truths. No matter what modern French philosophers and internet influencers tell you, the purpose of sex is to create children, and marriage is a divine Sacrament. If you believe Jesus is the son of God, fully divine, and fully human, you have to actually read the words that he says and not invent interpretations. Jesus and the Apostles took care of that for us. The urge to twist and manipulate the words only happens because we want to sin.

Those who dispute what the Gospel says, and the Apostolic interpretation of it, they will all be forgotten within a century. Maybe one or two names will stick around, but all of the noise is much ado about nothing. If you find your way through the multi-media mine field to the truth, and see Christ as God, then all of the hubbub no longer matters. But the reality is that God will find you, and if you are a seeker of truth, and I believe many atheists and agnostics are exactly that, if they read the Gospel with an open mind and heart, and ask for willingness to be willing, God will call to them. But it requires action on our part to cooperate with God’s grace. We are the ones that must lay our guns on the table, and undress, and turn to face God, full naked, flaws and all.

Of course, we will all be judged within a century, and God will take care of the judging. I am as concerned for myself as any atheist, due to many sins committed, and even confessed some still linger and bother me. While the Sacrament assures me those things are forgiven, I believe that the effect of those sins still dart about the world, for which I will be purified “to the last penny” in purgatory (see Mt 5:26).

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