Fervent love for God converted an empire once; it can do the same today

This week’s column is excerpted from Archbishop Chaput’s May 6 comments in New York to an American Bible Society (ABS) audience, many of whom were non-Catholic Christians and young adults.

From a Pauline point of view, whether America is really 80 percent or 50 percent or 10 percent Christian is unimportant.  The only thing that matters is what you and I do right now with the gift of faith we’ve been given.  God will do the work; he’s got a pretty good track record when we don’t get in the way.  Our job is to become the best cooperators and instruments of his will that we can be.

One of the best things we can do for our own faith is to simply turn off the noise around us one night a week.  Computers, televisions, cell phones, DVD players, radios, iPods—turn them all off.  Not every night.  Just one night.  This is a very fruitful habit we can borrow from Mormon families: one night a week spent reading, talking with each other, listening to each other and praying over Scripture.  We can at least do that much.  And if we do, we’ll discover that eventually we’re sober again and not drunk on technology and our own overheated consumer appetites.

Obviously we can’t ignore the forces that are reshaping our culture and its vocabulary.  I have no idea what American life will look like in 50 years.  But unless Christians get involved in public life and work to advance their convictions in the public square, our nation could be very different from anything the founders intended. 

Many of you will live to see that future.  In fact, many of you will help create it by your choices.  I’m in my mid-60s.  The way that I look at the world has been formed by the printed word.  It’s up to you to find a way to pour the word of God and the person of Jesus Christ into human hearts shaped by different tools and new knowledge.  You can’t do that by repudiating or withdrawing from the world.  You need to engage it.  And if Paul could begin the conversion of an empire with nothing but a love for God—well, at least you have nothing less than he did to work with.

The lesson of St. Paul, now and for every generation, is that we need to engage the world with intelligence, a creative spirit and, most importantly, charity, which “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (I Cor 13:7).

But real charity depends on truth; not shallow courtesies and not false compromises.  Paul reminds us that charity “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth” (I Cor 13:6).  In fact, no greater gift of love exists than sharing the truth with others.  Only God’s truth sets us free.  Respect for others is always a Christian duty.  But it’s never an excuse for indifference to our mission.  It can never be separated from a zeal for God’s truth about human nature and dignity. 

Staying loyal to the truth in today’s unfriendly culture, which is so badly wounded by what Pope Benedict XVI calls a “dictatorship of relativism,” is a tough task.  The nature of truth is vital not only to Paul’s theology, but to the substance of our faith.  Jesus himself did not claim to “preach” the truth but to be the truth.  That’s why a Christianity based only on technique or useful ideas or a system of good social principles will always fail.  Christianity can only be anchored in a love for Jesus Christ.

The cross of Jesus Christ is not a “philosophy.”  It’s an instrument of killing stained with the blood of a Person who was once dead but is now alive.  Only if we really believe the resurrection of Jesus Christ in our bones, only if we endure in proclaiming that truth, we will be able to repeat with St. Paul’s relief and joy: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day” (2 Tim 4:7-8).

Thanks, and God bless you.

The full text of the archbishop’s May 6 ABS speech can be found at archden.org.