If I'm in New York City right now listening to a radio station "Why Aren't You Jewish?"
for somewhere else "Why Aren't You Muslim?" I feel like all those would be the same reason:
mainly, because I didn't grow up with that. Nothing.
I like the honesty and the candor of that. And I think this is something that
is worth kind of meditating on. It doesn't mean it's wrong. Right. Like being born into
a religion, being born into a way of thinking that doesn't automatically mean it's wrong,
but it doesn't automatically mean it's right either. There's an important part of growing
up where you say is what I was taught true? You know. Is what I received from my parents true?
And I'm glad that you are seemingly open to that question or asking that question. And
so if I were to make the pitch for the Catholic Church, it wouldn't just be,
you know, as you heard maybe at the top of the hour, both Cy and I grew up Catholic.
Now, I didn't grow up really understanding what the Catholic Church believed.
So I was totally ready, even by the age of about 12, to jump ship
until I really learned a lot more about why Catholics believe what they believe. So I,
I feel you on that. I think, you know, I grew up this way isn't really enough of an
explanation or enough of an answer, but it's really an honest answer
at the same time. To that, I would suggest this because you mentioned all these non-Christian
alternatives as well, that the way I kind of describe it is other world religions are about men
reaching out to God. Judaism is an exception from this, but as a general rule, other world religion
than other philosophies, you know, Buddhism and the like are about this quest to find God.
There is a natural desire to see God and to know God. And what makes Judaism and
Christianity unique. What makes it different is that it's God's reaching out to man. It's
God revealing himself to man rather than, you know, some brilliant thinker or sage, saying,
Here's what I think about God, about the universe, about the world. Does that distinction make sense?
Yeah, I think so. Okay. So that's just like Christianity versus non-Christianity, but
within the kind of at least Catholic/Protestant discussion, there's a similar sort of thing that
Protestantism is man reaching out to Christ, it's man trying to follow Christ to the best
of his own ability, certainly aided by grace. I don't think any Protestant would deny that.
But there's still this attempt on the end of man to just say what do I think Christ
taught? And there's a sense that I have to, like, make my own church,
my own denomination, or have to follow another man-made denomination. And the Catholic answer
to that is, no like Christ comes to us, He makes the church, we don't make it for him.
Just as God reveals himself to us, we don't reveal God to ourselves. Just as there's that
difference between non-Christian religions, man reaching out to God. You have a similar thing at
the level of the church with Protestants kind of having a man-made denomination that's just
as apart as having a man-made religion is where there may be some true things there.
But the way God does it is He does the reviewing, he does the building,
he builds the church. And I think you can see this even, you know, you mentioned being Methodist.
You can trace this even in the history of Methodist. Thought so. John Wesley,
who I really have a great deal of respect for. He has a 1749 letter to a Roman Catholic
in which he talks about all the things that he and Catholics have in common.
He came from an Anglican background and one of the things he talks about is that
Methodists and Catholics both believe that Christ was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
who, in his words, as well after as before she brought him forth
continue a pure and unspotted virgin.That is, John Wesley took it for
granted that Catholics and Methodists could agree on the perpetual virginity of Mary.
And I think it's safe to say that virtually no Methodist today agrees with that.
That Methodists have strayed from even not just historic Christianity,
even historic Methodism. And the check against that, the way we don't fall into
that is by saying what has Christ revealed to us? And the way we know that is what is
he revealed through the church rather than just like as individual followers would do.
I think the message is, does that distinction make sense? And is that maybe a helpful way of thinking
about the question? [caller] Yeah. And one of the biggest things I struggle with might making a separate
topic from today is that in my view, if I don't believe the correct denomination or not correct faith,
I'm lost and to me, if I grew up in a certain family that never believed that, then I'm just.
I just, like, messed up or like, I didn't mess up. There's no, I'm out of luck, you know,
like, unless I completely switch to the right one.
Maybe that's Catholic. Maybe it's something else. Unless I switch to the right one. I'm just.
I'm just out of luck, you know? [Joe] Oh yeah, no, I totally get where you're coming from.
So to that, I would say this, like, for one, how you raise
your child really does matter. I don't want to act like it doesn't matter. So you can prepare a kid
to have a proper view of God, a proper view of the world,
a proper view of right and wrong conduct. Or you can prepare your child to have a
wrong view of all those things, and you can really mess him up for life.
That's just one of the reasons parents are really important, but no one is a slave to their family
of origin. There are all sorts of people who convert. Pew Research study found that a majority
of Protestants convert at some point in their life within the kind of world of Christianity
that if you grew up Methodist, the odds of you dying Methodist are a little under 50%.
So it's not just like, well, if you grew up in this one way,
you have no other possibility of getting to another worldview because you have free
will. You can still say no. I hear another vision of reality that makes more sense. I
see another Christian denomination that has a more coherent claim or whatever it is. Right?
Like, people convert for all sorts of reasons.
But then the third thing is in terms of God's judgment, God judges you on what you say yes
and no to not and what you didn't know and had no way of knowing. So this is pretty clearly taught
in Luke 1248, in which Jesus says everyone to whom much is given of him, much will be required,
and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more.
In other words, you're judged based on what you do with the gifts God gave you. And those
gifts include your natural talents. They also include the upbringing you got. They include,
like your access to divine revelation. They include all of those things. And so the
people who live in ignorance aren't judged on the things that they're in ignorance of.
They're judged on how they responded to God's call on them in whatever
way He did call them. So you see this really clearly in Acts 17,
Saint Paul goes to Mars Hill and he is talking to a group of pagans who have
a temple to an unknown god. And He tells them that he's there to proclaim that unknown God.
And He tells them that, you know, God is merciful to them. From that time of
ignorance when they were seeking after him and didn't know where to find him. But now
he's come like he's the fulfillment of that longing of the human heart. And so Paul is
there to reveal this previously unknown God. So that's an important difference.
Like, had they not heard Paul's message,
they wouldn't have been judged for having not known about Christianity. They had no control
over that. Once they hear about Christianity, this is the fulfillment of everything they've
been longing for. And it also creates this responsibility. Now, what are you going to
do about it? So the gospel is an invitation, it is a gift, and it's also a challenge.
So in that sense, I wouldn't worry about people who had, you know, through no fault of their own,
didn't have access to the gospel except to say, bring them the gospel.