Thanks ,Steve, for sharing this. And also for retweeting Rose’s essay on X earlier. Im not trying to be sappy, but your essay is beautiful and reads like a prayer from the aforementioned Job. Eloquent, earnest and honest. I intend to read this through again and really sit with it.
Keep going. When I was in a grey cloud a long time ago I came across a simple list of 12 ways to know God , and I printed it and put a tiny copy of it in several places desk drawer, bulletin board, in books as bookmarks and it fed me while I couldn’t stay recollected myself… https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/12-ways.htm
Every Catholic (and any other Christian for that matter) should read this. I believe that all of your seeking, searching, and knocking will be answered one day.
Given your experience, I'm glad I wasn't raised Catholic. I don't think God ever intended His children to say what Rose said ("I have dragged myself across broken glass and ran through fire for my faith. I have denied myself many things, forced myself to be comfortable with what hurts"). I've had completely the opposite experience. I've felt His love like a nuclear bomb that was incredibly intense.
For me, God has spoken to us abundantly through scripture, which has truly amazing things in it showing us all about God. Do you want to hear God? Just read scripture.
But it seems Catholic teachings have somehow obscured this if they have led to so much suffering. Or maybe it's something else like the Enlightenment. I don't know. But I do know I've never been close to doubting God. I've seen Him move. I've seen Him transform peoples lives. I've seen Him heal marriages filled with hate.
My dad used to be a top skydiver and said it was the most thrilling thing he knew - until he met Jesus. He didn't just believe in God. He was thrilled by God.
I identify with Sarah Edwards. She said she experience more bliss in one night than the rest of her life combined. She couldn't walk for weeks it affected her so much. During that time she learned firsthand of her nearness and dearness to God.
The thing is. I know exactly what's she's talking about. I've felt it too. There's no way I can see God any other way. And then I read scripture. And it melts me. There is an aroma about it that drips with God. And it changes how you think.
You don't suddenly know everything about God. But you do know Him well enough to trust Him more than life itself.
I'm also a software engineer. Quite logical all my life. I'm so sure of the logic surrounding God that I have been planning to write several books about it. From my vantage point, it all seems so clear. And I mean incredibly clear.
But I'm with you. I want truth. I'm not blindly believing something that doesn't appear fully true to me. And where I'm wrong I want to know. Truth is more important than doctrine. If something isn't true, then you can't build on it. God does not contradict truth.
Twenty three years ago, I wrote a story for my 12-year old daughter. I start the story by having her have a dream that is a reflection of what I experienced myself. It's the best I could do to write what it felt like to me - and what I wanted to pass down to my daughter. I still feel this today. It truly changed my life. Here's from the story...
What I saw that day changed everything. And I do mean everything!
One minute you're an ordinary twelve-year-old with your mind on nothing more important than going to see a movie or having fun with your best friend, and the next minute your life is completely changed - even more so than if I had just won the lottery - because these changes went right to the core of my being.
We simply have no idea.
I know I didn't. I had no clue what was really going on in this universe. I didn't even know what was going on in my own small place on this planet. I was utterly blind until that day back in November - the day I had my first dream.
Like a curtain being rolled back, God opened my eyes. And yet, it was in a way that I never expected. I don't know if your eyes have ever been opened, but there's nothing like it. Really.
I have no idea why God picked that day to roll back the curtains for me. I have no idea why He decided to show... me! What did I ever do to deserve anything like this?
Right. Nothing.
Do you find it hard to believe? Well, I didn't believe it either... at first. And I was right there! I saw it with my own eyes!
What's it like to find yourself standing in what looks - and feels - like heaven? What does it do to a person to see what so few have ever seen?
If you've never been to heaven, then I don't think I can adequately explain what I saw and felt. There are no comparisons to it on Earth. There are no paintings that convey what you feel like standing there. There are no stories written that can express its impact on your being. There are no songs that can lift you in the same way. There is no place like heaven.
[...]
And then I saw what looked like a cloud appear in front of me. It materialized out of nowhere directly in the center of the room. Even though I was to the side, I could feel its thickness and I felt its weight on me like a weight placed on every cell in my body... and yet it didn't wear me down... rather it felt like a thick blanket of pure love.
That love thoroughly pervaded my being and I knew that the voices felt this same love, as I could hear their singing change. They sang the same words, yet now their passion became very personal. They felt His love and it changed them. And it changed me. I never knew I could be in love with God, but He won my heart when I felt the weight of His love - for me!
And I saw a glistening river begin to pour out from underneath the cloud. It came right at me, but His love so overwhelmed me that I was incapable of moving out of its path. The river spilled around my ankles and I felt a warmth enter my body and I saw that my feet began to glow. The glow ran straight up my legs and poured through me and out my arms and soon I was shining like the beings who sang below me.
The warmth followed the glow and soon it had permeated deep inside of me. It was like no other warmth I had ever felt. It felt like someone was pouring raw life right into me. It was a life that filled me with hope. And it filled me with joy. I always thought I knew what it was like to be alive, but really, we know so little.
It felt like the day my ballet teacher had picked me out to do a solo part - but a hundred times over. It felt like a thousand Christmas mornings all wrapped into one. It felt like the warmth I felt when my mother smiled at me and I knew she loved me - but it was like someone had purified that love down to a single pure drop and then made a river out of billions of these drops. Why had no one ever told me that real life is so full of love?
As I stood there so many things became clearer to me. Love has a way of doing that. I stood there for a very long time soaking in His love. It felt so good! I had no desire to go anywhere else. Where could I possibly want to go?
Although I didn't see His eyes then, I knew Him after that, and it wouldn't take an introduction for me to recognize Him. His love is truly unforgettable.
I know God exists. I'm one of the fortunate people who has experienced a miracle in their life, and so I have no doubt about that. But that doesn't mean that I never wonder what God's plan is, or that my trust in Him is absolute at all times. You'd think that, having experienced miraculous healing, I would never doubt, but I do. Then I remind myself that Jesus' disciples lived with him for three years, saw all of his miracles, watched people flock around him, and then ran away when the crisis came. We are broken, every one of us, so it's no wonder our relationships, our families, our culture are broken too. A happy marriage is a miracle of God. In the old days, people just stayed together somehow. My parents were happy in the beginning; my mother used to say that the first 20 years were one long honeymoon. Then the bad times came. Only after they were both gone did we realize the extent of the misery, the incompatibility of their two personalities. They stuck it out because to divorce was unthinkable, but those last years were pretty miserable, especially for my mom because my father was chronically unfaithful. But she was unfailingly gracious and kind to all who knew her. The Holy Spirit glowed through her even as her health failed. Only faith can do that. I'm grateful for her example.
It's a funny thing how even supernatural experiences seem unable to maintain their grasp over us over time. I haven't had anything of significance to speak of, out of a voice in my head one time that may have saved my life. A story for another time.
But I've been around people who have gone through crazy experiences while I was present (but not perceiving them myself) and I don't know what to make of that. It's one of the reasons why I never became an atheist. I know there's more going on than meets the eye.
As for your parents, yeah, I would have stuck it out to the end, too. I don't know if it ever would have gotten better. It's impossible to say, but the track record wasn't great. I just don't know why I would have felt led to someone who was bad for me, and vice versa. That will never make sense to me.
Hi Steve, I'm a new subscriber, and I just read this post. I found out about your Substack through Monitoring the Situation, which I learned about from Larry Chapp. My background is different from yours in that I went from teenage atheism to Evangelical Christianity where I stayed for many years. Then I embarked on a quest for historic Christianity which led through Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, but unexpectedly ended at the Catholic Church. I spent some time investigating traditionalism in the wake of the McCarrick scandal in 2018, and it was at that time I found 1 Peter 5 and saw a video where you talked about your experience with the Legionaries. Even so, I have remained what may be labeled as a conservative Catholic.
All that is to say that I have gone through many changes, and I have found many things that I thought I knew about God to be wrong, but I also continue to learn and have a very long way to go. So in that respect, I resonate with a lot of your article. However, from things you have said on MTS and in this article, you seem to me to be reacting against what I might describe as a mechanical approach to the faith. You know the doctrinal propositions, arguments, and rules, and these are the things I hear you reacting against, but that's not what I consider the core of what it means to be a Christian. I like what you recently said about your teacher, Dr. Regis Martin, when he said that the faith is a poem, not a syllogism, but I don't hear you talking about the poetry of the faith.
Your post mocks those of us who say we have a relationship with God. You're right, it is not the same thing as a human relationship. God is very different from us, and life is full of things that blind us to spiritual realities. Many little children have a kind of spiritual sense, but lose it as they grow up. Even so, God constantly reaches out to all of us, and he gets through to us in different ways.
All I know about you, Steve, is through some videos and posts, so I may be completely off base, but it appears to me that you were raised in a pretty rigorous Catholic environment. The irony is that it may have blinded your spiritual sense and caused you to miss the God at the center of it all. Maybe you were so focused on the syllogisms that you missed the poetry. I wonder if you have heard the recent conversation between Larry Chapp and Kale Zeldon.* I think they do a good job addressing what they cleverly call "trip-wire Catholicism," and I think you have been the victim of that trip-wire approach to the faith. My hope is that you will find a way back to God and even the Catholic Church through a kind of poetry that emerges from what you're experiencing now.
Well, I could go on and on, but I will stop here. Who am I to tell you what to do? Even so, I felt like your post was meant to provoke a response. In addition, my heart has gone out to you from the time I heard about what you went through with the Legionaries and continuing to your current situation. I like the Steve that I see in the videos, and I want things to go well for him. I will close with a saying I learned as an Evangelical, I'm just a beggar telling other beggars where to find bread.
Hey Greg, thanks for subscribing, and for your comment.
I'm actually really sorry if what I said came across as mocking. I don't mean to mock people who say they have a relationship, it's frustrated bewilderment that I'm experiencing. I just don't get how it's possible to do this with someone you have no perceptual interaction with.
And you're correct when you say I don't see the poetry of faith, but that's largely because my education and formation offered me a mechanistic version of praxis and a wrathful, distant God. But I talk about the poetry because I *WANT* that to be the real version. I just don't know how to stop tripping over the axioms and threats and scholasticism and all the saints talking about how you're only really holy if God makes you suffer a lot.
The deeper issue, for me, is that love in my life has rarely come from trustworthy sources. I always seem to end up being told I'm too little, too much, or rejected entirely. The people I have made myself vulnerable have often been the most critical and the least encouraging. And that adds up over time, but especially when your worldview is formed that way.
There is a disparity between my attempt to understand all these things intellectually and how I feel about them, and where my conviction lives. I keep trying to sort it all out, and figure out if the things impeding me are of my own creation, and if so, how to identify and remove them.
I don't mind hearing from other beggars. I just hate begging the question, if that makes sense.
I am really sorry for your suffering and the way people have treated you, and I believe the core question you are asking is why would a loving God let that happen to you? I don't know in your case, but I can share my testimony. In the 47 years of my life of faith, my belief in God's goodness and His love for me has been foundational. As I have suffered, I don't usually know why, but I hold on to my belief in God's love as a bedrock fact. Looking back over my life, I see events as consistent with a life under God's providence that sometimes allows evil to affect me, but other times protects me. I try to be thankful for both, trusting in God's goodness and wisdom.
I just read through your Teresa of Avila post from July 16. I have a hard time relating to these old stories of saints' attitude to suffering. I am sure they reflect some truths but I don't think they translate well into our times. I'm not saying that truth is relative to a specific age, but stories and the way they are told can be hard to decode, even when they contain truth. I don't believe God outright inflicts suffering. I think language that portrays God as a torturer is a gross distortion that does a lot of harm, especially to people who are suffering.
Finally, I don't think suffering in this life makes any sense outside of the context of eternity. I often go back to this passage in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
This magnificent, honest, and eloquent piece deserves a longer comment than I can complete in an afternoon of what for my latitude is sweltering heat (I'm in Europe, the non-AC continent, remember?).
But it deserves a comment, because I've been to some of the mental and spiritual places you describe and so sense a certain kinship, as I often do with you, who could be my son.
I just replied to a post of yours on X.
When this heat lessens and I can think straight, I'll write a longer response.
Whew. I had to sleep on this before writing that "Who can know the mind of God?" So I get up, see the beauty of the trees outside my window. If I don't have a good view, I at least know it exists somewhere and I am content with that. You want what everyone wants - comfort and peace. Nothing new under the sun. God has made himself known in Scriptures and continues to speak.
Now, what you and most of us don't get yet is that total surrender in the Will of God does not make us puppets or pawns. The surrender gives us union with God. It ain't easy, but Jesus showed us the Way. I love you Steve.
Steve, I was raised Reformed Presbyterian (TULIP), and lost my faith at 14 the day the youth group leaders explained their idea of election. I couldn't say that God wasn't real, but I could say that, based on what I'd heard, I wanted nothing to do with such a god and wouldn't worship him, even if it meant eternal damnation. I don't respond well to threats, and I want no part of such a deity or system.
Things began to change ever so slowly for me over the next ten years, but the question still lingered - not whether or not God is real, but whether or not God is good. I wasn't quite sure. And then I became pregnant and had my son, and held him in my arms, and I knew - and still know beyond doubt - that God is good and all will be well. I understood that if a selfish asshole like myself could love my child as I did, then I had no cause to fear the love of the Father for his creation being insufficient or overly legalistic or whatever.
That is not to say that I fix all my son's problems, or manage all his choices, and he lives in a world and a body that suffer from the disease of sin, from which the only release is death. He has free will, and will certainly suffer even if he does everything right (which he won't), and even if I could, I would not protect him from that, because that is what will grow him into a mature and (hopefully) compassionate man with a sense of his own limits and humility. The suffering is the sandpaper shaping the wood into something beautiful and useful, or the surgery treating the disease of sin - pick your metaphor.
As I understand it, the promise isn't that if you follow God perfectly things will work out well for you in this life - the promise is that if you faithfully struggle against the disease of sin in your own life, which will certainly end in suffering and death one way or another, you will be raised whole and holy. That suffering is not meaningless, but is a means of transformation, and that through Christ's willing submission to suffering and death, and then his resurrection, ours will follow. I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
"What many believers fail to understand is that religion — particularly the Catholic religion, with its intricate and extensive collection of rules and axioms and obligatory beliefs — is torture for some people. An endlessly growing chasm between expectations and what you get. A non-stop assault of guilt and obligation with no perception of mercy, peace, healing, or love."
I've been Catholic now for 21 years; I converted when I was 39. This paragraph does not describe my church at all. Maybe I got lucky.
Yeah, I just confess what I can remember, and then walk away rejoicing. Fortunately the priests at our Byzantine-rite parish have always been good at hearing confessions.
Oh yes, we did, for a short time, have an interim priest from a TLM background who had just become bi-ritual. One of the fellows in our parish went to confess to "choking the chicken", and he got a thousand Hail Mary's and a round scolding for not getting to confession sooner.
Well my wife is a cradle Roman Catholic who grew up with very devout immigrant parents. She never felt like she was being guilt-tripped by the normie, "novus ordo" church, which switched over during her childhood, and the priests and nuns in her school were very loving. However, as an adult she spent time in the traditional Latin Mass churches, both indult and the ones in schism. She said the SSPX and the sedevacantists were very much full of fire-and-brimstone talk. Her three younger siblings are still enmeshed in that world, thinking that the rest of us are bound to hell. They even refused to come to their own mother's funeral last year. I'm very fortunate I landed in a good place the first time, with reverent liturgies and solid priests but very reasonable during confession (which in our rite takes place at the front of the church). But in my limited experience, the Roman-rite confessions are also very reasonable these days; perhaps Vatican II helped things, but I'm not familiar enough with that corner of Catholicism to say for sure. I do believe that the Church is the Church, but yes, like you said, one's experience might vary.
This thing you're describing is something I have such a hard time getting folks to believe. The fire and brimstone legalistic craziness is ubiquitous in Catholic traditionalism -- which means it was ubiquitous in the pre-conciliar Church.
I think Vatican II did some good things to the overall ethos of the Church's approach to human beings, but it basically did so by trying to sweep all the old beliefs under the rug, and whitewash whatever was left. They are truly different religions, and unfortunately the new one is often as milquetoast as the old one was harsh.
I'm not so sure that the teachings have changed. It's common, especially among Protestants, to slam on "legalism", but I like knowing where I stand. Looking at old writings, it does seem that a lot of intellectual energy in the West was spent on trying to draw the line between venial and mortal sins, but how that affected Confession in practice, I don't know. Purgatory changed over the years, too; Dante's version seems less horrifying than that of later writers. The one thing my wife observed during her time in the TLM communities is that most of the people were seething with anger, and that certainly describes her siblings. I'm assuming that was not universally the case with the pre-concilliar church, although I've read that Irish Catholicism became quite harsh due to the way that they were persecuted by the English. The Byzantine-rite churches have their challenges, too, such as the old-timers wanting to treat them as ethnic clubs. I'm not a sociologist, but it's interesting.
John 14: 26-27, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."
Unfortunately for us all, souls too numerous to count have no ability to read this without a knee jerk reaction....some among them quite like to see souls with whom they might have had words, lay bare their wounds so that they might pat themselves on the back, ever so thankful they are so far above this.
It's a bit of why do bad things happen to good people; why the horrible desolation, the unending, unimaginable sufferings if God is such a loving God. He's not hearing the cries, the sincere, from the gut, begging for guidance, help, solace.
Therefore, He must be unreachable; we're nothing but billions of ants crawling over the earth, waiting to be crushed under His foot on a whim.
He made us and just sits back, letting anything and everything happen and that's pretty much it.Religion is just the opiate of the masses and we believe in whatever floats our boat just to exist.
None of the above is true, Steve. Not because I say so. Not because I like opiates and glob on to any feel good about myself ideology like a fairy tale story with a happy ever after ending.
He sent His Son to endure all the sufferings, the abandonment, the desolation, the rejection that we might realize in our lives, times billions. He showed us just how much He loves us.....to infinity and beyond.
He wept over Jerusalem just as you weep over what you endure. He said that he who has seen Me has seen the Father.
What more could He do to show us that we mean more to Him than we can comprehend with our darkened, glass half full kind of thinking?
I don’t want to be flippant, but if there weren’t more he could do, this wouldn’t even be a discussion.
Something that happened 2,000 years ago that seemed to drag us all into an ethos of redemption only through brutal suffering, some of the most important historical aspects of which find no corroboration outside of the very scriptures designed to promote the narrative, doesn’t help me in the slightest when it comes to figuring out why I should live my life for it today, particularly when I’ve already done so and all I’ve gotten for it is destruction.
If this is what being loved by God feels like, I don’t know that I want to be loved by him.
I know you’re no stranger to suffering, so I’m not trying to imply anything otherwise. I’d just prefer things to actually make sense instead of having to be threatened into accepting them when they don’t.
You know, Steve, I'm older than you by a few years. To this day, I have feared more than I have loved, especially with respect to God. All that was expected by others, demanded under pain of hell and damnation governed most of my life.
I get what you're saying and why you're saying it.
The only thing....and I mean the only thing that helped me to move from fear to love are the words of Our Lord. Seeing Him, I see the Father.
Thanks for sharing your story. I'm sorry to hear that you went through something similar. It's like being gutted while you're still alive.
It's funny, because I've had multiple people say to me that they never could have gotten through this kind of experience without their faith, but in a way I think I was so wrapped around the axle about the indissolubility of marriage that it would have made things even worse. I would have felt even more hopeless. And faithful or not, God never showed much interest in helping to deal with the suffering the marriage caused either of us.
That said, I do not relish the idea of pointless suffering and I do pray, rather frequently, that he will help me carry this cross that is too heavy for me. If this isn't all for something better, then I'd like to cash in my chips, please.
I've never had any mystical or uncanny experiences, but I've known plenty of very sane people (including my wife) who have. So, when I start having doubts, I just think of them and trust that they mostly got it right.
Thanks ,Steve, for sharing this. And also for retweeting Rose’s essay on X earlier. Im not trying to be sappy, but your essay is beautiful and reads like a prayer from the aforementioned Job. Eloquent, earnest and honest. I intend to read this through again and really sit with it.
Thanks, Garrett!
Keep going. When I was in a grey cloud a long time ago I came across a simple list of 12 ways to know God , and I printed it and put a tiny copy of it in several places desk drawer, bulletin board, in books as bookmarks and it fed me while I couldn’t stay recollected myself… https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/12-ways.htm
Every Catholic (and any other Christian for that matter) should read this. I believe that all of your seeking, searching, and knocking will be answered one day.
I sure hope you're correct. This has to be for SOMETHING, right?
Given your experience, I'm glad I wasn't raised Catholic. I don't think God ever intended His children to say what Rose said ("I have dragged myself across broken glass and ran through fire for my faith. I have denied myself many things, forced myself to be comfortable with what hurts"). I've had completely the opposite experience. I've felt His love like a nuclear bomb that was incredibly intense.
For me, God has spoken to us abundantly through scripture, which has truly amazing things in it showing us all about God. Do you want to hear God? Just read scripture.
But it seems Catholic teachings have somehow obscured this if they have led to so much suffering. Or maybe it's something else like the Enlightenment. I don't know. But I do know I've never been close to doubting God. I've seen Him move. I've seen Him transform peoples lives. I've seen Him heal marriages filled with hate.
My dad used to be a top skydiver and said it was the most thrilling thing he knew - until he met Jesus. He didn't just believe in God. He was thrilled by God.
I identify with Sarah Edwards. She said she experience more bliss in one night than the rest of her life combined. She couldn't walk for weeks it affected her so much. During that time she learned firsthand of her nearness and dearness to God.
The thing is. I know exactly what's she's talking about. I've felt it too. There's no way I can see God any other way. And then I read scripture. And it melts me. There is an aroma about it that drips with God. And it changes how you think.
You don't suddenly know everything about God. But you do know Him well enough to trust Him more than life itself.
I'm also a software engineer. Quite logical all my life. I'm so sure of the logic surrounding God that I have been planning to write several books about it. From my vantage point, it all seems so clear. And I mean incredibly clear.
But I'm with you. I want truth. I'm not blindly believing something that doesn't appear fully true to me. And where I'm wrong I want to know. Truth is more important than doctrine. If something isn't true, then you can't build on it. God does not contradict truth.
I'm really glad this has been your experience of faith, Dean. I would love to know what that's like.
Twenty three years ago, I wrote a story for my 12-year old daughter. I start the story by having her have a dream that is a reflection of what I experienced myself. It's the best I could do to write what it felt like to me - and what I wanted to pass down to my daughter. I still feel this today. It truly changed my life. Here's from the story...
What I saw that day changed everything. And I do mean everything!
One minute you're an ordinary twelve-year-old with your mind on nothing more important than going to see a movie or having fun with your best friend, and the next minute your life is completely changed - even more so than if I had just won the lottery - because these changes went right to the core of my being.
We simply have no idea.
I know I didn't. I had no clue what was really going on in this universe. I didn't even know what was going on in my own small place on this planet. I was utterly blind until that day back in November - the day I had my first dream.
Like a curtain being rolled back, God opened my eyes. And yet, it was in a way that I never expected. I don't know if your eyes have ever been opened, but there's nothing like it. Really.
I have no idea why God picked that day to roll back the curtains for me. I have no idea why He decided to show... me! What did I ever do to deserve anything like this?
Right. Nothing.
Do you find it hard to believe? Well, I didn't believe it either... at first. And I was right there! I saw it with my own eyes!
What's it like to find yourself standing in what looks - and feels - like heaven? What does it do to a person to see what so few have ever seen?
If you've never been to heaven, then I don't think I can adequately explain what I saw and felt. There are no comparisons to it on Earth. There are no paintings that convey what you feel like standing there. There are no stories written that can express its impact on your being. There are no songs that can lift you in the same way. There is no place like heaven.
[...]
And then I saw what looked like a cloud appear in front of me. It materialized out of nowhere directly in the center of the room. Even though I was to the side, I could feel its thickness and I felt its weight on me like a weight placed on every cell in my body... and yet it didn't wear me down... rather it felt like a thick blanket of pure love.
That love thoroughly pervaded my being and I knew that the voices felt this same love, as I could hear their singing change. They sang the same words, yet now their passion became very personal. They felt His love and it changed them. And it changed me. I never knew I could be in love with God, but He won my heart when I felt the weight of His love - for me!
And I saw a glistening river begin to pour out from underneath the cloud. It came right at me, but His love so overwhelmed me that I was incapable of moving out of its path. The river spilled around my ankles and I felt a warmth enter my body and I saw that my feet began to glow. The glow ran straight up my legs and poured through me and out my arms and soon I was shining like the beings who sang below me.
The warmth followed the glow and soon it had permeated deep inside of me. It was like no other warmth I had ever felt. It felt like someone was pouring raw life right into me. It was a life that filled me with hope. And it filled me with joy. I always thought I knew what it was like to be alive, but really, we know so little.
It felt like the day my ballet teacher had picked me out to do a solo part - but a hundred times over. It felt like a thousand Christmas mornings all wrapped into one. It felt like the warmth I felt when my mother smiled at me and I knew she loved me - but it was like someone had purified that love down to a single pure drop and then made a river out of billions of these drops. Why had no one ever told me that real life is so full of love?
As I stood there so many things became clearer to me. Love has a way of doing that. I stood there for a very long time soaking in His love. It felt so good! I had no desire to go anywhere else. Where could I possibly want to go?
Although I didn't see His eyes then, I knew Him after that, and it wouldn't take an introduction for me to recognize Him. His love is truly unforgettable.
I know God exists. I'm one of the fortunate people who has experienced a miracle in their life, and so I have no doubt about that. But that doesn't mean that I never wonder what God's plan is, or that my trust in Him is absolute at all times. You'd think that, having experienced miraculous healing, I would never doubt, but I do. Then I remind myself that Jesus' disciples lived with him for three years, saw all of his miracles, watched people flock around him, and then ran away when the crisis came. We are broken, every one of us, so it's no wonder our relationships, our families, our culture are broken too. A happy marriage is a miracle of God. In the old days, people just stayed together somehow. My parents were happy in the beginning; my mother used to say that the first 20 years were one long honeymoon. Then the bad times came. Only after they were both gone did we realize the extent of the misery, the incompatibility of their two personalities. They stuck it out because to divorce was unthinkable, but those last years were pretty miserable, especially for my mom because my father was chronically unfaithful. But she was unfailingly gracious and kind to all who knew her. The Holy Spirit glowed through her even as her health failed. Only faith can do that. I'm grateful for her example.
It's a funny thing how even supernatural experiences seem unable to maintain their grasp over us over time. I haven't had anything of significance to speak of, out of a voice in my head one time that may have saved my life. A story for another time.
But I've been around people who have gone through crazy experiences while I was present (but not perceiving them myself) and I don't know what to make of that. It's one of the reasons why I never became an atheist. I know there's more going on than meets the eye.
As for your parents, yeah, I would have stuck it out to the end, too. I don't know if it ever would have gotten better. It's impossible to say, but the track record wasn't great. I just don't know why I would have felt led to someone who was bad for me, and vice versa. That will never make sense to me.
Hi Steve, I'm a new subscriber, and I just read this post. I found out about your Substack through Monitoring the Situation, which I learned about from Larry Chapp. My background is different from yours in that I went from teenage atheism to Evangelical Christianity where I stayed for many years. Then I embarked on a quest for historic Christianity which led through Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, but unexpectedly ended at the Catholic Church. I spent some time investigating traditionalism in the wake of the McCarrick scandal in 2018, and it was at that time I found 1 Peter 5 and saw a video where you talked about your experience with the Legionaries. Even so, I have remained what may be labeled as a conservative Catholic.
All that is to say that I have gone through many changes, and I have found many things that I thought I knew about God to be wrong, but I also continue to learn and have a very long way to go. So in that respect, I resonate with a lot of your article. However, from things you have said on MTS and in this article, you seem to me to be reacting against what I might describe as a mechanical approach to the faith. You know the doctrinal propositions, arguments, and rules, and these are the things I hear you reacting against, but that's not what I consider the core of what it means to be a Christian. I like what you recently said about your teacher, Dr. Regis Martin, when he said that the faith is a poem, not a syllogism, but I don't hear you talking about the poetry of the faith.
Your post mocks those of us who say we have a relationship with God. You're right, it is not the same thing as a human relationship. God is very different from us, and life is full of things that blind us to spiritual realities. Many little children have a kind of spiritual sense, but lose it as they grow up. Even so, God constantly reaches out to all of us, and he gets through to us in different ways.
All I know about you, Steve, is through some videos and posts, so I may be completely off base, but it appears to me that you were raised in a pretty rigorous Catholic environment. The irony is that it may have blinded your spiritual sense and caused you to miss the God at the center of it all. Maybe you were so focused on the syllogisms that you missed the poetry. I wonder if you have heard the recent conversation between Larry Chapp and Kale Zeldon.* I think they do a good job addressing what they cleverly call "trip-wire Catholicism," and I think you have been the victim of that trip-wire approach to the faith. My hope is that you will find a way back to God and even the Catholic Church through a kind of poetry that emerges from what you're experiencing now.
Well, I could go on and on, but I will stop here. Who am I to tell you what to do? Even so, I felt like your post was meant to provoke a response. In addition, my heart has gone out to you from the time I heard about what you went through with the Legionaries and continuing to your current situation. I like the Steve that I see in the videos, and I want things to go well for him. I will close with a saying I learned as an Evangelical, I'm just a beggar telling other beggars where to find bread.
* https://gaudiumetspes22.com/blog/kale-zelden-joins-larry-chapp-to-discuss-everything-that-is-worth-discussing
Hey Greg, thanks for subscribing, and for your comment.
I'm actually really sorry if what I said came across as mocking. I don't mean to mock people who say they have a relationship, it's frustrated bewilderment that I'm experiencing. I just don't get how it's possible to do this with someone you have no perceptual interaction with.
And you're correct when you say I don't see the poetry of faith, but that's largely because my education and formation offered me a mechanistic version of praxis and a wrathful, distant God. But I talk about the poetry because I *WANT* that to be the real version. I just don't know how to stop tripping over the axioms and threats and scholasticism and all the saints talking about how you're only really holy if God makes you suffer a lot.
The deeper issue, for me, is that love in my life has rarely come from trustworthy sources. I always seem to end up being told I'm too little, too much, or rejected entirely. The people I have made myself vulnerable have often been the most critical and the least encouraging. And that adds up over time, but especially when your worldview is formed that way.
There is a disparity between my attempt to understand all these things intellectually and how I feel about them, and where my conviction lives. I keep trying to sort it all out, and figure out if the things impeding me are of my own creation, and if so, how to identify and remove them.
I don't mind hearing from other beggars. I just hate begging the question, if that makes sense.
I am really sorry for your suffering and the way people have treated you, and I believe the core question you are asking is why would a loving God let that happen to you? I don't know in your case, but I can share my testimony. In the 47 years of my life of faith, my belief in God's goodness and His love for me has been foundational. As I have suffered, I don't usually know why, but I hold on to my belief in God's love as a bedrock fact. Looking back over my life, I see events as consistent with a life under God's providence that sometimes allows evil to affect me, but other times protects me. I try to be thankful for both, trusting in God's goodness and wisdom.
I just read through your Teresa of Avila post from July 16. I have a hard time relating to these old stories of saints' attitude to suffering. I am sure they reflect some truths but I don't think they translate well into our times. I'm not saying that truth is relative to a specific age, but stories and the way they are told can be hard to decode, even when they contain truth. I don't believe God outright inflicts suffering. I think language that portrays God as a torturer is a gross distortion that does a lot of harm, especially to people who are suffering.
Finally, I don't think suffering in this life makes any sense outside of the context of eternity. I often go back to this passage in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
This magnificent, honest, and eloquent piece deserves a longer comment than I can complete in an afternoon of what for my latitude is sweltering heat (I'm in Europe, the non-AC continent, remember?).
But it deserves a comment, because I've been to some of the mental and spiritual places you describe and so sense a certain kinship, as I often do with you, who could be my son.
I just replied to a post of yours on X.
When this heat lessens and I can think straight, I'll write a longer response.
Stay cool, David. It’s brutal out there (and still funny to me that Europeans seem to have such a hangup about AC)
Whew. I had to sleep on this before writing that "Who can know the mind of God?" So I get up, see the beauty of the trees outside my window. If I don't have a good view, I at least know it exists somewhere and I am content with that. You want what everyone wants - comfort and peace. Nothing new under the sun. God has made himself known in Scriptures and continues to speak.
Now, what you and most of us don't get yet is that total surrender in the Will of God does not make us puppets or pawns. The surrender gives us union with God. It ain't easy, but Jesus showed us the Way. I love you Steve.
I don't know where your comment went, Henrietta, but I wasn't upset at you, I was just working and needed time to consider how to respond.
Steve, I was raised Reformed Presbyterian (TULIP), and lost my faith at 14 the day the youth group leaders explained their idea of election. I couldn't say that God wasn't real, but I could say that, based on what I'd heard, I wanted nothing to do with such a god and wouldn't worship him, even if it meant eternal damnation. I don't respond well to threats, and I want no part of such a deity or system.
Things began to change ever so slowly for me over the next ten years, but the question still lingered - not whether or not God is real, but whether or not God is good. I wasn't quite sure. And then I became pregnant and had my son, and held him in my arms, and I knew - and still know beyond doubt - that God is good and all will be well. I understood that if a selfish asshole like myself could love my child as I did, then I had no cause to fear the love of the Father for his creation being insufficient or overly legalistic or whatever.
That is not to say that I fix all my son's problems, or manage all his choices, and he lives in a world and a body that suffer from the disease of sin, from which the only release is death. He has free will, and will certainly suffer even if he does everything right (which he won't), and even if I could, I would not protect him from that, because that is what will grow him into a mature and (hopefully) compassionate man with a sense of his own limits and humility. The suffering is the sandpaper shaping the wood into something beautiful and useful, or the surgery treating the disease of sin - pick your metaphor.
As I understand it, the promise isn't that if you follow God perfectly things will work out well for you in this life - the promise is that if you faithfully struggle against the disease of sin in your own life, which will certainly end in suffering and death one way or another, you will be raised whole and holy. That suffering is not meaningless, but is a means of transformation, and that through Christ's willing submission to suffering and death, and then his resurrection, ours will follow. I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
I owe this thoughtful comment a reply, but I’m working most of the weekend and may not get to it for a bit.
You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I have areas of disagreement… ;)
"What many believers fail to understand is that religion — particularly the Catholic religion, with its intricate and extensive collection of rules and axioms and obligatory beliefs — is torture for some people. An endlessly growing chasm between expectations and what you get. A non-stop assault of guilt and obligation with no perception of mercy, peace, healing, or love."
I've been Catholic now for 21 years; I converted when I was 39. This paragraph does not describe my church at all. Maybe I got lucky.
The experience varies, for sure. Especially since 1965. It also sounds like you don’t suffer from scrupulosity.
Yeah, I just confess what I can remember, and then walk away rejoicing. Fortunately the priests at our Byzantine-rite parish have always been good at hearing confessions.
The East has a much healthier relationship with sin and legalism, from what I've experienced.
Oh yes, we did, for a short time, have an interim priest from a TLM background who had just become bi-ritual. One of the fellows in our parish went to confess to "choking the chicken", and he got a thousand Hail Mary's and a round scolding for not getting to confession sooner.
Well my wife is a cradle Roman Catholic who grew up with very devout immigrant parents. She never felt like she was being guilt-tripped by the normie, "novus ordo" church, which switched over during her childhood, and the priests and nuns in her school were very loving. However, as an adult she spent time in the traditional Latin Mass churches, both indult and the ones in schism. She said the SSPX and the sedevacantists were very much full of fire-and-brimstone talk. Her three younger siblings are still enmeshed in that world, thinking that the rest of us are bound to hell. They even refused to come to their own mother's funeral last year. I'm very fortunate I landed in a good place the first time, with reverent liturgies and solid priests but very reasonable during confession (which in our rite takes place at the front of the church). But in my limited experience, the Roman-rite confessions are also very reasonable these days; perhaps Vatican II helped things, but I'm not familiar enough with that corner of Catholicism to say for sure. I do believe that the Church is the Church, but yes, like you said, one's experience might vary.
This thing you're describing is something I have such a hard time getting folks to believe. The fire and brimstone legalistic craziness is ubiquitous in Catholic traditionalism -- which means it was ubiquitous in the pre-conciliar Church.
I think Vatican II did some good things to the overall ethos of the Church's approach to human beings, but it basically did so by trying to sweep all the old beliefs under the rug, and whitewash whatever was left. They are truly different religions, and unfortunately the new one is often as milquetoast as the old one was harsh.
I'm not so sure that the teachings have changed. It's common, especially among Protestants, to slam on "legalism", but I like knowing where I stand. Looking at old writings, it does seem that a lot of intellectual energy in the West was spent on trying to draw the line between venial and mortal sins, but how that affected Confession in practice, I don't know. Purgatory changed over the years, too; Dante's version seems less horrifying than that of later writers. The one thing my wife observed during her time in the TLM communities is that most of the people were seething with anger, and that certainly describes her siblings. I'm assuming that was not universally the case with the pre-concilliar church, although I've read that Irish Catholicism became quite harsh due to the way that they were persecuted by the English. The Byzantine-rite churches have their challenges, too, such as the old-timers wanting to treat them as ethnic clubs. I'm not a sociologist, but it's interesting.
I do know 2 Corinthians 3:17 to be true.
This is where I say, "But how do you KNOW?" ;)
John 14: 26-27, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."
Unfortunately for us all, souls too numerous to count have no ability to read this without a knee jerk reaction....some among them quite like to see souls with whom they might have had words, lay bare their wounds so that they might pat themselves on the back, ever so thankful they are so far above this.
It's a bit of why do bad things happen to good people; why the horrible desolation, the unending, unimaginable sufferings if God is such a loving God. He's not hearing the cries, the sincere, from the gut, begging for guidance, help, solace.
Therefore, He must be unreachable; we're nothing but billions of ants crawling over the earth, waiting to be crushed under His foot on a whim.
He made us and just sits back, letting anything and everything happen and that's pretty much it.Religion is just the opiate of the masses and we believe in whatever floats our boat just to exist.
None of the above is true, Steve. Not because I say so. Not because I like opiates and glob on to any feel good about myself ideology like a fairy tale story with a happy ever after ending.
He sent His Son to endure all the sufferings, the abandonment, the desolation, the rejection that we might realize in our lives, times billions. He showed us just how much He loves us.....to infinity and beyond.
He wept over Jerusalem just as you weep over what you endure. He said that he who has seen Me has seen the Father.
What more could He do to show us that we mean more to Him than we can comprehend with our darkened, glass half full kind of thinking?
Reminds me of Ben-Hur. Good movie.
I don’t want to be flippant, but if there weren’t more he could do, this wouldn’t even be a discussion.
Something that happened 2,000 years ago that seemed to drag us all into an ethos of redemption only through brutal suffering, some of the most important historical aspects of which find no corroboration outside of the very scriptures designed to promote the narrative, doesn’t help me in the slightest when it comes to figuring out why I should live my life for it today, particularly when I’ve already done so and all I’ve gotten for it is destruction.
If this is what being loved by God feels like, I don’t know that I want to be loved by him.
I know you’re no stranger to suffering, so I’m not trying to imply anything otherwise. I’d just prefer things to actually make sense instead of having to be threatened into accepting them when they don’t.
You know, Steve, I'm older than you by a few years. To this day, I have feared more than I have loved, especially with respect to God. All that was expected by others, demanded under pain of hell and damnation governed most of my life.
I get what you're saying and why you're saying it.
The only thing....and I mean the only thing that helped me to move from fear to love are the words of Our Lord. Seeing Him, I see the Father.
Those words alone.
I'm way past the anger now.
I love that you made it poetic, but I’m in too nihilistic a frame of mind to join you tonight.
Still, I appreciate the beauty in what you did here
Thanks for sharing your story. I'm sorry to hear that you went through something similar. It's like being gutted while you're still alive.
It's funny, because I've had multiple people say to me that they never could have gotten through this kind of experience without their faith, but in a way I think I was so wrapped around the axle about the indissolubility of marriage that it would have made things even worse. I would have felt even more hopeless. And faithful or not, God never showed much interest in helping to deal with the suffering the marriage caused either of us.
That said, I do not relish the idea of pointless suffering and I do pray, rather frequently, that he will help me carry this cross that is too heavy for me. If this isn't all for something better, then I'd like to cash in my chips, please.
I've never had any mystical or uncanny experiences, but I've known plenty of very sane people (including my wife) who have. So, when I start having doubts, I just think of them and trust that they mostly got it right.