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.
Shortly before trusting in Jesus the fair Baptist maiden who was earnestly witnessing to me over a number of months got frustrated with my facile arguments and reasonings. We were near a church during one conversation walking together. She pulled me into the pastor’s office hoping he could deal with me, suddenly what I now know was the Spirit of Truth fell on me I was rendered speechless and my reasonings melted in the presence of truth without a word from the pastor. I excused myself and the girl apologized to me on the way out.I said everything was fine. I felt strangely peaceful. I received Jesus a few weeks later. That was decades ago.
A couple of years ago the opposite happened. A demonic spirit manifested to me, my inner being was conscious of it. I knew all my reasonings in support of Christianity could be broken by it just by using the information I held in my mind. Yet I felt that agreement with its arguments was the pathway to death, a zombie, vampiric death I could sense. Not the peace and life I met in having my wisdom cast down by the Spirit of Truth sent by the Savior. It says in I Corinthians 15, that Jesus is a Life Giving Spirit(Breath) and Romans 8 “the Spirit(Breath) of Life in Christ Jesus has set me free”
Went through a divorce 9 years ago after decades of marriage and five children as a Christian. The below is what got me through. A comment made awhile back
But for me this is the heart of the action of the Holy Spirit, ongoing, daily. For me the Father’s presence is known and felt as a still quiet peaceful comforting transverbal isness or I Amness always there. As it says in Psalm 73 ‘God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever’
My grandmother once told me “I would have never made through the first year after your grandfather’s death if God hadn’t always been there” For me this has been the prime gift and manifestation of the Holy Spirit given through Jesus and not at all something attained through some sort of meditative or contemplative discipline. “Whosoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. So we have come to know and rely on the love God has for us” 1 John 4 So we get to go forward in quiet peace and strength as pure gift.
I first met this gift in my early twenties,eyes opening in surprise at the sudden Presence, praying to trust in Jesus in my bedroom in an eastern meditation center. Praying you met the simplicity of Christ
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.
My former wife and I have gradually transformed into old friends with a lot of shared history. A few weeks ago she said, “Back then we were just doing the best we knew how” I now say, “According to Jesus there is no marriage or giving of marriage in heaven so I guess I have taken an early start on that” What we have now is a good, but a different good that we had intended. By the way events like a divorce or a death can take up to three years before the present pain becomes a past pain, a scar not an open wound, according to stuff I have read.
She was quite bitter and disappointed in God, but now asks me to pray for things. I was very disappointed in myself and crushed by what happened but the quiet touch of God’s Spirit on my inner man when I go to God - which is quite real to me kept me going. I am a non-denominational Christian with charismatic/pentecostal tendencies. We live in a broken creation with active evil that one day will be renewed, but in the meantime real senseless suck happens. Wish it wasn’t so, but it is.
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.
ironic. Jesus was supposed to show us the Father. now, Who will show us Jesus?
Holy Spirit?
but the Holy Spirit is my least favorite person of the Trinity. delights in not even having a face. I have to remind myself to use "he/him" pronouns, and that he is also God, not a vague farting emanation who grants us wishes.
everyone at my parish always talking like the Spirit's the most kickass, but I believe the whole Trinity sups with me, not only a wisp of fiery air. am I Prospero?
indeed what doctrine doesn't risk making a fool of us? religious pluralism is anodyne, and Catholic triumphalism intolerable. I understand why people give up on Truth(TM). I shake my head at the koolaid drinkers, and others have been known to scorn my cookie Jesus.
I live in Jesus though. verily I say unto you. my Father is real, and shines a sunny countenance upon me.
I believe it because I choose to. it seems solid, like Wisdom has built her house, set up her seven pillars. it seems true as faith does, not as facts do, which are paltry things unto themselves.
I believe my life touches the hem of his garment, verses from the psalms are microexpressions across his face, and Jesus is his heart. mine too for that matter. Mary is dressed in blue, in my imagination.
I think you should become a mystic so you can teach us how to do it. Steve of the Cross.
I think it's like your life becomes a poem, and everything signifies and gels. Brother Moon, Sister Sky.
Brother of the Knowing Glance.
Sister of Seven and Seven Mercies.
and then you can't help but call out to him: Be like a gazelle on the mountains of Bether.
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.
This has blessed me over the years, a quote from George Fox, founding father of the Quakers
“As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition"; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are 'concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief' as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the preeminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let (i. e. prevent) it? And this I knew experimentally”
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."
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.
My heart goes out to you.
Shortly before trusting in Jesus the fair Baptist maiden who was earnestly witnessing to me over a number of months got frustrated with my facile arguments and reasonings. We were near a church during one conversation walking together. She pulled me into the pastor’s office hoping he could deal with me, suddenly what I now know was the Spirit of Truth fell on me I was rendered speechless and my reasonings melted in the presence of truth without a word from the pastor. I excused myself and the girl apologized to me on the way out.I said everything was fine. I felt strangely peaceful. I received Jesus a few weeks later. That was decades ago.
A couple of years ago the opposite happened. A demonic spirit manifested to me, my inner being was conscious of it. I knew all my reasonings in support of Christianity could be broken by it just by using the information I held in my mind. Yet I felt that agreement with its arguments was the pathway to death, a zombie, vampiric death I could sense. Not the peace and life I met in having my wisdom cast down by the Spirit of Truth sent by the Savior. It says in I Corinthians 15, that Jesus is a Life Giving Spirit(Breath) and Romans 8 “the Spirit(Breath) of Life in Christ Jesus has set me free”
Went through a divorce 9 years ago after decades of marriage and five children as a Christian. The below is what got me through. A comment made awhile back
But for me this is the heart of the action of the Holy Spirit, ongoing, daily. For me the Father’s presence is known and felt as a still quiet peaceful comforting transverbal isness or I Amness always there. As it says in Psalm 73 ‘God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever’
My grandmother once told me “I would have never made through the first year after your grandfather’s death if God hadn’t always been there” For me this has been the prime gift and manifestation of the Holy Spirit given through Jesus and not at all something attained through some sort of meditative or contemplative discipline. “Whosoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. So we have come to know and rely on the love God has for us” 1 John 4 So we get to go forward in quiet peace and strength as pure gift.
I first met this gift in my early twenties,eyes opening in surprise at the sudden Presence, praying to trust in Jesus in my bedroom in an eastern meditation center. Praying you met the simplicity of Christ
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.
My former wife and I have gradually transformed into old friends with a lot of shared history. A few weeks ago she said, “Back then we were just doing the best we knew how” I now say, “According to Jesus there is no marriage or giving of marriage in heaven so I guess I have taken an early start on that” What we have now is a good, but a different good that we had intended. By the way events like a divorce or a death can take up to three years before the present pain becomes a past pain, a scar not an open wound, according to stuff I have read.
She was quite bitter and disappointed in God, but now asks me to pray for things. I was very disappointed in myself and crushed by what happened but the quiet touch of God’s Spirit on my inner man when I go to God - which is quite real to me kept me going. I am a non-denominational Christian with charismatic/pentecostal tendencies. We live in a broken creation with active evil that one day will be renewed, but in the meantime real senseless suck happens. Wish it wasn’t so, but it is.
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.
ironic. Jesus was supposed to show us the Father. now, Who will show us Jesus?
Holy Spirit?
but the Holy Spirit is my least favorite person of the Trinity. delights in not even having a face. I have to remind myself to use "he/him" pronouns, and that he is also God, not a vague farting emanation who grants us wishes.
everyone at my parish always talking like the Spirit's the most kickass, but I believe the whole Trinity sups with me, not only a wisp of fiery air. am I Prospero?
indeed what doctrine doesn't risk making a fool of us? religious pluralism is anodyne, and Catholic triumphalism intolerable. I understand why people give up on Truth(TM). I shake my head at the koolaid drinkers, and others have been known to scorn my cookie Jesus.
I live in Jesus though. verily I say unto you. my Father is real, and shines a sunny countenance upon me.
I believe it because I choose to. it seems solid, like Wisdom has built her house, set up her seven pillars. it seems true as faith does, not as facts do, which are paltry things unto themselves.
I believe my life touches the hem of his garment, verses from the psalms are microexpressions across his face, and Jesus is his heart. mine too for that matter. Mary is dressed in blue, in my imagination.
I think you should become a mystic so you can teach us how to do it. Steve of the Cross.
I think it's like your life becomes a poem, and everything signifies and gels. Brother Moon, Sister Sky.
Brother of the Knowing Glance.
Sister of Seven and Seven Mercies.
and then you can't help but call out to him: Be like a gazelle on the mountains of Bether.
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
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.
This has blessed me over the years, a quote from George Fox, founding father of the Quakers
“As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition"; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are 'concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief' as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the preeminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let (i. e. prevent) it? And this I knew experimentally”
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."