God is not an ideology — nor is He reducible to a moral code. He is a community of Divine Persons and His Identity is more important than our own for many reasons.
To a non-believer, this context of faith is difficult to apprehend if the subjective judgment is that God is make-believe and we merely have a relationship with something entirely hypothetical. For the authentic believer, God is more real than our own self. And for the believer, God is the basis for knowing ourselves.
For this reason, the believer and non-believer live in two different interpretations of this world. And this generates emnity in a diametrically opposed vision — one lives for this life, the other uses this life to prepare for the next, in the context of a relationship with God. These two ends compete.
For this reason, it gives scandal to be a believer yet to hold to one’s own life, as our behavior and actions demonstrate something contrary to our beliefs. We all fail in that regard, but to avoid scandal we must be willing to admit that, and thereby teach non-believers that faith orients us to a path that is difficult yet not left untried. And this difficulty can be made attractive in the genuine sense of faith and love and hope that moves us forward on this path.
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Photo: Tofin Creations, Unsplash / PD-US
2 thoughts on “God is Not an Ideology”
The abrupt end of this short post looks very much like it was a longer post that was truncated, leaving only the introduction.
It was originally just a short Facebook post by Father.
You can find his longer pieces here: https://diocesanspirituality.wordpress.com/
Blessed Advent!