Homily

Last Friday night after Pre-Sanctified Liturgy we watched a short video clip by Bishop Robert Barron who spoke on the topic of why faith matters. He was answering the problem created by an idea that many people hold to today, and that idea is this: “It doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you are a good person.” That slogan has been with us for quite a while now and quite a few people seem to think it is an expression of wisdom, but nothing could be further from the truth. How you act and what you do, how you live is indeed based on what you believe, what you think, how you perceive yourself and other people and the world you live in. For example look at some of the acts of terrorism inflicted on people in many parts of the western world in the last 20 years, in the name of Islam, not to mention the atrocities committed against both Christian and Muslim people in parts of the Middle East, in the name of Islam.

This violence is clearly based on the beliefs that these Muslims hold. While it is true that there are other Muslims who do not agree with the tactics of murder and violence their fellow religionists use to advance their faith, you will not find a massive group response from the Muslim world saying that these tactics go against the Muslim religion. Because they don’t. I think it’s very fascinating that the loudest voices telling us that acts of war, terrorism, violence and murder are not part of the teachings of the Koran are non-Muslim voices. Why is that? First reason is that there are many people who abhor the idea of any suggestion that a non-Christian, foreign group of people and their religion might be a problem. To them that seems like some kind of bad discrimination. But there is another reason for this insistence that the Muslim religion is a religion of peace. And that is that these deniers cannot and will not publicly accept the premise that what you believe really does matter and it does have an impact upon how you see the world and how you live your life.

So when Muslim terrorists say they create violence in the name of Allah, fulfilling the will of God, there are plenty of people living in a culture that was formed by a Christian understanding of what is good and bad, who denounce such violence and claim it cannot possibly be a part of their religious beliefs, no matter how many terrorist groups say they act in such a way precisely because of their beliefs. People object because it goes against the slogan that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are a good person. And we don’t want to say some Muslims are bad people.

Think of the twenty-one Coptic Christian men who were beheaded wearing those orange coveralls in Libya just two years ago. ISIL video-taped the execution for the world to see, denouncing the “religion of the cross”, as they did so. They acted on their belief. But at the same time so did these Coptic men. They refused to convert and denounce Jesus Christ. They also acted on their belief and were willing to suffer death rather than give up their faith. As you remember not much was made of this in the regular media. It wasn’t like it took place in the U.S. or Europe. Something in a foreign African country and how does that affect me anyhow? But I think part of the reason that the U.S. news agencies made so little of this event was because it went against the slogan that what you believe doesn’t matter if you are a good person. The Muslim executioners said these murders were good deeds sanctioned by Allah, but so too the Coptic men were willing to give up their lives in order to do what they believed was good. Certain people did not want to face up to the good the Muslims claimed, but they also did not want to face up to the good that the Christians claimed for themselves. Because what you believe is not supposed to really matter. So let’s not discuss that little incident. Move on. (Compare that to the recent London truck driver incident and how that was reported.)

If what we believe does not matter as long as you are a good person, the most obvious question to ask is, “What is a good person? What acts are good and what acts are evil? How do we know? Mormons once taught that polygamy was God-approved. How do we answer that, good or bad?” This slogan, on the surface sounds very congenial, very accommodating, very accepting of the differences between people. But I suggest to you that what it really means is “shut up about your faith and keep it to yourself.” We sit here every Sunday and hear the words of Jesus, the letters of St. Paul, the Acts of the Apostles—and where, anywhere at any time, do we ever hear the slightest hint that it does not matter what you believe as long as you are a good person?

Let’s not be thrown off by people who only want a totally secular society that is run according to their own secular beliefs. On the contrary, let us try to wake ourselves up to more genuinely live as we believe. To love God above all else, and our neighbor as ourselves—if we believe that then let us strive to truly and deeply live in that truth and not in the closet of “it does not matter” but in the world the Lord has made. This is part of our Lenten mission—to live more fully, more faithfully in Jesus Christ. To believe what He teaches us, and to beg for His grace, and to hope for His salvation and to love Him above all else, to share that good news with whoever will listen to us and to love our neighbors as best as we can. May what we believe be the ONLY thing that matters because it is the only way we will ever become good persons.