MINNESOTA
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
If atheists are right, and there is no God, then let’s burn down all the churches, for they’re all monuments to lies. If Catholics are right, and there is a God and He is who He says He is, then when He says, “Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32) we’d better realize He means it. That much, at least, Catholics should have in common with atheists: a devotion to the Truth.
But if we are too scared to be loyal to what is True, then we will also fail in being faithful to what is Beautiful and what is Good. The prince of Lies and the God of Truth don’t really mix that well.
I write a lot about Unreality on this blog, by which I mean a religious attitude that is divorced from the reality of life. Unreality is a form of idolatry, of using the things of God for your own small-minded purposes, of leaning on the Church to support your tottering house of cards, of being contrived and artificial, of adopting airs and affectations, of making the worship of God not about understanding and serving the Truth (troubling though the Truth may be), but about shoring up your own deliberately narrowed and circumscribed agenda. It is the main temptation facing devout Christians of all stripes.
And here’s how Unreality works in practice.
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