I'm a Catholic?

I know the pieces fit 'cause I watched them tumble down

No fault, none to blame, it doesn't mean I don't desire to

Point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over.

Schism-Tool

When I first started embracing Universalism, in a heated discussion about it, my husband asked me about what happens to people who die without being saved in this lifetime. I told him that I guessed there was some way of being saved after death and what he said rather shook me up:

"Kind of like Purgatory?"

"Well, no, of course," I said,  "But...."

"It sounds Catholic to me", he said, "maybe we should just go back to Mass."

I could tell he was not really serious, but something about the way he said it made me think this wasn't the first time this had crossed his mind.


Things went along after that for quite some time before I brought up the Salvation of All again, but then it was settled that we didn't need to agree and time marched on for a year or so more.






We were really starting to phone it in at church. We taught the class, still enjoyed that part very much, but as far as the service, well we were just not feelin' it. Not that we didn't try, it was that we'd tried so very hard to make things fit. We had over the last decade and a half, prayed, fasted, studied scripture, bought into this whole world with our whole heart and yet something still wasn't right.





Everyone at this church had always been so very kind and good to us. They helped us out many times with extraordinarily generous gifts. I know that they just wanted to bless us since we really had nothing to offer them and they did immensely.  If there were a true expression of Christian love, I saw it there in the hearts of many of those who we saw each Sunday morning. The problem was my heart...it was wandering from all of this (at least this branch of Christendom). Something was stirring, but it would be a while before I would or could put my finger on it. I didn't want to be there anymore and I started to feel very panicky on Sunday mornings. I so didn't wan't to disappoint anyone that had believed in us or blessed our family. I wasn't the person I was when we joined and I knew it.




One Sunday as my husband and I were sitting in our regular section of the worship center watching the singers before the service started I became very sad.  I looked up at the stage at all the people that I had grown to know and some to be close to, and just felt so detached. I didn't belong here anymore. As if he was reading my mind, he leaned over and whispered:

"Let's go back to Mass."

Hot tears immediately started running down my cheek. Trying to keep it together I said,

"I would be lying if I said I hadn't thought about that. Your mom would be so happy."

"She would probably think all those Rosaries she is saying for us worked," he chuckled.

At that more tears.

"Maybe they did.  What happened here?" I asked.

"This didn't work either," he said.

We sat and held each other's hands while I tried to keep my blubbering as quiet as possible.



I whispered,

"I've been reading about Eastern Orthodoxy. I like the way they see certain things better than the Catholic Church, but the liturgy is very much the same." 

At that he replied,

"We should just go back to our old parish, maybe we'll go to the festival this summer and check it out." 

We sat through church and went home.




I tried to fill my husband in at lunch about my new found interest in Orthodoxy, how I liked the way they saw Mary and original sin among other things.



He cut me off and looked me right in the eyes.

"I'm not interested in joining an Orthodox church," he said flatly, definitively, as in no room for debate. 

Disappointed, I decided not to argue.




<previous part


next part>

Hell, the Problem of Evil, and a New Hope

God don't make no junk

But it's plain to see

He still made me, He told me so

Amity- Elliott Smith

So now we're back to where I started this story and after that initial realization at the computer that day I admitted something to myself.




I was longing for a God that wasn't, frankly, the God of the Bible. Let me clear that up, I wasn't looking for a new deity, but I was hoping and praying that the God of the Bible wasn't as He was portrayed in the scriptures. Sure, there were lots of love-y stuff in there as well as some wisdom for living and such, but that was honestly not the case in general. God was angry. God ordered people to kill other men, women, children and livestock. He sent people lying and deluding spirits (in the Old and New Testaments).  He demanded horrible things (Abraham and Isaac for instance). Then of top of all that, eternity loomed in the balance. ETERNITY  And for most people it wasn't going to be pretty.







 I got some of this when I expressed slight doubts to others:

You gotta have faith

His ways are higher than our ways

...past finding out...

Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not on your own understanding

Okay, let's do that.

So I did for awhile.

God is God and I am not.

There, done.






But I couldn't drop it.



I mean if God is Love, as John says, then why create a world in which God is unable or unwilling (not sure which is worse) to not only stop all the evil we see around us, but to allow (cause) most of humanity to be born, live, die and then go to a place of unspeakable horror for ever and ever, the vast majority of them not knowing that this was in the future for them without even a chance to decide for themselves? I was saved of course but what about that devout Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist who were searching for God with all their hearts just to find out in the end they had been deceived and now are in the Lake of Fire for all eternity? I mean, really think about that and see if you can live your life business as usual.


Or as another writer put it:

Please stop and ponder this for a moment: What possible justification could there be for blaming those who are innocently ignorant–all but a tiny fraction of the billions of people who live to the age of accountability–for never even hearing about the only possible way to be saved? And the consequence to them is an eternity of unimaginably horrible torture? It’s not even punishment. There is no opportunity for rehabilitation, ever. It’s not about deterrence, either, because almost all of those being tortured had no idea that such a fate was in store for them, much less how to avoid it. No, it is just the most unimaginably cruel and pointless sadism, from a God we are told is loving and gracious: (emphasis mine)Edwin A. Suominen- An Examination of the Pearl

I re-examined all the mainstream theories about Hell out there to see which one I could live with the most.


The Calvinist theology says it's for God's glory. God created people for His glory, saves them for His glory, damns them for His glory and that it that. It's tough but that's the breaks. We all deserve Hell anyway, so even saving one person is an unfathomable act of kindness.



The free will approach is that God gives us the choice to love Him and if we don't then He has no other choice but to give us what we want, which somehow means we choose to go to Hell. I can't think of anyone who would choose that. To be separated from God in this macabre way is not much of a "choice".  Maybe there are those who would choose not to have eternal life, but then just die and that's it. (I do know some that believe in conditional immortality and it is certainly a more sensible option.)

In the Roman Catholic tradition there is purgatory. Ironically with all my problems with Catholicism, it seems that they saw a big problem with this too. Purgatory is kind of a Hell-light or temporary purging for those who didn't believe in this life or not worthy enough to go straight to heaven. Only the most stubborn and hardened sinners would not confess and repent in this place of cleansing and after about a kagillion years, God would have no choice and they would finally end up in Hell forever.




It was all too horrible to think of. I was haunted with the thought of my family, friends, ANYONE going to Hell.  But it was there in the Bible and I had to believe it. I was starting to feel very hopeless about ever being able to accept it.





But then out of the blue another theory emerged.





A blog that was linked to a blog that I was following caught my eye and I started reading it. I very much enjoyed the author's style and her definite love for the Lord. This was a real person that I felt a strange connection with. Her writing drew me in and always gave me something to think about. Several weeks (or maybe months) after I started reading her blog she posted that the Lord was showing her something but wouldn't come out and say it at first. Once she did I had my hand poised over the unfollow button and was ready to push it. She had tragically been sucked up by what I was led to believe in my Christian realm to be the pinnacle of high heresy.





She now believed in the power and willingness of God to save everyone eventually somehow.






<previous part



next part>