In today’s world, the believer is confused and demoralized. We live alongside people who have forgotten God. And despite our best efforts, few of our brothers and sisters can be reached and made to see any of the very many good things God wants for them. Perhaps, though, God is allowing his beloved world to go astray to purify the hearts of believers.
We would, of course, prefer a simpler story. Christianity spreads, slowly but surely, from the cradle in Bethlehem, through Rome and Europe and eventually to all nations. We don’t like the wrinkle that is introduced by modern secularism. It’s as though God is somehow losing the fight against the prince of the world, and the ego of mankind.
Everywhere we look, man ignores God. Church attendance is down. Abortion, which the Catholic Church views as the moral equivalent of murder, is practiced freely and with legal sanction. In the very bosom of the Church, her officials have abused the faithful and shirked responsibility.
Yes, we would write the story another way, a way that provided easier answers. We look at the modern condition and wonder, how would God allow himself to be forgotten? Perhaps we begin to doubt, was the history of Christianity a collective hallucination? Or we feel demoralized, that we have not the strength to carry on with our convictions. When public Christianity is falling apart, we feel foolish for believing in God. We are sheepish about making the sign of the cross in public. We may be embarrassed if our neighbors see us dressed up on Sunday morning.
Ours is a world where some countries that used to be Christian are no longer. It’s as though Christianity was tried for a while, and then discarded in favor of humanism and science. It seems as though we’ve outgrown the Christian story. As unique as the modern situation is, there is still, I think, more than a little for us modern believers to learn about our plight from Scripture.
Christ told us we would be hated for his sake, that the powers of the world will:
"insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me."
He also told us that many people would fall away from the faith:
"Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold."
Saint Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians tells us that believers should expect to be mistreated and misunderstood:
"For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment."
In the modern world, believers and nonbelievers live in close proximity, just as in the early church. Just as then, we believers are meant to sanctify the world through our lives. Our friends and family are nonbelievers. In my case, my most cherished loved one, my spouse and lover, the one with whom I share a bed, does not share my faith, and it sometimes makes me feel like a spiritual failure.
It can also cause us to fear for the eternal soul of our beloved. I hope to spend eternity with God in perfect happiness. Will my wife be with me? Some moments I am held so serenely by God, I am so immersed in his consolations, that I cannot imagine spending eternity apart from her. When we fight, I am tempted to dwell on how much she deserves damnation.
These troubles force us into patience, humility and trust. The conversion of my wife may happen tomorrow, should God will it. But I think it much more likely that if it does happen, it will take many years. It’s not all about me, but I’m convinced God wants me to wait.
In living with my wife, a flawed but wonderful woman who I cherish dearly, I am daily reminded of my own smallness. She is a dynamo of affection and warmth. Despite my spiritual graces, I am a cranky and selfish person. For far too long, I supposed that the strength of my intellect and argumentation would convert her. In truth, they probably pushed her farther away. When glimmers of grace break into her life, it has never been the result of anything I do, no matter how virtuous. It is always a gratuitous gift from God.
A few times, she has told me of a dream, or some epiphany that is so memorable, so strange and pointed that it seems it must be a message from God to her. I’m also conscious that it’s a message from God, through her, to me: “I know you have tried to tell your darling of me, my son, but that is not what I need from you right now. Pray for her, cherish her, love her, but do not be anxious for her or for yourself. I am in control. Maybe someday I will make myself known to her. Until then, be faithful to me, and love your wife well, so that on that day she might embrace me.”
Maybe I try too hard to get inside the mind of God. But as I live with my wife’s lack of faith, and reflect on the scripture where we believers are told to expect such trials, I start to see His design in withdrawing from the world, at least in part.
It seems clear that He has withdrawn from the world, at least in part, and at least for a time. He wants to purify the hearts of the faithful. He wants us to love Him, not just when he looks strong, but when he looks weak. He wants to remind us that on our own we can do nothing good. The twentieth century was the devil’s century. The promise of modernism gave way to total wars, concentration camps, nuclear devastation, and ideologies based on the rejection of God. God gave man science, technology, democracy, and prosperity. Man used them to bring about an ocean of corpses and social Armageddon. This should humble us profoundly and remind us never to rely on our own strength.
We live in the ashes of the world and attempt to salvage what goodness and humanity remain. The believer must hold that the evil of modern secularism is bringing about some good. “For God works all things to the good for those who love him.”
About the twenty-first century, as bad as it seems to us right now, one thing can be said: it is, so far, much better than the twentieth. Modernism, which held that man was the measure of all things, had no room for God. Postmodernism, which says there is no certainty, curiously leaves God more room to creep in at the edges. We see what we hope may be the beginnings of another revival, faith amidst the wreckage.