Do you ever tire of the constant doomsday fear-mongering that happens in the political commentator space? I used to listen to the Daily Wire every day. I went from listening to Ben Shapiro to Matt Walsh and back to Ben. I loved getting Dave Rubin’s take on certain issues and I even have to admit with great shame that I used to enjoy listening to Steven Crowder. 

Over time, I got sick of the constant negativity. I was bored with the persistent anger, and sometimes borderline hatred, for those who held different opinions. Now, I can certainly get infuriated by the people who promote abortion or those of the LGBTQ community who prey on young, innocent children. There is undoubtedly a time and place for righteous anger. But I knew that dwelling on these things every afternoon was neither good for my mental nor spiritual health. 

I took a step back and I was lucky to find a new podcast to listen to:  The PBD Podcast. I love Patrick Bet-David. He’s an American-loving, capitalism-promoting, super-successful immigrant, Christian, Army veteran. It’s easy to see how he’s my kind of guy. PBD chose a motto for the year and has been putting it on merch all over his website. He came up with the tagline “The Future Looks Bright” to remind conservatives that we can still have hope for the days ahead. 

My podcast guest this week, renowned author, speaker, and conservative Gen Z spokesperson Isabel Brown, has a similar message in her most recent book, The End of the Alphabet: How Gen Z Can Save America.  When asked about how she remains positive during our interview, she essentially said that it’s all about understanding our context. We will live in an unavoidable shit show until Christ returns. Sure, there are some times that are better than others, but all generations faced their fair share of challenges and setbacks. There is no creating heaven on Earth, despite how much the Communists try to convince us otherwise. 

If that is true, how do we fight to create good times? We have all heard the adage that strong men create good times. You may be thinking to yourself, “I want to be a strong man (or woman), so what do I do now, Nathan?” I’m so glad you asked. 

There are three things you can do to help create a better world. Well, there’s more than three, but I want to talk about three things here that most people avoid. Seeking Excellence is all about doing the hard things that most people run away from. We have a small audience here because most young Catholics would rather take the Socrates route of keeping their heads perpetually in the theological clouds than face the hard reality of the need to work out, budget, and the other practical demands of a good life. 

Action #1:  Fasting 

Last week, I was blessed to spend a few days in Winter Park, CO with my wife, son, and several of our friends who make up the team at West Coast Catholic. You truly can’t beat a little getaway with some amazing people. We spent a lot of time in the hot tub, sitting by the fire, or around the dinner table just having great conversations and dreaming about our individual and collective futures. 

Don’t judge us (I’ll explain more at another time), but we somehow landed on the topic of ‘fat priests’ during one of our late-night conversations. We bemoaned the fact that so many priests, lay Catholics, and Americans in general have become so unhealthy and overweight. We recounted stories about priests who had to sit to distribute Communion or who were unable to genuflect. We all had stories and examples to share, which was disheartening. Priests are representative of Christ on earth, which is harder to see when they are so overweight that they can hardly get around without assistance. Gluttony, though often ignored, is still one of the seven deadly sins. 

Perhaps the reason that it’s hard to see Jesus in an extremely obese priest is because Jesus preached and lived a life of prayer and fasting. The saints have reaffirmed the goodness of fasting throughout the ages as well: 

“For we fast for three purposes: (1) to restrain the desires of the flesh; (2) to raise the mind to contemplate sublime things; (3) to make satisfaction for our sins. These are good and noble things, and so fasting is virtuous.” 

-St. Thomas Aquinas

“Fasting cleanses the soul, raises the mind, subjects one’s flesh to the spirit, renders the heart contrite and humble, scatters the clouds of concupiscence, quenches the fire of lust, kindles the true light of chastity.”

-St. Augustine

We have largely abandoned the practice of fasting in the Church. It used to be common for people to fast and abstain from meat on every Friday throughout the year, along with many other days on the Liturgical calendar. We are still called to practice some type of fasting on Fridays, but most people forget to do so or simply choose not to. Fasting has incredible personal benefits when it comes to your journey to sainthood, but it also has larger cultural implications. 

In Mark 9, Jesus casts out a particularly strong demon out of a young boy. By this point, the disciples were accustomed to casting out demons in Jesus' name all by themselves. They had gotten used to exorcisms and healings by their own hands. This one, however, refused to leave the boy until Jesus came along. 

After he rebukes the demon and casts him out of the child, the disciples ask Jesus why they could not do so. He responds to them by saying, “This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting” (emphasis added). 

In our culture today, we can easily see the immense progress made by satan and his minions. They have convinced many to abandon faith, truth, and reason. This has resulted in a society that knows not truth, beauty, or goodness. We have prayed for these spirits to leave our loved ones, our communities, and our country for long enough. It’s time we begin to embrace the wisdom of Mark 9:28 and bring forth the power combo of prayer and fasting to fight off this evil spirit plaguing our generation. 

Action #2:  Educate Yourself

Around ten months ago, Dave Ramsey conducted an onstage interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson at the Entreleadership Conference. There is a clip that has recently gotten more attention, where Peterson rebuked Ramsey’s statement that it’s often not worth engaging with people with vastly different beliefs and viewpoints on cultural and political topics. Peterson affirms that we should, in fact, engage with people who see things differently than we do. He goes so far as to imply that we have a moral obligation to be well-formed enough on important topics to be able to instruct and correct people in the way of truth and goodness. 

Isn’t it interesting that, time and time again, death comes as a surprise?

One could argue that it’s really the only guaranteed thing in life; the death rate for humans is 100%. We all know it’s coming, but we still manage to take most days for granted. Death is perhaps the most significant and vital transition we will ever make, and yet we don’t spend much time planning or preparing for it. Think of all the time we allot for planning and preparing to get out of the military, for moving into a new home, or for a wedding day. We are so intentional and deliberate when planning for these times of change in our lives – we know that the less prepared we are for any big transition, the more anxiety we have. I think the fear of death comes from a general misunderstanding of it and a huge lack of preparation. We often have our priorities mixed up, focusing solely on the here and now when the other side of eternity awaits in our not so distant future.

Preparing for marriage is actually a great example of how we let our priorities grow overly focused on the urgent, rather than the important. In order to get married in the Catholic Church, you have to go through marriage prep courses; however, most couples are far more invested in planning for the wedding day than they are about getting ready for every day that follows. Consider this – we put so much time and so many resources into a 5-hour event, and widely choose to neglect preparing for the time, most likely decades, that fills the space between the wedding day and death. That leads many people to having an awesome 5 hours of ceremony and celebration followed by a draining and unfulfilling marriage for the next 5, 10, or even 50 years.

So it is with how we spend our lives on earth solely focused on earthly things, neglecting eternity. This comparison of a wedding and marriage here on earth to the after-life may be relevant, but it won’t ever be sufficient.  A 5-hour to 50-year comparison is conceivable.  A 50 year to eternity comparison isn’t possible to wrap our minds around because eternity, in a certain sense, is still a mystery to the time-bound human mind.   We cannot fully conceptualize the difference between 50 years and eternity, because we cannot understand eternity.

The mystery of eternity partially explains our apathy toward preparing for it, but I think the cause is a deeper, more philosophical issue. I believe it has to do with our beliefs, or better yet, our assumptions about judgement, God, and the afterlife. Do most people go to heaven? That's a question that only makes sense to the believer.

Lacking intentionality in preparing to meet God face to face would be reasonable for the atheist. We know there is a growing trend toward atheism and away from religion in the West, but the truth is that majority of us do profess a belief in God, or at least in the afterlife.  An NBC News article cites a 2016 study that showed from the 1980’s to the 2010’s, there was a significant increase in the number of people who had serious doubts about the existence of God. There was a significant decrease in those who considered themselves to be very religious. However, the percentage of people who believe in some form of afterlife actually increased. Belief in God and the afterlife are what allow us to lead a meaningful life. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky summarizes the effects of destroying the idea of everlasting life in society,

“If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be permissible, even cannibalism.”

And while an increase in belief in the afterlife is undoubtedly a good thing, this belief separate from a belief in God that is grounded in the Truth and context of the Church signifies some dangerous (and heretical) thinking.

Do Most People Go to Heaven?

Similar to my incredulity toward people's surprised attitude toward death, I’ve always been amazed at the thing that typically follows, most commonly at funerals:  the assumption of salvation and heaven for the deceased. Almost every time you hear people, including many preachers, console a grieving family or friend, they assure them that the person who has passed is now "in a better place". I don’t mean to be a downer, but is it remotely possible that this is really true for every person? From a biblical perspective, it seems clear that not every person goes to Heaven. In Matthew 7:13, among other places, Jesus Himself confirms this, “for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few".

I think this is a very important, but often forgotten, truth: Heaven and Hell both exist and there are likely many, many people in both places. To me, this truth isn’t meant just to scare us into going to church on Sunday or to repent of our sins strictly out of fear, but to move us to be bolder and more courageous in sharing our faith with others and to live holier lives ourselves.

The problem with assuming that everyone we know gets into Heaven is that it generates lukewarmness of faith in our own lives. After all, we usually knew the people whose bodies lie in the caskets at funerals. We knew their strengths and their weaknesses. We are, by nature, judgmental creatures. These ideas combine to make us think that if a person, who in some instances we know was heavily disengaged from their faith life by all knowable standards is assumed to have made it into heaven, then we also can be saved by doing the bare minimum of subjectively "trying to be a good person".

Admittedly, we can’t know the inner workings of someone’s heart, and we are certainly not the ultimate judge of who is saved and who is not. Therefore, I’m not championing that we loudly proclaim at a funeral that the deceased won’t make the cut into heaven, the point is that we just don’t know. The uncertainty is tremendous. And it's okay to express hope rather than conviction when talking about the deceased's eternal destination.  

The Catholic response to this ambiguity is just another reason that I love being Catholic. In a video by Fr. Mike Schmitz on this topic, he states that we typically have three major reasons for wanting to attend a funeral:  to say a final goodbye, for closure and grieving, and to celebrate the life of the person. But these are each contrary to the main purpose of a Catholic funeral. The reason we gather is to offer the sacrifice on the mass on behalf of the person who has passed away. The main problem with assuming someone is in Heaven is that we fail to pray for their salvation and for their soul in purgatory. Hope moves us to action through prayer and sacrifice on their behalf while conviction leads us to wrongly assume that the work of salvation is complete. 

I’ve noticed this in my own life as well. Many times when someone dies, I’m asked to pray for the family. While the family is certainly in need of prayers and God’s love, our main focus should be praying for the soul of the individual who died, asking for their salvation, and offering sacrifices on their behalf.

The same is true when someone is in the process of dying. The focus of most "thoughts and prayers" are for the recovery of the sick and for peace in the hearts of grieving loved ones. Both of these things are good desires, but they are not the most pressing need. Praying for the continued conversion and work of salvation to be brought to its completion is by far the most important thing you can do in such a situation. 

Fr. Mike makes another interesting point. We are often told that we shouldn’t judge people while they’re on earth, but we are quick to judge them once they leave this world by declaring where they will spend eternity. Canonizing (i.e. making the person a 'saint' by declaring with certainty that they are in heaven) the person who died is not the role of family or friends, and certainly not the purpose of a funeral. This happy go lucky idea of not judging others unless it’s pleasant and convenient comes from a few flawed, yet mainstream, beliefs:

Belief #1: God doesn’t really send people to hell

One of the most deceiving and misleading teachings circling around in Christianity today is that hell and the devil do not exist. I do understand the difficulty of reconciling an all merciful and all loving God with this concept of hell, but I don’t understand how you can profess to believe the Holy Bible and the teachings of the Catholic Church yet say that hell doesn’t exist or that it exists but is empty.

Now, many of you may think that I’m exaggerating this problem. Not that many people actually doubt the existence of hell or believe that it is empty. You might be able to convince me that few people actually outright state that belief, but isn’t it obvious that we don’t believe in it based on the way we live? In our personal lives we often demonstrate this belief by having a passive or lazy approach to developing our relationship with God.

In our evangelization efforts, I think it’s even more common. Do you share the Gospel with people as if their eternity depended on it? Or do you tend to be more focused on preserving your relationship and your reputation by avoiding what could be a “touchy subject”?

Further, do most Christians go to Heaven? I guess it depends on the definition of “Christian.” We know the Catholic Church does not teach the popular evangelical maxim that you are “once saved, always saved.”  If to be Christian is to be a member of the Church, that is the Body of Christ, then presumably yes, all Christians would go to Heaven where they continue this incorporation as a member of the Body of Christ for all eternity. 

However, that is quite different than saying every person who claims to be a Christian is going to Heaven.  Contrary to popular belief, simply stating something does not automatically make it true. You can claim to be something you are not, but that doesn’t change reality. The Church believes that everybody who is in a state of grace and has not cut themselves off from God through mortal sin at the point of their death goes to Heaven. A plain reading of the New Testament confirms that many believers and baptized Christians will abandon the faith and thereby likely forfeit their own salvation through their beliefs, words, and actions.

Belief #2: Ignorance is a free pass

Another common objection to hell is the hypothetical (although probably common for most of Church history) situation of someone who never gets exposed to the faith and dies without ever getting baptized or professing belief in Christ. It’s a good question and an interesting one to discuss. But it’s utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of people alive today. Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray then to the Lord of the harvest that he will send more laborers into the harvest” (Matthew 9:37). The harvest around us is certainly plentiful each and every day. We are not interacting with people who have no access to information about Jesus. In modern day America, essentially every person has access to free resources about anything and everything. I must drive past 12 churches on my ten minute commute to work. The people you know who are unbelievers or disengaged in their faith are not that way because they are deprived of the opportunity to learn the truth. This ignorance is most frequently a result of choice. And while we can’t save everyone, we do have an immense responsibility to lead people closer to God and his Church through our prayers, words, and actions.

The well-formed Catholic might ask how the idea of ignorance applies to Protestants, Mormans, Muslims, and people of other various religions. After all, you may recall the old Latin phrase, extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, i.e. "outside the Church there is no salvation." This is an infallible teaching of the Church, meaning Catholics must accept this as the truth. 

I’ve recently done a lot of thinking on the topic of non-Catholics being saved. I’m currently reading Will Many be Saved? By Ralph Martin, who is one of my favorite Catholic authors. He argues that Vatican II did in fact make some adjustments to the way the Church now views our “separated brethren” (referring to Protestants) and that those changes were needed based on new context after the passing of several centuries. After all, it is quite different to be raised Lutheran in Minnesota today than it would have been to choose to leave the Catholic Church follow a schismatic Martin Luther in the early 16th Century when the Protestant Reformation first began. 

The idea is that those who were raised believing forms of Christianity that lack the fullness of faith found only in Catholicism are not as culpable as those who initiated the breaking away from the Church in the first place. 

The problem we have today, as Ralph Martin repeatedly stresses, is that so many leaders in the Church promoted the idea that salvation for Protestants, as well as members of other non-Christian religions, was not only possible, but actually probable. 

This I believe is the root of the first issue I named - the assumption of salvation. This “salvation optimism” permeated the Church and has become extremely popular in so many Protestant denominations who teach a watered down Gospel and a nice, always tolerant caricature of Jesus. 

I believe there are two main attractions to this lie. The first is that it gives us false security that we can go to Heaven no matter what we believe and regardless of how we live.  Why strive for sainthood when mediocrity will take you to the same location for all eternity? It allows us to choose lukewarmness and apathy rather than self-denial, repentance, and dependence on God. 

The second attraction is that it presents a wholly acceptable option to neglect evangelization. There’s no need to have those tough conversations about getting married in the Church, living chastely, abortion, etc. if you believe your ideological opponent is guaranteed a spot in heaven regardless of what they believe and do. 

Ultimately, it gives us the excuse to ignore the command of Jesus Himself to make disciples of all nations, especially disciples who know and follow His commands. Rather, operating on these false beliefs, we can simply make disciples who are warm to the idea of Christianity and think highly of Jesus as a good teacher and positive influence.

Belief #3: Just be a good person

We have this vague belief floating around today that if you are just a ‘good person’ you will be good to go in the long run. That’s ridiculous. The idea of a “good person” has as many definitions as there are people who claim to be one. Almost everyone fancies themselves a good person, even some serial killers and dictators.

According to our faith, getting to Heaven requires more than avoiding being a horrific human being. It’s typically the holiest among us who identify themselves more as a sinner than a saint. Why is that? Because the closer you get to the light of Jesus, the darker you find yourself to be. When compared to true perfection, you find yourself to be small, wretched, and hopeless without His mercy and love. Conversely, when we are far from God, we tend to compare ourselves to the most evil among us, and we shine in this juxtaposition with Hitler and Stalin. People truly think that because they are not committing grotesque sins on a daily basis that they are deemed ‘good' in the eyes of God.

This conclusion doesn’t come from any sort of logic; it simply flows from laziness. People who don’t want to change or put effort into their spiritual health are quick to lower the standards that we are called to. You see this happen as many churches today drift further and further from the fullness of the faith that Jesus originally intended for us. People reject absolute truth or high standards because it challenges them to actually live their lives differently. And even those of us who are engaged members of the Church often fail to live our lives with enough conviction, joy, and zeal to actually make them give faith a chance. I think one of the main causes of this problem is that we fail to remember death.

Remember Death

Memento Mori is a Latin phrase that means “remember death.” As Fr Mike explains, the meaning is actually two-fold. It serves as a reminder of our impending death, but also serves to call to mind the fact that we have already died to sin through Baptism and are risen to a new life in Jesus Christ. The phrase used to be extremely common among Catholics. At times it was even used as a greeting. One of my best reminders of death comes when I’m on a plane that is about to land. I always think of just how little a mistake could cause us to crash. No, this thought doesn’t invoke fear and anxiety. Instead, it causes me to evaluate my life up to this point:

Am I happy with how I’ve lived? 

Am I happy with how people would remember me? 

What would my eulogy sound like? 

Who did I not reconcile with who could be left feeling empty and without closure? 

Do people know how I feel about them? 

Do they know how grateful I am for what they’ve done for me? 

Have I done my best to know Jesus and to make Him known?

I come off each flight motivated to live my life. For many, though, the thought of death doesn’t bring about inspiration to live life to the fullest. Instead, it draws, from within the deepest parts of their being, serious fear, worry, and anxiety. I know that in my own life few things give me more anxiety than procrastinating on something vitally important. I believe that a lot of anxiety and depression comes from not having a proper understanding of death along with a lack of preparedness for it. Think about how hard it would be to near the end of a life you know you are currently wasting.

Most of us fall somewhere in between one of two categories:

1) Knowing God exists and striving to live completely for Him

2) Knowing God exists and ignoring that fact, distancing ourselves more and more from Him with each passing day

Many people unknowingly move closer and closer to that second category. For almost a decade now, I have been intrigued by what I now know is many Catholics' misinterpretation of Church teaching in their neglect for evangelization stemming from their lack of concern about their own salvation or the salvation of others. 

Ralph Martin continues to address the Vatican II documents in a way especially interesting to me; one such point is the following: 

“All children of the Church should nevertheless remember that their exalted condition results, not from their own merits, but from the grace of Christ. If they fail to respond in thought, word and deed to that grace, not only shall they not be saved, but they shall be the more severely judged” 

And yet another quote reads: 

“Whosoever knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by God through Jesus Christ, would refuse to enter her or remain in her could not be saved” 

It seems like most holy men and women have believed that we really underestimate the culpability of those who willingly choose to be ignorant, as St. John Chrysostom points out: 

“One should not think that ignorance excuses the non-believer…When you are ignorant of what can easily be known, you have to suffer the penalty…When we do all that is in our power, in matters where we lack knowledge, God will give us his hand, but if we do not do what we can, we do not enjoy God’s help either…

 

So do not say: ‘How is it that God has neglected this sincere and honest pagan?’ You will find that he has not really been diligent in seeking the truth, since what concerns the truth is now clearer than the sun. How shall they obtain pardon who, when they see the doctrine of truth spread before them, make no effort to come to know it?...

 

It is impossible that anyone who is vigilant in seeking the truth should be condemned by God… ‘but how is it,’ you ask, ‘that they have not believed?’  It is because they did not wish to. And yet Christ did his part on their behalf; his passion bears witness to that.”

The line that hit me especially hard, because of my constant struggle with this very question, was the following: 

“But how is it” you ask, “that they have not believed?” 

It is because they did not wish to. 

A great fictional depiction of this choice can be found in C.S. Lewis’ work The Great Divorce. 

He does an amazing job of showing that people really do choose hell for themselves rather than being arbitrarily sent there by God. Many people, despite access to so much information and ability to seek the truth, decide not to do so. 

Others know the truth and choose to reject it anyway. 

____________________________

How We View Death, and in turn, Heaven

Peace, hope, and joy are virtues that come through grace. When our life has no meaning or greater purpose, when we lack the love of God in our lives, what else is there but sadness?

Matt Walsh explains it well in his new book Church of Cowards,

“We are told that despair – or depression, as we call it today – is a mental illness. But how can we call someone ill for being in despair when he has so many good reasons for that despair. . .We do nothing for a despairing man by numbing his sadness while leaving him to his empty, miserable existence. . . Life moves always on to death. Every step we take is a step closer to it. If death is a plunge into nothingness, if it is the cessation of all being, then what is there but despair?”

We are called to draw people out of that despair. One of the necessary marks of a Christian is hope. This hope, when fully present, doesn’t allow for there to be fear of death. We have hope in God’s mercy and goodness, trusting that our wholehearted pursuit of God’s presence here on earth will be finally made fully possible in heaven. Contrast Matt’s description of the unbeliever’s despair, life and the view of death with C.S. Lewis’ view of the afterlife for a believer in Till We Have Faces,

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing – to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from – my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”

Death is our journey home to worship God for all eternity.

A healthy view of death along with a serious intentionality around trying to be prepared for it allows you to be fully alive. The best athletes are those who play like it could be their last game ever. The best concerts are those where you see someone perform like it could be their last one. In a similar way, the best lives are those lived in a way that doesn’t take time here for granted. I want you to love your life and to live like it’s almost the end. This means spending time being truly present with people, forgiving people, loving others with all your heart, and being bold in your faith. It means tenaciously seeking out your purpose in life and then pursuing it with all your heart.

Knowing that there is an end allows us to understand the urgency of now. You may not understand why just yet, but God created you in this particular time in history, in this particular place, for a particular reason. Your life will go on forever, but your time here on earth is finite. The most important thing we can do in this finite time is know Jesus and make Him known.

Are you spending your limited time wisely and intentionally? I hope so, because your eternity and the eternity of many others will likely depend on it.

“Many great things depend, don’t you forget, on whether or not you and I live our lives as God wants.” –St. Josemaria Escriva

One of my heroes was born on January 8th, 1894 in the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. He received a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary when he was only 12 years old, during which she predicted that he would persevere in purity and become a martyr for our Faith. By age 21, he received his first doctorate degree in Philosophy. At age 28, he received his second doctorate in Theology.

He became a priest and witnessed angry demonstrations against the popes of his time, including Pope St. Pius X. He was a writer and a missionary, founding multiple monasteries in Japan and India. His health forced him to return home to Poland in 1936. Three short years later, the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Life for this man would never be the same.

Despite his own health challenges, he was one of the few who remained in his monastery and even went so far as to open a temporary hospital there to help those in need. He spent three months in prison after his town was invaded, but was then released. He was given an opportunity to avoid future persecution, but refused to sign a document that would protect him as a German citizen because of his German ancestry. He went on to hide over 2,000 Jews in his monastery and began printing many anti-Nazi German publications from their printing house. On February 17, 1941, he was arrested and the monastery shut down. He was taken to the Pawiak prison for three months before being transferred to Auschwitz.

During all this, he never abandoned his priesthood. He remained committed to his identity and the Church. Mother Mary’s prediction would eventually come true when he volunteered his life to take the place of a man with a family who was being sent to be starved to death. After two weeks of starvation and dehydration, he still hadn’t died. The Nazis injected him with a lethal poison, to which he willingly gave his arm.

This man was St. Maximillian Kolbe. In my opinion, he is one of the greatest saints of the last 2000 years of Church history. He was the epitome of a warrior for Christ. He was a man he knew who he was and what he was here to do.

St. Maximillian Kolbe endured tremendous suffering and saw evil in its rawest and truest forms. He lived in both Russian and Nazi occupied Poland. He was a missionary to foreign lands where he undoubtedly saw the reality of extreme poverty. He was alive for both WWI and WWII, witnessing one of the harshest concentration camps from the inside. We have many great quotes from this man, but one that has always stood out to me the most was when he shared his thoughts the greatest evil of our time:

“The most deadly poison of our times is indifference” –St. Maximillian Kolbe

Imagine that. Imagine going through life having seen and experienced all that he did, seeing the absolute worst of mankind – then someone asks you, “what do you think is the greatest problem in the world today?”

Hate? No.

Violence? No.

War? Nope.

Poverty? Negative.

It’s indifference.

It’s apathy. It’s the fact that all of those things are happening all over the world and too many people simply do not care. People with the ability, resources, and oftentimes the awareness, do nothing to provide a solution. It brings me back to the timeless Edmund Burke quote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to sit aside and do nothing.”

Are you one of the good people doing nothing?

Short term memory loss

It’s amazing to me how quickly we as humans can forget things. Have you ever had a day or a season in your life be so bad that you assumed everything after it would be relatively easy? I’m sure we all have. I know I have multiple times. This week, I reflected more and more on my time in the Dominican Republic on three different mission trips. Those trips were filled with love, service, and the Holy Spirit. The experiences I had there permanently changed my view on material goods and the bountiful blessings that are afforded to me as a middle-class American.

The most interesting part of my third trip was getting to see others go through these same experiences I had had multiple times now. This group was the biggest we had gone with yet, and definitely had the highest average age across the board. We usually traveled with other college kids, but this time had more middle aged people than usual. Some of them had allowed decades to pass between their last gritty form of service, and it showed.

It was amazing to see the unwillingness to submit themselves to certain discomforts for a ten-day period of time. Even once returning to the United States, it stunned me to see the quickness with which appreciation for the finer things in life (like warm showers, air conditioning, and fully functioning toilets) evaporated in that American air.  

To be fair to my fellow missionaries, this experience of taking things for granted isn’t unique to middle aged, first time mission trip goers. We all do it almost every single day. Firmly aware of the injustices taking place around the world and even in our own country, we can barely afford the time to even pray for the victims, let alone contribute our time and treasure to the point of sacrifice.

One of the most devastating consequences of this return to comfort and ease is that we lose sight of all the experiences that once moved us to change the way that we live. When we go through a life altering experience, like losing a loved one or going on a spiritual retreat, we discover this deep understanding of reality. It pushes us to approach life in a new way. It drives us to cherish our time with loved ones, be more generous with our possessions, and to share the wisdom and insights from what we’ve learned with those we encounter. Almost each time though, as the hours and days pass, we get more comfortable as normalcy resettles around us. We forget these hard earned nuggets of wisdom and our lives look eerily similar to the way they did prior to the experience.

Many resolutions and commitments made on the tail end of trying times go unfinished because we sprint away from the pain, which is coupled with the wisdom, at the first opportunity. It takes great humility and courage to not take people and things for granted in your life. Why? Because it forces you to realize that you are not any different from those suffering from extreme poverty in other places in the world who were never given a chance at prosperity. It leaves you no choice but to actually live the lessons you learned, and we all know that application and doing are the hardest parts of changing. Personal comfort leads to indifference to the struggles going on in the lives of other people.

We can’t all solve every problem in the world, especially not on our own. But I’m willing to bet that we could all do a little bit more to help make the world a better place. I think one of the best places to start is evaluating the root causes of this indifference and apathy that we are plagued with, and examining how it might be in effect in our own lives. What’s keeping you from playing a bigger role in the battle between good and evil in our world today?

The Roots of Apathy

Victim Mentality

One of the first things that we lose when we are attentive to the needs of others is the ability to play the victim. Every time you turn on the news today, you will hear somebody blaming another person for their own misfortune. Whenever life isn’t going the way we hoped or expected, the easiest thing to do is look to our left and right in order to find someone responsible for our lack of success. I heard it all the time growing up in Harrisburg, during my time in the military, and even more now in my work for the Church.

Human beings often think that because they cannot control everything, they cannot really control anything. Sadly, we often spend so much time trying to control what we can’t control (viz. other people) that we seldom take time to really determine what is under our sphere of influence. You are the sum total of the choices you have made up to this point in your life. Sure, some people may have had a head start on you in a lot of ways, but you’ve also had a head start on many others as well. Do you focus more on what you don’t have and haven’t been given, or on what you do have and have been given in your life?

I constantly try to remind myself and other people that there are true victims out there in this world. There are people who have no ability to change their situation. These are the people who are victims of sex trafficking, slavery, wrongful imprisonments, and brutal dictatorships. These are child soldiers, people in caste systems, and prisoners of war. We don’t have to dwell on such depressing thoughts all the time in order to be grateful for what we have, but it does help to occasionally call to mind that there are situations much worse than the ones we find ourselves in.

“It could be worse” was a simple motto that often got us through difficult times in the Army. We would brainstorm situations that would actually make our current predicament more miserable. Sure, we might be wet, cold, and hungry, but at least we didn’t have to climb a mountain during this mission. You might have a heavy ruck to carry, but at least you didn’t also have to carry a 17lb machine gun along with it’s ammunition. You may have to go on a five mile run in the rain, but at least you were going to get a great big breakfast afterwards. It could always be worse.

Pessimism

The other side of this lovely coin is that wonderful opposing truth, “it could always be better.” While it is helpful in certain situations to think of how life could be worse in order to muster up the strength to persevere, there are also times where we must reflect on what could improve. More importantly, we should focus on the ways in which we can personally do something to affect positive change in our circumstances and in the lives of other people.

Pessimism runs rampant in our world today. We get so caught up in thinking of how bad things are and how bad things can be that we fail to dream of a better future, let alone start working towards it. A joyful life requires that we “rejoice even in our sufferings” (Romans 5:3). The exercise of imagining how your life could be worse is meant to bring you gratitude for hidden blessings, but it doesn’t end here.  Gratitude should always lead to action through generosity and optimism. This thankfulness should shift our thinking from negative to positive, allowing us to see outside of our current pain and find creative ways to bring even greater joy to those around us. Even though I have a heavy ruck to carry, I’m now grateful that I don’t have to lug the big machine gun around. This should move me to go offer a snack or an encouraging word to the man who is carrying such a burden. When that gratitude ends with me, the process is only half complete. For most people, the process never even begins.

You get to choose the way you think. I’m willing to bet that you know an abundance of negative people. The common misconception is that these people are negative because of some outside forces or because of some determined “personality type” they’ve had since birth. In Man’s Search for Meaning, holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl says that the last of human freedoms is our freedom to choose how we will respond to the things we face in life, the freedom to choose our attitude. Negative people are negative because they choose to be that way. This blinds them from reality and keeps them from seeing the beautiful possibilities that could exist, which leads to apathy. If nothing will get better, why should you even try to change yourself or the world around you?

What attitude will you choose to have today?

Distractions

I know that the devil loves himself some distractions. Our Enemy has worked tirelessly over the past century to get us to be as busy and distracted as he possibly could, and he has done so with great success. Think of how obsessed we are with being busy. Ask anybody you know how they’ve been over the past couple weeks and the answer is almost always “busy, busy, busy.” Every person prides themselves on the level of busy they attempt to maintain. Sure, their “busy” schedule might include hours and hours of Netflix, social media, and time at the bar, but don’t you dare try and add something else into their “jammed packed” schedules.

Busy, in my opinion, often just becomes synonymous with distracted, i.e. operating life with no priorities. The constant noise and entertainment prevents us from having a moment to really evaluate our effectiveness and the true importance, or true pointlessness, of what we are doing. Life is all about your priorities. To be successful in the world’s eyes, just stay really busy, but to be significant, it’s going to take some serious intentionality. Distractions and busyness will keep you from caring about what really needs your attention.

Obsession with self

Toddlers are awesome. Their laughs are always adorable and they can be incredibly entertaining. They have such a pure innocence and trust those who take care of them so deeply. Then again, we don’t call that second year of life the “terrible two’s” for nothing. Small children can be incredibly difficult as they go through this gigantic perspective shift that allows them to see that the world does not revolve around them. There are other people who matter too, so the child can’t always have things his or her way. It’s a painful but important journey. We often evaluate someone’s upbringing by how well their parents helped them make this shift.

For some reason, our society is pushing more and more for this two-year-old mentality to be the norm for adults. We are pushing this idea that one’s self is the only person you should really care about.  Self-love, self-care, and self-acceptance are touted as the greatest virtues of our time. They are elevated above self-stewardship and personal responsibility. The world pushes us to be more obsessed with gaining more “rights” and forgetting our responsibilities. In today’s society, you are told to flee from the consequences of your actions. Whether you become pregnant, have student loans, or choose not to work a job, there are people who say the consequences of those actions should be simply wiped away. Why? Because you should have a “right” to choose, a “right” to not have to be burdened by loans, and a “right” to a ‘living’ wage. You also should have a “right” to force your beliefs on other people, making them conform to new ways of pronoun, bathroom, and locker room rules through a new, deeply flawed approach to biology in general.

People’s feelings have been elevated above the English language, the religious liberties of others, and even the right to life for the most defenseless among us. We are empowering a small, yet very loud, minority to take away basic human rights such as the right to freedom of speech and religion, and even the right to life. This minority moves in the shadows behind the guise of tolerance and acceptance, while they actually fight to develop a society who doesn’t tolerate or accept those who disagree with them.

The purpose of society is to help one another protect our true rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. When we adopt this selfish thinking, we cease considering those rights in regards to others and only seek to protect them for ourselves. “Who cares if more African American babies are killed in the womb than are born in New York city? It hasn’t affected my day to day life, right?”

Self-obsession leads us to focusing on our own problems to the extent that we can no longer see, tend to, or even care about the needs of others. This tunnel vision in our own lives causes us to want to play the victim. Self-obsession leads to indifference.

The Way Out

Our lives require context. Whenever things are taken out of context, confusion ensues. We have to keep in mind that we are playing an eternal game in life. We are striving to live holy lives in this life so that we can worship God for eternity in the next. Never lose sight of the goal. We have to also keep in mind that we have a deep and heavy responsibility to leave this world better than we found it. We can’t do this if we are indifferent toward these duties. This undertaking can easily seem overwhelming, but it just comes back to these basic choices:

1. Choose to play the hero, not the victim
2. Choose to have a positive attitude
3. Choose to rid your life of the people and things that distract you from what is most important
4. Choose to be selfless – give yourself to God and others generously in every way that you can

These things are simple, but not easy. It takes time, perseverance, and accountability from the good people around us to even get close to mastering these things in our short lifetimes. The difficult things in life are often the most rewarding. Choosing to fight this battle, to be a light in the midst of all this darkness, is the best decision you will ever make.