A Harder Charity

The defining benefit of being a Believer is the view that the universe means something; there's a purpose, or at least a higher level to reality than our everyday aches, pains, and pleasures. For the Christian believer, this benefit is infinitely enhanced through our being intimately connected to this Purpose and our confidence that it all works out to our eternal elation — if we allow it to.

The entire universe is designed in such a way that this acceptance must be a choice. We are so designed that it must be our choice, individually. Even in the height of tranquility, human beings can reject God, while even in the pits of suffering, in flames, or on a cross, we can turn to Him. Often, comfort makes faith more difficult, while those who suffer in faith are blessed.

So here we have a single choice that is personal, individual, and of central import in our lives. Bringing people to the proper understanding is the single most charitable task we can undertake. In fact, it is so central and so important that we are positively obligated to further others' faith. It is more important than ensuring that the poor have warm coats in winter. More important than feeding poor children in distant countries. More important, even, than protecting the unborn.

Unfortunately, faith is not something that we can donate to others. We can never give it as a gift; we can only move others toward it and walk them around it in circles until they see it for themselves. And as it happens, accomplishing this requires warming and feeding them and turning them toward the choice of life. It involves, in short, every facet of our interactions. Thus — where the ambiguous design of the world intersects with our individuality — our everyday aches, pains, and pleasures come to represent the purpose and the higher reality.

I bring this all up, here and now, because people are forgetting to ask themselves whose souls they are looking to save when they act. "Preaching to the choir" may be useless, but when the saved seek only to save each other, the result can be catastrophe — weighed down by the fact of salvation, rather than elevated by its pursuit.

What reward is there for loving those who love you — for convincing those who already agree? Will you save your family by shunning those who have forgotten what family is for? Will you save yourself from corruption by closing your ears to those who mistakenly call it virtue?

Whose soul are you looking to save?

When somebody with whom you periodically agree raises a matter of disagreement, it can serve no purpose to send him away to express it to others who will be sympathetic. Deroy Murdock sought to turn the principles of social conservatives — with whom he shares cause in other areas — around on them. The response should be what? "Get out; you and I cannot coexist"? For my part, I think it is better to listen and to reply with credulity — or good-natured incredulity.

When Catherine Seipp skips through the over-scented roses and titters, it wastes opportunity if we push her to the door and add insult to the stench of sin. Who, in our company, will be seduced by the smell? The problem with communication is that it requires listening. We can either seek those on the other side out and berate them where they control the guest list, or we can invite them out of their insulation. This doesn't mean that we allow them to bring samples of their smut, but if we don't hear their arguments, we can't know what to leverage in order to convince them to stay with us.

Worse: if we fear even their words, then some among us, or between, may be intrigued, having gotten the impression of a phantom strength. If we have the stronger argument and the greater Truth — let alone a Divine Will actively working through us — then it is in our interest to connect with those whose values repel us. Don't we believe that we'll win, ultimately? Of course, we do; we have no reason to say, "Get out of here with those questions," as if we fear that we lack for answers. The answers are there — although they slip from us, if we never have cause to recite them, and they are lost to those who never hear.

This goes on through layers of subtlety and degrees of disagreement. Sometimes we have to shock or offend people into asking new questions of us or (better) of themselves. Sometimes tentative encouragement is needed. We can never give up, though. It may be that one just cannot address the needs of another — whether for reason of time or of temper — which is to say that a break is necessary. But if we aren't letting the land lie, then we ought to stoke its fertility.

This is why I found it unconscionable for Mark Shea to encourage his readers to go out of their way to harm the dreams — the livelihood — of Joseph D'Hippolito. Yes, if Mark believes that Joseph has dangerous ideas, he ought to address those ideas. But if Mark saw a "facade of sanity" in Joseph's article, there must be some understanding of sanity there with which to work. (To be clear, I don't believe that it was a facade.) In our capacity to influence each other toward better thinking, we have to offer encouragement when the direction is true. Mark and his reader instead made it clear that Joseph was damned, in their eyes, either way.

We aren't on this Earth to allocate our brethren into categories of damned and undamned. It isn't even our place to predict an outcome. Why should people who would give murderers every chance to repent discard hope with those who are willing to engage in debate? Our shared room is less a "big tent" than a tabernacle. The purpose of the former is to gather for battle. The purpose of the latter is simply to be present, and it isn't for us to decide who enters.

I can't claim to have the key to the aforementioned eternal elation, but I suspect that our entrance has less to do with the speed or directness of our approach than with the number of people — friends — with whom we arrive.