It’s not secret to anyone who has kept up with my blog that I have been on a faith journey for the last several years. Over the last two to three years, that journey has taken a noticeably catholic turn. There are two main reasons for this.
First, the Bible.

I take very seriously the Word of God. Everyone who knows me knows that, not only do I take God’s Word seriously, I love God’s Word. Reading, learning and studying God’s Word has been one of the great joys of my life to date. When I came to faith in Jesus, one of the first prayers I prayed was, “Lord, help me to love Your Word. Help me to hunger and thirst for Your Word. Give me a desire to know You in Your Word.”
Our gracious Father has granted that request. He has given me an ache in my soul that only His Word can fill. He has made me hunger and thirst after His Word. Man cannot live on bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. I live and breathe for God’s Word. I read it and study it and dissect it. 
I love and read and study God’s Word because it is His revelation of Himself to us. Of course we have general revelation in God’s creation. And we have others ways by which we may see God. But God has given us His Word written down so that we may know Him and serve Him rightly.

The second main reason for this is my reading and studying of the Church Fathers. Now, before anyone gets all upset, I am not saying that the Fathers are inerrant. I am not saying that they are on par with revealed truth in God’s Word. However, what I am saying is that they speak to us who, in our modern context, think we’ve got this thing figured out and they say to us, usually with one voice, that there are things about the Christian faith that make most Protestants really nervous.
The Fathers tell us what the Church has always believed and how the Church has always practiced her faith. This is enormously helpful for us today. There is a deep desire among many younger Christians today to connect with the historic Church…and I am profoundly grateful for this desire. I applaud it and encourage it for all!

I encourage it even it makes you uncomfortable and perhaps even leads you to conclusions that sound…well, Catholic.

Let me give you an example from my own life and faith journey. As I said, it’s no secret that my journey has led me out of Protestantism and into a distinctly catholic position. But I struggle and question many of the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. But I want to be intellectually and emotionally honest with myself and with you and maybe you need to ask yourself this same question.

Are my problems with the Catholic Church real problems with biblical reality or do I just not want them to be true?

Here’s my example. I have been wrestling with some things. One of them is all this dogma about Mary. For my Protestant friends...it’s okay for you to call her The Blessed Virgin. Scripture calls her blessed so it is quite alright for you too as well.   But there are some things about the dogma of the Church that I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around.

Like the perpetual virginity of Mary.

The first time I heard this I literally laughed out loud. I was like, “Right. You mean to tell me that Joseph was married to her and never had sex with her? Right.” Seems logical, right? So, here’s where it gets interesting for me. As I said, been studying and wrestling with all this a lot. So, how can it be possible that Mary was perpetually a virgin and surely no one actually believes this, right?

Well….
Actually lots of people in the early Church believed it and taught it. I will give just one example: St. John Chrysostom.
“And when he had taken her, “he knew her not, till she had brought forth her first-born Son.” He hath here used the word “till,” not that thou shouldest suspect that afterwards he did know her, but to inform thee that before the birth the Virgin was wholly untouched by man. But why then, it may be said, hath he used the word, “till”? Because it is usual in Scripture often to do this, and to use this expression without reference to limited times. For so with respect to the ark likewise, it is said, “The raven returned not till the earth was dried up.”6 And yet it did not return even after that time. And when discoursing also of God, the Scripture saith, “From age until age Thou art,” not as fixing limits in this case. And again when it is preaching the Gospel beforehand, and saying, “In his days shall righteousness flourish, and abundance of peace, till the moon be taken away,”8 it doth not set a limit to this fair part of creation. So then here likewise, it uses the word “till,” to make certain what was before the birth, but as to what follows, it leaves thee to make the inference. Thus, what it was necessary for thee to learn of Him, this He Himself hath said; that the Virgin was untouched by man until the birth; but that which both was seen to be a consequence of the former statement, and was acknowledged, this in its turn he leaves for thee to perceive; namely, that not even after this, she having so become a mother, and having been counted worthy of a new sort of travail, and a child-bearing so strange, could that righteous man ever have endured to know her. For if he had known her, and had kept her in the place of a wife, how is it that our Lord commits her, as unprotected, and having no one, to His disciple, and commands him to take her to his own home?[1]”

I read that and was like…wait…what?! Chrysostom goes on to talk about his “brethren” and I highly recommend you read it for yourself. By the way, Chrysostom was the man that many consider to be the father of the Orthodox Church and perhaps one of the greatest preachers that has ever lived.

But it wasn’t just the Fathers that believed and taught this. The hero of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, also maintained the same teaching. Luther said, “Christ our Savior, was the real and natural fruit of Mary’s virginal womb…This was without the co-operation of a man, and she remained a virgin after that.” (Luther’s Works, Volume 22, 23.) By the way, Calvin and Zwingli also defended the perpetual virginity of Mary.
If you’re like me, you’re like, “Yeah but those dudes could be wrong.” Well, yes they could be. So let’s look at what the Bible has to say. Matthew 1 details Jesus’ birth for us and he says in verses 24 and 25,
“When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.”

So right away, if you’re like me, you’ll say…See?! “He knew her not until…” implying that he “knew her” after the birth of Jesus. Problem with that is almost every commentator I read on this (including Calvin) says that phrase was put in there to prove that Jesus’ birth was not as a result of sexual relations with Joseph. But you may say, like me, “Yeah but the Bible says Jesus had brothers and sisters.”
Does it? Here’s the problem with that. The Hebrew and Aramaic languages don’t have separate words for “brother,” “cousin,” or any other near relative. The term “brother” was used for all kinds of relationships (1 Corinthians 15:6, Matt. 23:8, Acts 7:23 to name a few).

Still not buying it?

Okay, another compelling piece…When Jesus is hanging on the cross, where are his siblings? If He had siblings, why weren’t they there? You may say, “Well, because they didn’t believe in Him.” Okay but neither did the High Priest and he was there, as were the Roman soldiers and many others. Don’t you think that if your brother was being executed, you’d show up, especially if you didn’t believe in Him? I mean, this is your opportunity to be able to say, “See, Mom?! I told you He wasn’t the Messiah.”
But aside from that, the interesting part is that Jesus hands over care of His mother to St. John. Now if you’ve done any sort of study on the culture of the day and the Jewish tradition, Jesus, as the oldest son, would have been responsible for the care of His mother (we assume that Joseph was dead by this time). And if He couldn’t fulfill those obligations, one of His siblings (if He had any) would be required to. But He didn’t pass that on to a sibling, He passed that responsibility along to one of the Apostles. Why?

Okay…so here’s what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that I buy all this as of yet. What I am saying is…

What if?
What if it’s true? What if the teaching of the Church for the last couple thousand years is true? Does that in any way diminish who Jesus is, what He accomplished? Does it change anything for you, for me?

Pray for me as I seek wisdom and clarity on these things I struggle with. You may say, “What difference does it make?” If you’re Protestant, you already know the answer to that. It matters because, if the Church is right about that…what else are they right about?
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Pray for me. Pray for yourself and seek God’s wisdom in His Word, His Church and those who have gone before. We do this for the glory of Christ and of His Church!
 
Soli Deo Gloria!


[1] John Chrysostom. (1888). Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople on the Gospel according to St. Matthew. In P. Schaff (Ed.), G. Prevost & M. B. Riddle (Trans.), Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew (Vol. 10, p. 33). New York: Christian Literature Company.

I’m grieving right now.
I’m grieving for the world.
I’m grieving for the United States.
I’m grieving for the people of El Paso and Dayton and countless other cities where too many people have lost their lives because we, in America, are addicted to our guns and our violence. I’m also grieving for the first responders.
These brave men and women give so selflessly of themselves to serve their communities. They suffer more than most of you reading this post will ever know. Many of them suffer in silence. Many of them drown their suffering in alcohol or pills or sex or suicide or whatever they can find to dull the pain.

I know they do this. I know because I did it.

Here’s the thing. Humans weren’t made for this. We weren’t made to murder each other. We weren’t made to take lives, including our own, through violence or any other means. How do I know this? Because I am a Christian and I believe God’s Word.
In the beginning, God created. He created all things that existed and He created mankind. He created mankind in His own image, to model and show the world what He was like. And when He had created mankind, He said it was “very good.” If you’ve never read the story or have never really reflected on it or just want to read it again, I invite you to read Genesis 1-3.

But something went wrong.

We chose. Adam chose. Mankind chose to turn our backs on our good Creator and go it our own way. Our pride drove us to make a decision that has proven to be catastrophic for the world. We chose disobedience over obedience. We chose our own will over God’s will. We chose our own way over God’s way. And sin entered the world.

Now look where we are.

We murder and slander and scream and eradicate and destroy and crush our fellow man and the world that God has created that He called good. We flounder around searching for answers to our own problems and yet turn our eyes and hearts away from the very person that can and has and will answer every question that we have, every answer we seek.

Here’s the reality. There are no answers to our problems in America or in the world without the person of Jesus Christ.

Education can’t be the answer. We’ve tried that. We are the most educated and advanced society the world has ever known. Yet, murder and suicide and assaults and vitriol and racism have never been more rampant. We are so busy shouting at each other and accusing one another and pointing fingers that we cannot see the forest for the trees. If education could solve our problems, we would not see racism and all the other problems we see.
Tolerance can’t be the answer. We’ve tried that. Only our so-called tolerance isn’t really tolerance. We are only tolerant of those who are like us, who agree with us. And so our shouting and biting words tear us apart.

There are no answers to our problems apart from the person of Jesus Christ.

While we grieve (rightly so) and demand change (also rightly so), let’s also not forget that there is very real human collateral damage here. Children are dying. Teenagers are dying. Adults are dying. First responders and soldiers suffer within their own hearts and minds the fall out of having to deal with constant death and depravity.

There are no answers to our problems apart from the person of Jesus Christ. It is only in Him that we will find the peace with ourselves and one another that we so desperately need and crave. So while we have our debates about gun control, racism and many other things, let us hear again the words of our Saviour.
“Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
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A Prayer for the Human Family (Book of Common Prayer):
O God, you made us in your own image, and you have redeemed us through your Son Jesus Christ: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
 
Soli Deo Gloria!