Diluted Gospel.
Written by: Liz Ivkovich
I was talking to an evangelical Pastor I know last week. He commented to me; “I’m not sure I know much about Catholicism but I know that when it comes to sharing the gospel at the end of the day I don’t want it to be diluted.” This conversation is a form of a conversation that I’ve had over and over as a member of an ecumenical (primarily evangelical) community and having grown up in fundamental Bible-believing churches. The implication of Catholicism as diluting the Gospel took me so far aback that I was speechless for a full minute. I’ve heard that and worse before, but I guess I just haven’t had this conversation in a while, so it started me thinking.
Dilute. Gospel. What is the Gospel? Jesus. Apostle’s Creed. Life beyond death, fuller life on earth. Presence of God. Opposite of dilute- concentrate. Stronger, thicker, more real.
Today I was reading my All Saints: Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for our Timebook, October has St Ignatius’ feast day, Sep 10 – Mother Teresa, Oct 1- Teresa of Avila. These are people that compose the great crowd of witnesses that Paul talked about in Acts. These people are my friends in the way that their lives have guided me, and continue to guide me towards Christ. Something about learning their lives for me is like seeing a pixelated picture of the Gospel become clearer and more detailed. I have a bit of that feeling you get when after listening to a song on repeat 30 times you finally understand the lyrics. I honor the saints by emulating their lives and their relationship with Jesus, I am honored to have them to emulate.
Environmentalists say that emulating something is better than imitating it. Emulating is taking the spirit (or Spirit in this case) of something and integrating it into another thing. Emulating is more intuitive, more thoughtful than imitating. It requires discernment of things like place, time, season, purpose, condition.
I read in the Wikipedia page on Ignatius that he was inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, the adopted patron saint of my community- Word Made Flesh. Through his life he emulated Francis, though their spiritual paths were different, the same Spirit flowed through them and informed who they became. It’s neat to think about how by honoring Ignatius and emulating his life I’m also going deeper into the life of Francis. By going deeper into the life of Francis, I’m entering more fully into the life of Christ, and on and on.
I am drawn to Ignatian spirituality because it seems to be a thoughtful way of emulating the Gospel. It seems to be about discerning the Spirit, being aware of your place, time, season, and living the life of a saint where you are located. It concentrates the Gospel by placing you within it and giving you the ability to live more fully and in detailed colors.
Photo: “Warren – St. Teresa of Avila (St. Dorothy)” by “Patricia Drury” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)
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Liz,
Thanks for a great post! I agree with you very much. As someone who grew up Lutheran, flirted with agnosticism for a while, crawled back into church in a Foursquare Gospel community, and was involved with Campus Crusade before becoming a Catholic 4 years ago, your experience resonates.
That being said, I think what Protestants fear about Catholics is that we sometimes get caught up in serving and fighting for justice and doing good things that we seem to sometimes convey the message that we are what we do or that we are “saved” by our works. I have been shocked in the theology classes I teach at a Catholic high school how many of my students believe that salvation equals getting to heaven and the way we “get saved” is by doing good things and being nice. To me, the gospel is that we can accept ourselves as failures knowing that we are loved in our weaknesses. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” It is that reality of the gratuitousness of love, grace, and salvation in our lives which should motivate action, out of a freedom, rather than a sense of legal requirement or because “God’s gonna send us to hell if we’re bad” or “get mad at us if we mess up.”
I think that the “diluted Gospel” is the idea that I think lots of Christians believe and implicitly convey is that that somehow, despite his unconditional love for us, and despite his incarnation out of love, and in spite of his free gift of abundant life, secretly, God still really just wants us to get our act together and be perfect. The Gospel to me is being able to trust that it is IN my powerlessness to be perfect, my inability to get it right, my helplessness in the face of injustice, and the sin I still fall prey to, God desires me.
Thanks again for your post!
Mattie
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