Chapter
3

Why We Believe

In This Chapter

Why humans hunger for a relationship with God

How God reveals his plan for humankind

The connection between the Bible and Church teaching

The meaning of faith

Before we get into Part One of the Catechism and the actual profession of faith, it’s important to look at faith in general. What is faith? Why do we have any need or hunger for faith? And if we have faith, what is its connection to reason, logic, and the world around us?

These are some of the big, deep questions we face in life. It comes down to what degree of importance we put on God and how significant a role we want him and faith in him to play in our lives.

For some people, faith is like a life soundtrack—always playing, always present, always influencing their decisions or the ways they respond to events in their lives. For others, faith is more like a one-hit wonder—something that’s great in small doses and pulled out on certain occasions, but never consistently takes center stage. And then there are those that fall somewhere in between.

No matter where you fall on the spectrum of faith, it’s almost inevitable that at some point in your life you will have questions about what your faith means. Crises, turning points, celebrations, and sorrows tend to make us ask the question, “Why?”

The only way to find the answer to that question is to start at the be-ginning. And I mean the very beginning.

The Desire to Know God

The Bible tells us God made man and woman in his own image and out of love. Because of that there is an invisible but lasting bond between humankind and its creator. The Catechism says that the “desire for God is written in the human heart” and that the truth and happiness people seek can be found only in God. (27)

You have to admit, most of us are on a pretty constant quest for happiness. So, as the Catechism states, if God is the only answer, then how do we get to the point where saying the words “I believe …” is no longer just words or habit but living, breathing faith?

True Confessions

The English translation of the Catechism was held up for more than a year when some U.S. bishops objected to the use of “man” and “men” to represent both men and women. In the end, the U.S. bishops lost the fight for inclusive language, and the Church opted to keep the original generic male-centered language. So when you see man or men, it is meant to refer to men and women, or humanity as a whole.

The Catechism says that humans are religious beings from the start, and that we express our hunger for God through prayers we say, sacrifices we make, and meditations and rituals we incorporate into our lives. That may be so, but it’s still a long road from ritual to redemption.

Redemption is, after all, the ultimate goal, although it’s certainly not any easy journey to get there. We’ll get into the concept of redemption in more detail later on. For now, let’s just remember that redemption was the point of Jesus’ life and death. He came to redeem humankind from sin and to open the door to eternal salvation.

What can explain, then, why many of us who are supposedly naturally drawn to God so willingly and actively leave God out of our life equation? Why do we become indifferent or focused on other things, like money and material wealth, self-righteousness and selfishness, or all of the above and more? (29)

Well, we are, after all, only human, and being mere mortals, we’re not always able to fathom God’s God-ness. We can never really grasp what God is or express it fully in words, but we can give it our best shot. (43)

The Catechism says that people who seek out God and make him a regular part of their lives tend to see his presence in both the extraordinary and ordinary aspects of the world around them—from the natural beauty of the earth and the mystery of the universe, to the truth, beauty, moral goodness, and spiritual longing of the human person. (31)

Teachable Moment

Human reason enables men and women to come to recognize God as the beginning and end of all things. But it is only through divine revelation that humans are able to attain a deeper understanding of God and his plans, that God is personal, not just powerful.

God Meets Man—and Woman

So if human beings are so limited in their ability to truly know God, how do we go from interested to enlightened, from finite faith to burning belief?

The truth is, we can’t do it on our own. We need a little help from above, or maybe a lot of help. God sent us the ultimate kind of help in the form of his Son, Jesus Christ. Remember, Christian teaching doesn’t start with Jesus but with the beginning of time, the universe. So we have to trace our family tree through the Old Testament, which begins with the beginning of time, to watch God’s plan for us slowly unfold.

First God revealed himself slowly over time to the people of Israel, as recorded in Jewish Scripture. This was followed by the piece de resistance of his plan: His Son.

God’s Plan Revealed!

When we talk about God revealing his plan, we’re talking about God wanting us to understand him better. He doesn’t want us just stumbling along in spiritual darkness. He wants to light the way for us. So while God may seem mysterious, rest assured he makes his plan for us known to us one way or another, even if we sometimes don’t catch on until after the fact.

Church Speak

Revelation in the Church sense means something communicated by God and of God. In the Old Testament, we see this communication through the law and the prophets. In the New Test-ament, God reveals himself in the person of Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit.

Before he sent Jesus, God set about shining his light on humankind through Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, and the Israelites.

It all started with God manifesting himself to Adam and Eve, whom God invited into “intimate communion” with himself (54). Even after they disobeyed him and were banished from paradise, God still stood behind his offer of salvation for them and for their descendants.

Then along came Noah, the flood, the rainbow, and God’s promise. God makes a covenant between himself and all living creatures, saying that he will never again destroy his creation because of the rebellion of his creatures. This is all part of the plan.

Church Speak

Covenant is a solemn agreement that contains promises but also imposes obligations. In the Old Testament, we find covenants between God and Noah, God and Abraham, God and Moses, God and King David, God and the Israelites. In the New Testament, we see a “new” covenant—the promise of eternal life—forged by Christ’s death and resurrection.

Now enters Abraham, whom God proclaims “the father of a multitude of nations.” (Gen 12:3) Abraham’s descendants—the Israelites—will be the chosen ones, with whom God establishes a covenant, which includes the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Then we have God’s covenant with King David, by which God promises the people of Israel a “messiah,” the anointed king of the House of David.

Finally we come to last part of God’s plan revealed: Jesus Christ, who is given to humanity as God’s promised Messiah, God’s Word made flesh, God’s revelation of a new and final covenant. And this is the end of his plan. There will be no further “public revelations” from God. (66)

So how do we fit into this plan if it was over and done with before any of us arrived on the scene? Well, this story is our story. We are not separate from the plan; we are extensions of the plan, living out what God set into motion at the beginning of time. The covenant God made with humankind through his Son is a covenant for all time and for all people.

Teachable Moment

Jesus is known as the “Word made flesh.” How is Jesus a Word? Well, in Jewish tradition, the “word” or dabar, is at once a creative force and a moral force. When we speak of Jesus as the Word, we are not referring to a spoken word as we understand it but to God’s Word spoken from the consciousness of divinity in a timeless and eternal way. Jesus is God’s Word—the link between humanity on earth and God in heaven. In the Gospel of John, Jesus described this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.” (John 1:1-3)

Isn’t That Divine?

Okay, the average person does not receive shazam-thundered divine messages and revelations on a regular basis. So how exactly does God’s plan get passed on to those of us who are not hearing God’s voice, building arks, or receiving tablets of stone? Well, we have the Bible, of course, and we also have something called Apostolic Tradition.

Church Speak

Tradition, with a capital “T,” refers to the living faith that is not necessarily contained in Scripture but is handed down from generation to generation, first by the apostles and now by their successors in the college of bishops.

Jesus told the apostles to go out and spread the Gospel message, which would lead men and women to salvation. The apostles did this by preaching. The preaching they began in those early years after Jesus’ death and resurrection continues today uninterrupted through Scripture and Tradition. (76)

Is All This in the Bible?

The Catechism says very clearly that the Church’s Tradition and Scripture, while distinct from each other, are “bound closely together and communicate one with the other.” (80)

Think of Jesus Christ as the main source of revelation, from which flows two bubbling springs: Scripture and Tradition. Scripture is the word of God spoken through the Holy Spirit, and Tradition is the word of God come to life, living faith, in the form of Jesus Christ.

So how does everything that is in the Bible and everything that Jesus taught to his apostles and earliest disciples fit into what the Catholic Church teaches today? Well, the college of bishops, headed by the pope, is the continuation of the Twelve Apostles in the Church today.

Teachable Moment

The Catholic Church accepts the 46 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament as divinely inspired. The Old and New Testaments are connected in that the Old Testament foretold what would happen in the New Testament, and the New Testament fulfilled the messages of the Old Testament.

The magisterium (remember, that’s the Church’s teaching authority, as discussed in Chapter 1) teaches “only what has been handed on to it” either through “divine command” or the Holy Spirit. It is not superior to the word of God, but rather interprets the word of God. (86)

The Catechism says that Tradition, Scripture, and the magisterium are so closely intertwined that one cannot stand without the other. Together they “contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.” (95)

That means that the Bible (or Scripture) and Tradition passed on through the apostles, and the Church’s authentic interpretation of both, combine to give us all of the teachings you will find in the Catechism.

Responding to Transcendent Love

We’re just about ready to dive into the profession of faith, if you can believe it. I know it’s been a while since we started this discussion, but, as you can see, there’s a lot to understand about faith in general before we can put faith under a microscope and study the little intricacies that make specific beliefs so beautiful.

Maybe you think of faith as something beyond explanation or human comprehension. The Catechism gets into a very detailed explanation of faith, which it calls “a grace.” Faith, the Catechism says, is a “supernatural virtue” that is a cooperation between human intellect and divine grace. (155)

Although faith is often beyond reason, it can never be completely contradicted by reason because “the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God.” (159) In other words, faith can happily coexist with something like science.

Church Speak

Grace is a supernatural gift that God bestows upon men and women to help them live as children of God and to achieve eternal salvation. A virtue is an attitude or disposition that enables a person to act in a righteous way.

Finally, faith, the Catechism says, is a personal act that humans can freely choose to accept or reject, but faith is necessary for salvation. (161)

The Least You Need to Know

Human beings are naturally drawn to their creator God, who wants them to know him and love him.

God revealed his plan through the Israelites, the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, and, finally, Jesus Christ.

Since most of us are not getting messages directly from God, we need divine revelation, which comes to us from Jesus Christ through Scripture, Tradition, and Tradition’s fine-tuning by the Church’s teaching authority, called the magisterium.

Faith is a grace and virtue that is freely chosen and necessary for salvation.