Nothing but a Thing

Faith is a thing. Church is a thing. Prayers are things. Most people have lives that are too full of things. Many have no room to add another. It becomes easy to give up church, a thing, for something like football, a thing that seems to give more enjoyment. One of the reasons people fall away from a faith filled life is because it is nothing more than an unused thing, like that treadmill collecting dust in the corner. A thing unused is a thing unwanted.


Christianity was never meant to be a thing. Christianity is a relationship. It is a friendship with the second person of the Holy Trinity, the person of Jesus. Jesus is an actual living, breathing person. He is not a concept or someone living in a distant place that we never see. He is an intimate part of every person. He should be the one we have the closest relationship with. Yet, too many of us don’t know him.


In my former life as a sailor I used to observe other sailors calling their loved ones from the pay phone on the pier. It would not be uncommon to see one of them just stand with the phone to their ear, not saying a word, for hours on end. Words were not needed. Just being connected to someone they loved at the other end of the line was all that was necessary. The phone was nothing but a thing that connected them together. Because it did it was something of great value.


The things of our religious life, our faith, going to Mass, saying prayers, are much like that phone. When we have a love relationship with Jesus those are the things that keep us connected. Because they keep us connected we treasure them.


It is my estimation that this is the real reason so many leave the faith. We teach them the rules of the faith. We take them to church. We get them to memorize the prayers. We tell them all about Jesus. At the end of the day they have a lot of knowledge but no relationship. It is like being forced to learn the rules of baseball without having a desire to watch a game. Avid baseball fans fall in love with the game first and then try to learn as much about it as they can. Modern evangelization goes about it backwards. We teach as much as we can about Jesus in the hope that one will come to have a relationship with him and love him. Sure, that works for some who were open and searching for the relationship to begin with. It doesn’t work so well for those who have no interest.


When you express your faith do you talk about the things used for the connection or do you talk about the person you are in love with? If you were to talk to one of those sailors as they left the phone booth on the pier they would tell you all about their loved one. They would tell you how beautiful that person was and how much they loved said person. Not one of the sailors would mention the cold, black, plastic phone with the shiny, square buttons. That should be a clue to us on how we should express our faith with others. When we talk to others about our faith do we talk about how beautiful our church is, our great our Mass is, or the prayers we pray every day? Without a relationship with Jesus they become nothing more but trivial, empty things. When we get someone interested in establishing a friendship with Jesus those things become treasured means of connection and communication.