CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN VALUES versus CULTURAL VALUES
Robert Henry
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CULTURAL VALUES |
CATHOLIC
CHRISTIAN VALUES |
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BEAUTY
– One of the things we are taught to value in our society is physical beauty. This is evidenced by
the amount of time and money that is spent by all of us to improve our
physical appearance. We have a
multibillion dollar cosmetic industry, clothing industry, and hairstyling
business to achieve this end. This is
also evidenced by the huge amounts of money and time spent by the advertising
industry on this issue. What we are
taught in a very subtle fashion from our earliest years is that if you are
physically beautiful then you are valued.
If not, then you are not as desirable and valued. Pornography pushes even further with the
full thrust being solely on the person’s physical beauty and sexual
attractiveness. This value system says
that as long as you appear beautiful, desirable or sexually attractive you
are valued but when you don’t then you are no longer valued. This is conditional value and love, and can
easily be lost through sickness and aging. |
BEAUTY
– The biblical and Catholic Christian view is much different in that every
person who has been created in the image and likeness of God is beautiful and
valued. God values each and every one
of us the same equal yet infinite amount,
and we do not have to earn this because it is freely given. God’s love is unconditional and does not depend on our physical appearance, or
whether we were lucky enough to have “good looking” genes in our family tree. The
following Scriptures indicate God’s viewpoint on what true beauty is: Proverbs
31:30 states “Charm is deceptive and physical beauty is fleeting; but the
woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” 1
Samuel 16:7 states “But the Lord said to Samuel: Do not judge from his appearance or his
lofty stature, because I have rejected him.
Not as man sees does God see, because man looks at the appearance but
the Lord looks at the heart”. True
beauty is spiritual beauty not physical beauty. |
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HUMAN
INTELLIGENCE – another personal aspect that we greatly value in our society
is a person’s IQ. We are taught that
these gifted people who attend MIT or Harvard are the cream of the crop, and
somehow are better than the rest of us.
Again, our society seems to say that if you are intellectually
brilliant then you are valued. If you
have little formal education then you are not that valuable, and you have
limited “marketable skills”. This
type of intellectual superiority is rooted in pride and many of these people
are convinced that there is no God and if there were
a God, that they are smarter than He is.
This type of intellectual superiority (that we seem to worship) says
“I am great because of what I know”. |
SPIRITUAL
INTELLIGENCE is called WISDOM. Wisdom
is a different type of intelligence because God is the source of all
wisdom. It is an intelligence that
comes from communing with God and letting the Holy Spirit fill you. It is indeed one of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit that you will receive at Confirmation.
One
whole book of the bible that teaches us about true intelligence is the Book
of Wisdom. Other books of the bible
that teach us about wisdom are the Book of Proverbs, the Psalms, the Book of
Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Sirach. Wisdom
says “I am great because of Whom I know”. |
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MATERIAL
WEALTH – books about the lives of the rich and famous tend glorify these
people and to point out that these people are more valuable and lovable than
the rest of us. The possessions of
huge sums of money tend to cause us to feel that we are powerful and in
control of our destiny. Besides the
comforts, conveniences and pleasures that money offer us, our ego needs are
also met by the esteem others show us.
Fortune magazine and the multiple get-rich-quick schemes that are
offered to us indicate that we humans fall for this temptation rather
frequently. This
type of richness is conditional
because if the stock market drops or a bad investment is made the person looses
his sense of self-worth and sometimes commits suicide. It
has been said that the most addictive substance in the world is not alcohol
or any type of drug; but rather it is pure unadulterated money. |
SPIRITUAL
WEALTH – this type of wealth is given by God freely to all; and is available
for the asking. Spiritual wealth is the unfathomable riches in Christ. It is the riches that the scriptures talk
about when Jesus tells us to work for the true riches of his kingdom, the
riches that will not rust, corrode or wear-out. In other words the eternal riches which no one or no thing can take away. A
true Christian can stand tall no matter what his or her economic status, and can say “I am a child of God the Father and my
Daddy loves me and He owns it all”. Indeed
one of the beatitudes says “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the |
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FREEDOM
– our culture tells us that “you only go around once in this life so you have
to grab for all the gusto you can get”.
In our culture we seem to have the notion that freedom means to do what
ever we feel like and when we feel like it.
This is ingrained in us thru advertising. We have the impression that freedom means
to be able to indulge our passions and desires indiscriminately, with little
or no regard for others or the effects of our actions. We live in an era of MORAL RELATIVISM
which states that we decide what is good and what is bad because after all we
are “free” to make our own decisions on our morality and our values. This
false worldly sense of freedom leads to the path of addiction as the person
who in his quest to be free and gratify the flesh gets hooked on a chemical
substance. This person is not free but
rather is a slave to his/her addiction. |
FREEDOM
– for a Catholic Christian, it means that we are free to be holy. Free to be
saved from damnation and free to be the sons and daughters of God. For
example, a wild horse runs all over the place and endangers itself and other
living creatures with its recklessness.
However, a trained Arabian show horse is graceful, controlled, and
endangers no one as it performs under the gentle command of the trainer. This show horse is free to show beauty and
gracefulness. And
so we are most free when we are in obedience and under the protection of God
who gently commands our actions. When
we surrender our very lives to Christ we find that we are most free because
we are free from sin, spiritual death and destruction. This is the true and eternal freedom. |
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TIME
- is a component of our lives that is constantly being accelerated. Culturally, we live in the All
of us feel the pressures of time and are constantly being pushed to do things
faster and faster. The underlying
assumption is that the faster is definitely the better. So we enter the rat race and miss out on
many good and holy things. We
are perhaps the most impatient generation in the history of the world, and
road rage indicates that we risk our lives and those of others to save a few
seconds as we travel down the roads at breath taking speeds. All
this rush because we buy in to this worldly philosophy that faster is better. |
TIME
– from God’s perspective time is not a problem since He existed before time and
will exist after time. A Christian who
believes in his/her eternal destiny of being with Jesus in heaven does not
have to be overcome by time pressures because we literally have all the time
in this world and the next world. Indeed
the life of Jesus as recorded in sacred scripture shows that Jesus never
hurried off to Mother
Theresa with tens of thousands of the poor to minister to was never in a
rush, rather she reserved the took first hours of
every day for prayer and the Eucharist. |
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CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN VALUES |
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OWNERSHIP
– in our culture we are taught that we own our earthly possessions and have
complete control over how they are to be used. Like money or wealth, an abundance of
possessions is also seen as making the person more valuable or
desirable. As
a result of this we are most unlikely to share with our less fortunate
brothers and sisters, and more likely to build up our own little kingdoms. The
thrust behind this worldly concept of ownership is: “It is mine and I will do
with it what I want”. Note,
that the letter I shows up here frequently and that the middle letter of sin
is the letter I. |
OWNERSHIP
– the discerning Catholic Christian comes to realize that every thing that
he/she owns “came from the hand of God” and that indeed “All is gift freely
given by God”. This person realizes
that he/she is only the steward of his/her possessions, and feels obligated
to use these God given possessions to help their fellow brothers and sisters
in this world. Because
this person has the true perspective of ownership, he does not have that much
of a problem with making himself tithe or give alms. The
Catholic Christian perspective of ownership is characterized by the word stewardship, not ownership. |
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INSTANT
GRATIFICATION – the thrust behind our advertising industry is instant
self-gratification. All the food,
cigarette, and drink commercials indicate that this instant gratification is
what we should always be experiencing. The
whole concept behind fast foods is to quickly gratify our physical hunger. Sexual
gratification is displayed most graphically in many of our movies and
somewhat on television. Here sexual gratification is often done outside the
marriage covenant because nobody wants to wait, after all it feels good and
we should always try to feel good as quickly as possible. |
DELAYED
GRATIFICATION – this is a fundamental concept of the Christian life because
if we follow Jesus and take his yoke upon us then we will constantly be
delaying our passions and desires for instant gratification of the
flesh. The result of this is eternal
life with Jesus and complete and total gratification in heaven. Even
in our secular world, some astute and observant people recognize the great
trap and deception that a life of instantly gratifying ones passions and
desires can lead to. There is a recent
book by .Scott Peck called the Road Less Traveled that encourages people to
follow the path of delayed self gratification, which certainly is not typical
of what is happening in our culture. |
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ABORTION
– our culture tells us that a woman’s right to her body is greater than her
child’s right to live. So we call the baby
a fetus and believe that abortion is not killing because we are merely
performing a procedure to remove and dispose of the fetus. We
justify this by telling our selves that birth control and abortion are okay
because there just isn’t enough food to go around. |
ADOPTION
– is the Catholic Christian alternative to deal with unwanted
pregnancies. This is not only the
Godly and moral correct choice, it is also the
natural choice as it against a mother’s true nature to harm her child. In
Luke’s Gospel, chapter 1 verse 40, we are told that “the baby (John the
Baptist) leapt in her womb. (not fetal tissue). |
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EUTHANASIA
- our culture is beginning to determine when you should die. The
underlying premise behind euthanasia is that if we are in bad pain then we
should relieve ourselves of this pain and consent to physician assisted
suicide. Although
this appears on the surface to be a merciful thing it is, like the rest of
the above cultural values, a deception that will eventually be used to kill
old people because they are an economic burden on society and cannot
contribute to the Gross National Product.
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REDEMPTIVE
SUFFERING – the Catholic church teaches that we should avail ourselves of all
God given and legal and moral medical means to relieve pain. However, there is a value in suffering as Additionally,
it is a true fact of our human nature that many of us fail to properly
prepare for our judgement before God.
This period of suffering has a way of making us very realistic in
dealing with our own mortality. Who
knows how many souls may have turned to God in their end of life sufferings
but were not given the chance because they choose euthanasia, or someone else
choose euthanasia for them.
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