Greetings,
I am a former Orthodox and currently Catholic Christian. I am slightly disillusioned with the Catholic Church currently, although I still attend Mass most weekends. My inability to refrain from certain sins is part of the problem, to be sure. But so is the whole legalistic process of confession and absolution. I am discouraged as I am not able to commune most weekends because of sins that are considered grave, and feel kind of ridiculous always confessing the same sins. Yes, I am a weak and foolish sinner. I already know that. But this cycle of sinning, repenting, and repeating has me very discouraged. I have a family background of addiction and anxiety/depression issues. Staying sin-free is just too hard for me, it seems, and I fall into certain sins again and again. And so now I feel somewhat estranged from the Christ and the Church because I feel I have to earn God's love - or at least the right to commune with our Lord. I am not worthy, and having the Body and Blood withheld from me fills me with a constant sense of unworthiness and guilt.
Does anyone else get in this kind of funk? Any words of encouragement or suggestions? I feel I am on the fence with Catholicism lately mostly because of this. In Orthodoxy, I had a similar problem, but where I converted it was rather normal to commune only occasionally, when one had thoroughly prepared themselves. But this varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. At Mass, everyone communes weekly, it seems, and this exacerbates my feelings of guilt and unworthiness.
Discouraged... Helpful, edifying encouragements or suggestions appreciated. Thanks for reading.
Steve
Hi Steve
I hope you don't mind, but I would like to put the first chapter of a book here. If it interests you, you can find it under the subject title 'Grace' in the Pentecostal/assemblies of God forum under Christian communities:
A Changed man
As I prepared to write this book, I wondered what I could say that would grab readers’ attention on the first page before they mistakenly discarded the book as not relevant to their lives. I immediately thought of a person I read about who lived a long time ago. It is my hope that what I am about to tell you will persuade you to read more of the wonderful Gospel of Grace that changed his life.
The man I mention was extremely committed to living a life pleasing to God – of that there can be no doubt. He was passionate to live as God required according to His good and holy laws. The harder he tried to live a good life for God, however, the more he failed. In fact, he became a worse sinner and concluded the good and holy laws of God that were supposed to give him life instead brought him to death, and he felt condemned by them. Or to put it another way, he couldn’t live a good enough life for God. Just think of all the guilt and shame he must have lived with. I think you’d agree the burden he carried must have been very great.
I wonder if anyone reading this has ever felt that way. Or perhaps you would never even dream of going to a church because you know you can’t live the life a Christian is supposed to live. So why bother trying, right? Is your life full of trouble? Have you made a mess of your life and feel you have no hope? Have you tried to be a Christian but given up because you feel it is hopeless because – like the man I mentioned – you simply couldn’t live as God wants you to live? Do you go to church but know in your heart that you cannot live up to the image you feel forced to show others? Do you believe they wouldn’t want to know you if they understood the real you beneath the skin?
I am sure that is just how the man I have been talking about felt. I know he considered himself the worst of sinners. I wonder how many of you are crushed beneath impossible burdens and carry tremendous guilt and shame because of the shortcomings in your own life, just like the man I am describing must have done. Yet he discovered something that changed his life – a pearl of great price, you could say – the Gospel of Grace, which completely changed him. In fact, he became probably the most famous Christian who ever lived and wrote nearly half the books of the New Testament. I am sure you now understand that I am speaking of the Apostle Paul.
Now I wonder, if the Gospel could change him that much, why couldn’t it change you? He said he was the worst of sinners; did he lie? If he did, the Bible itself, or at least nearly half the books in the New Testament, must be called into question because we couldn’t trust what Paul declared to be the truth in them, could we? So, no, he didn’t lie; he meant what he said. So I must repeat: if the Gospel could change the worst of sinners, surely there must be hope for all of us – including you.
You might be saying to yourself something like, “Well, that was then; God wouldn’t do the same now. In those days, many great miracles took place, but you don’t see things like that happening today.” God does not change, however. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He cannot change because He is not like us. We can change our behaviour if we have a bad night’s sleep. We can change if our boss or a family member upsets us. Even the seasons can alter our temperament as the summer changes to autumn and the winter nights start to close in, for we are fickle folk at times – aren’t we? God, however, is the one sure constant presence in our universe, so if that thought troubles you, be assured it should not.
Maybe you consider your own particular imperfections to be worse than Paul’s or anyone else’s. I think that’s unlikely. After all, before Paul became a Christian he persecuted Christians, ordering families thrown into prison for their faith. Some may have even been killed because of his actions. Have you done such a thing? When the first Christian martyr was stoned to death, Paul stood by in approval of the actions of those who hurled the stones that ended that man’s life. Have you been guilty of such a thing? If not, you cannot say that God cannot change you, too. If that Gospel could change Paul then, as it did, it can change you today just the same. God is constant, and He will always respond to anyone who comes to Him through the truth Paul discovered and preached.
So I would like to spend just a little time talking about a Gospel that changed the worst of sinners into the greatest preacher of Grace this world has ever known. I will try to be as brief as possible, in case you do not have a lot of time for reading. I hope you do, though, because this is a Gospel full of power that sets people free from the worst and most impossible situations life can throw at them. It is a Gospel that takes away all your guilt and shame and stops sin from being your master. It is a Gospel that means you – yes, you – can change and live as God wants you to, not by striving endlessly to live a good enough life by your own efforts, oh no! But by a very different method – the method that changed Paul.
