![\"Image](\"https:\/\/scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net\/v\/t1.0-9\/16998135_10158331263585080_1452320832406784675_n.jpg?oh=cee961bdc12d336d1f3b241d528c5958&oe=593FF258\")
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This particular cartoon sparked an interesting conversation that I thought might be fun to post here as a sample of a reasonable conversation between an atheist and a bunch of Catholics.<\/p>\n
Andy: Liz, you can get ashes without being Catholic, btw.<\/span><\/p>\n Me: Andy\u2019s right. Pop up to St. Patrick\u2019s and get your ashes free of charge.<\/span><\/p>\n Liz: I feel like that\u2019s appropriation on my part, if that makes sense? I also didn\u2019t give anything up. Just sat around atheisting.<\/span><\/p>\n Beth: It\u2019s not. Or anyway, it doesn\u2019t have to be. Wash off the ashes of they make you uncomfortable. It\u2019s a symbol.<\/span><\/p>\n You can give something up too, if you want. I don\u2019t see why being an atheist precludes that. It changes it, obviously, but not entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n During Lent we focus on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. All appropriate year-round. The way I think of it (and I\u2019ve never seen this written, so it\u2019s possible it\u2019s just me) is like this: prayer is communication with God. Fasting with self. Almsgiving with the community. In a Christian frame, all three are aspects of the same, right? All three are directed toward God, but the focus is different.<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway. If you want to do this thing with your friends, I don\u2019t see why you can\u2019t as an atheist. It could be very meaningful. Fasting is like tuning. It\u2019s a decision to do something difficult which helps tune your self. I tune toward God; you could tune toward being more present and loving. (I\u2019d argue similarity) Or whatever makes sense to you.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not pushing. But if something in you is pulling you toward this, why not? Lots of faiths practice fasting and I don\u2019t see why atheists shouldn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n Me: Actually, the point is not so much giving stuff up as anticipating getting something good from God. Thing is, God is miuch more interested in people who do his will than in people who talk about it. So if you live in obedience to God (even if you feel silly about it) the odds are actually pretty good he will reward you with a sign of his Presence anyway. You just need to be willing to grant \u201cI think that may have been Him\u201d when it comes. And it will typically come in some way clear only to you: what the Jews called a \u201cstill, small voice\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Beth: Mark, I disagree. Not entirely, obviously. I\u2019d leave it alone if you hadn\u2019t set your comment up as a counterpoint. The only real piece I take issue with is, \u201cActually the point is not\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I was thinking about what I am doing when I\u2019m fasting and whether, if an atheist were to do it, we\u2019d be doing the same thing in any real way.<\/span><\/p>\n I think the answer is yes, with minimal qualification.<\/span><\/p>\n Fasting is certainly different things to different people. For me, the discipline is the important thing.<\/span><\/p>\n Theologians talk about reasons to fast. Reward might be on the list, but it\u2019s a list. Discipline, greater than normal but with an end point, for me is like exercising. It\u2019s hard, but generally positive. It might hurt. I might screw it up. The end in sight is an important piece, psychologically. When I\u2019ve done this spiritual boot camp style work out, I will be stronger. That\u2019s a reason.<\/span><\/p>\n Another is that fasting makes you more acutely aware of dependency. Being hungry. Wanting. Feeling these pains can make you aware. Grateful.<\/span><\/p>\n Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, Muslims\u2026 Most if not all religions have fasting built into their practices in some way. There\u2019s something fundamentally human about it. Controlled or controlling desire. We can talk about Adam eating the apple, thus breaking a fast, and understand the essential link between fasting and sin. That\u2019s a reasonable way to think about fasting.<\/span><\/p>\n Another, not wholly different, is to think of it as flexing weak but essential muscles.<\/span><\/p>\n Me: Beth I don\u2019t think we are disagreeing. Discipline, strength and gratitude are all rewards. I\u2019m not talking about things extrinsic to the practices of Lent, as though God gives brownie points. In the Christian tradition, the punishment for sin is the sin itself in fruition. The reward of virtue is the virtue itself in fruition. There are, to be sure, super added rewards as well sometimes (so we are promised, not merely happy spirits in heaven, but the resurrection of the body as well as a new heaven and a new earth, none of which are the fruits of our virtue). There are reward that are proper to virtue (as you just noted). A general who received victory is receiving the reward proper to his discipline. The man who marries for money is not getting a proper reward for his sin, the lover who marries for love is.<\/span><\/p>\n Liz<\/span>: Beth \u201cDuring Lent we focus on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. All appropriate year-round. The way I think of it (and I\u2019ve never seen this written, so it\u2019s possible it\u2019s just me) is like this: prayer is communication with God. Fasting with self. Almsgiving with the community. In a Christian frame, all three are aspects of the same, right? All three are directed toward God, but the focus is different.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s cool. I like stuff in 3s. What you call \u201cGod\u201d, I translate that as the universe and everything that has existed and will exist. I learned this great tip from a Vonnegut book. Whenever you notice something nice, no matter how seemingly small, take the time to say, \u201cif this isn\u2019t nice, I don\u2019t know WHAT is!\u201d. (I sincerely believe I am a happier person because of this habit.)<\/span><\/p>\n As for fasting, I could get away with it when I was in a different industry. Now, I have to be mentally sharp at all times. I do keep to a strict, low carb, hi fat diet. Very little meat, if any.<\/span><\/p>\n I love the almsgiving part. We\u2019re not supposed to be isolated, we\u2019re supposed to be all in this together.<\/span><\/p>\n I figured Lent was like some reminder\/initiative to not just do these things for the allotted time, but that time span is there to convert the new actions into habits. So far, just swapping \u201cGod\u201d with my long phrase, and I\u2019m still nodding my head in agreement.<\/span><\/p>\n Mark \u201cSo if you live in obedience to God (even if you feel silly about it) the odds are actually pretty good he will reward you with a sign of his Presence anyway.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m pretty slow IRL and am kinda stereotypical programmer in the social awkwardness and missed cues. I have weird reasons for believing people are supposed to be \u201cgood\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n 1. Life\u2019s not fair<\/span> I\u2019m missing other factors, but they are all intertwined. Life isn\u2019t fair. I feel that many good people do not get rewarded or credited or relief. But we can learn and build things to try to make things better. Anything can happen to anyone at anytime. You don\u2019t know how different someone might be had they not experienced x, y, and z. But there\u2019s always people putting themselves out there. And you never know who that might inspire, and maybe cascade into great things. Yeah, the odds are against us individually, but if we all tried, then shit\u2026 Star Trek level of humanity. \ud83d\ude00<\/span><\/p>\n Me:\u00a0Liz, \u00a0The Catholic Tradition (borrowing from the great Jewish insight) agrees about the eternal self-existence of God (summed up in the profound Name \u201cI AM\u201d), but distinguishes between Creator and creature (i.e. the universe). Exactly what creatures do not do is last forever. Even the universe has a beginning and is radically contingent. So while creatures have their own intrinsic potencies and potentials, they always wind down (entropy). Eventually, it all ends in heat death. Nothing gold can stay. Only what is rooted in the I AM and what the I AM pours his life into has life. That said, one doorway into the Life is precisely gratitude. Vonnegut\u2019s point is well taken. Chesterton saw the same thing: that thanksgiving was a lifeline to Life. It suffuses everything he wrote. He was a man who came within inches of despair and suicide at one point in his life and thread he followed out of the Pit was the realization that he was grateful and the pursuit of the question \u201cWho am I grateful to?\u201d is what led him at last to God.<\/span><\/p>\n Re: fasting. The idea, of course, is not primarily about dieting etc. but about, as Paul put it, \u201coffering your body a living sacrifice\u201d. Sacrifice always involves a real good. So it\u2019s not about despising yourself or pleasure as evil, but about presenting a real good to God for the sake of another. In the Catholic tradition, Jesus offered the greatest thing that could be offered\u2013his own divine and human life\u2013not in contempt of it but for the sake of love. He \u201chanded himself over\u201d to us and let us do what we would with him. The love was all on his side. The violence was all our choice. And in the mystery of this exchange, he swallowed up our violence and death and returned only love and life in exchange at Easter. Fasting is about our attempt to conform to that self-offering now in the hope that God will bring out love and life from it in our lives too.<\/span><\/p>\n You get the almsgiving part. \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n Your take on goodness is interesting and you get a lot there too, it seems to me:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. Life\u2019s not fair<\/span> 2. Everything is random<\/span> 2 and 3 seem to be in contradiction. Random seems to be word that ultimately means \u201cWe don\u2019t understand the underlying order\u201d not \u201cThere is no underlying order.\u201d St. Thomas would certainly affirm that \u201cemergent properties\u201d exist in created things and that God has invested creation with a certain self-organizing power. Augustine used the word \u201cevolvere\u201d (unroll) to describe how creation happens. Neither he nor Thomas thought that meant that God could not also, when he chose, act upon creation in ways we would describe as \u201cmiraculous\u201d. But for the most part the assumption of both was that the picture was of God making creatures in whom potencies existed and \u201cunrolled\u201d over time rather than of \u201cdead matter\u201d that God had to continually dink around with in order to whomp up new creatures.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. There\u2019s enough beauty and good that\u2019s worth the suffering<\/span><\/p>\n St. Paul says substantially the same thing, except the beauty is, for him, the life of the world to come, already apprehended in sign and sacrament in the present life.<\/span><\/p>\n 5. We only got this one chance and are capable of great feats<\/span><\/p>\n The Christian tradition is close to you on this, except that the \u201cone chance\u201d is not \u201cthis life and then its oblivion\u201d but \u201cthis life and then the Judgment\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She\u2019s an atheist who has found herself of late surprised to discover a number of Catholics that she, well, likes. We\u2019ve been chatting back and forth about all sorts of stuff over the past few months and natural sense of fairness (as well as curiosity) has compelled her to get to know this gaggle of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[361,8,650],"class_list":["post-99420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lent","tag-mailbag","tag-na"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n 2. Everything is random<\/span>
\n 3. Order can naturally evolve from seeming chaos<\/span>
\n 4. There\u2019s enough beauty and good that\u2019s worth the suffering<\/span>
\n 5. We only got this one chance and are capable of great feats<\/span><\/p>\n
\nA religion that begins with the kangaroo trial and brutal execution of the most innocent person who ever lived underscores this observation pretty effectively. And yet, the question remains, how is it that we have a sense\u2013and a demand\u2013that life be fair? The Tradition says, \u201cBecause God is just and we are made in his image and our hearts demand justice.\u201d The mystery, of course, is why a God of justice lets grave evil happens and his reply is not so much an \u201canswer\u201d as simply the mystery of himself, nailed to a cross and answering still with love and life that makes even our choice to do evil the slave of his will to do still greater good.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n 3. Order can naturally evolve from seeming chaos<\/span><\/p>\n