Again, “We adore God Who is love, Who in Jesus Christ gave Himself for us, Who offered Himself on the Cross to expiate our sins, and through the power of this love, rose from the dead and lives in His Church. We have no God other than Him.”(Pope Francis, 6/21/14)
For the follower of Jesus eternal life is worth “loving as He loves” for, worth loving enemies for, worth suffering for, even worth dying for. But, for the follower of Jesus to say, “I’ll kill for eternal life,” makes no sense at all. It is tantamount to saying; “I’ll shoot my way into heaven! I’ll slaughter those whom God infinitely loves as the Way to becoming one with ‘the God who is love!’”
Without intending to demean any person and without intending to engage in hyperbole, it must be said that the Way of the Christian Just Warist is spiritually and morally, logically and theologically nothing other than ludicrous. And, for the Christian to say he or she can reach the degree of moral certainty necessary for him or her to choose the Way of the Christian Just Warist over Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies is patently disingenuous.
Jesus has no need for the Way of the Just Warist, the Church has no need for it and the Christian has no need for it. Everything for which the Christian has been given the gift of existence, and everything for which he or she has been given the gift of faith can be totally accomplished without anything that the Way of the Christian Just Warist has to offer. All that is needed for salvation is accomplished exclusively by Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of all, which Way is accessible to all who desire to live according to it. As noted in FAST FOOD Helpings 9 and 10,“Jesus placed his achievements within the reach of all men. He demands nothing that is not within the reach of every man of every age. The deliverance of man is not to be accomplished by an act, which can be shared by only a few.”
In his book, Source, Rev. John L. McKenzie summarizes what is being said in this FAST FOOD Helping: “Jesus was a practical person in the sense that he proposed a program which anyone could follow. The teaching of Jesus, as reported in the Gospels, is simple and without subtlety; it is addressed to the mental age of 12 years (as I’m told most television programs are addressed). The moral instructions of Jesus, as I have said before, are not hard to understand; they are just hard to do. We have devoted our intellectual subtlety to evading the words of Jesus, or to convincing ourselves that doing something else is just as good and a lot more practical.”
So now, answer truthfully: “How does Jesus save?” “How important is the eternal salvation of yourself, your loved ones and all human beings to you?”
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy (To be continued)
