Faith--Why Have It?

Bumper sticker spied in a parking lot at a local Best Buy: "Militant Agnostic . . . I don't know and you don't know either."

Your faith can be shaken daily, it's true. Just this past week there was the revelation of a recently discovered manuscript created in the biblical era that claimed Jesus asked Judas to betray him. Then there was the recently published medical study on recovering heart patients that found no recuperative benefits to prayer.

It's probably good that as we enter the most holy week of the Christian calendar we ask ourselves again what it means to have faith. And what it means to be a Christian.

I was raised a Catholic and raised my family as Catholics. But we're probably what the pundits will call liberal or Democrat style Catholics. We don't attend mass every Sunday.

Oh, we try to attend church often. I do like our new priest, a young always smiling gentleman with a deep baritone voice. His sermons bring to life the people of the Bible as if he knew them personally.

Yet I sometimes see what is done in the name of God and I want no part of that. The Ann Arbor News this past weekend carried a news article about a father who confronted and jostled an anti-abortion protestor--a candidate for the priesthood--who held a large sign of a mangled, aborted fetus towards him and his children.

I have seen the signs myself. They're ugly and offensive, and meant to be both. Protesters display them to motorists driving through the heart of nearby downtown Ypsilanti, the location of an abortion clinic. I'm not a fan of abortion, but I don't think it should be made illegal either. That stance probably puts me at odds with my church.

Then I see violence in the Middle East. Suicide bombers killing tens and hundreds in the name of their religious sect, seeking to become martyrs to their faith. They hope to reap some rich reward from God in the hereafter.

Why is it that religion and the church's teachings so often have us at odds with eachother. Anyone remember the song lyrics to the song "Brotherhood Week" composed by humorist Tom Lehrer decades ago?

The Protestants Hate The Catholics
The Catholics Hate The Protestants
The Moslems Hate The Hindus
And Everybody Hates the Jews

Maybe what might make things better is for people to put less faith in what God can do for them here and in the hereafter, and put more faith in what they themselves can do for their fellow man and woman now. I think that's what God would want.