Thursday, August 13, 2015

A healthy superiority complex

WE, of course, should be simple and humble, meek and with
fondness to pass unnoticed. We are in fact told, if we care to follow
Christ, to deny ourselves and carry the cross. We should not seek
self-assertion and self-glorification.

            As St. Paul would put it: “We have become, and are now,
the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things.” (1 Cor 4,13)
That’s how we have to look at ourselves if we want to be true to
Christ. We may just be a bundle of ciphers in the many departments of
life, but if we have Christ before all them, the more zeroes we have,
the greater we would become in dignity and stature.

            Yet, despite all these Christian indications, we have to
learn to be bold to know the truth, as well as to spread it as widely
and as persistently as possible, and especially to defend it, when
attacked, which seems to be the trend these days, and when charity
demands we do.

            In this, we should not be afraid and hesitating, but
rather willing to take on the challenge, together with all
inconveniences or sufferings that may be involved, convinced that such
sufferings would be a suffering with Christ and in Christ. Besides,
Christ clearly told us to be as clever as serpents while remaining as
innocent as doves.

            True, we may be the refuse and the offscouring of the
world, but we have the truth from God, and we have the duty to
proclaim, spread and defend it. We have to learn to carry out that
duty always with charity that has its own elegance and eloquence,
naturalness and forcefulness.

            This boldness and fearlessness with and in Christ is the
healthy superiority complex we are talking about here. And this is no
gratuitous claim since there’s solid basis for this. First of all,
because God always gives us the grace for this purpose and he gives it
to us in abundance.

            In this, St. Paul reassures us: “God is able to provide
you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have
enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good
work.” (2 Cor 9,8)

            The life and missionary work of St. Paul himself lend
credence to these words. We need to engrave this Pauline assurance
into our mind and hearts, making it a guiding conviction in our
thoughts, words and deeds. If we have to have an attitude, I believe
this has to be it.

            Especially these days when we are faced with many
hot-button issues that deftly mix truths and lies, good and evil, not
to mention, bear an openly hostile attitude toward the Christian
faith, we need men and women who can expose and explode the many
subtle sophistries involved in the arguments.

            I was just amazed that in a recent interview of a US
presidential candidate, for example, the interviewer had the temerity
to tell the candidate, a Catholic who tried to be consistent with his
faith, that he should go beyond his faith and stick to what science
would indicate with respect to when human life begins.

            I was happy to learn that the candidate told his
interviewer that he makes his faith the basis of his politics and
everything else in his life, and that science has borne out his
belief. That is the boldness that is needed these days.

            After all, if we would really analyze the whole argument,
it is the faith that has the first and last word of what is real and
not real, what is true and false, what is good and evil, moral and
immoral.

            It’s not our man-made sciences, though they can obviously
reinforce the faith and help us to discover more things about our
faith. Our sciences can only be the handmaid of our faith, not the
other way around.

            Today’s generation is what may be described by Christ
himself as a “perverse generation,” sunk in a lot of rationalized
errors and immoralities that are sustained by cleverly crafted
ideologies, sanitized soundbites and blinding and deafening rhetoric,
plus a lot of money and political clout.

            We need leaders and men and women who have that healthy
superiority complex to show and convey the truth in season and out of
season, who can drown evil with an abundance of good, without being
cowed by the tremendous difficulties, resistance, insults and mockery.

            If we pray, offer sacrifices, study our doctrine well,
develop the virtues, have recourse to the sacraments, wage interior
struggle, etc., we can have this healthy superiority complex so much
needed these days.


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