I had lunch with a colleague the other day and we talk about various things but we soon spoke about the Christian faith.
He is to marry a Catholic girl but he is not converting to the Catholic faith. He told me about his younger days when he was threatened with hell if he did not believe in Jesus and it repelled him. I don't blame him. He said he will not be converting now just because he is getting married as it would mean nothing to him at all. But he also said that whilst his relatives did threaten him, he believes there is a God and that he is not an atheist. Just that he does not have a need for God, for now.
I have to admit I did not know where to go on from there without having to go into a theological discourse on original sin. How else can one address an issue of contentment and needlessness for God without saying that we are sinners in the first place and are in fact in need of him? I did think about it but I felt it was not the right time to do so and I refrained myself.
He was confident that he did not need God. He had friends who converted after something had happened to them but as for him, he is good, for now. So there is no need. As for hell, he believes simply that when we die, we'll just expire, with no further extension of life, or afterlife for that matter.
We live in a consumer-based society. Everything works on a basis of needs. That mindset has permeated into every facet of our lives and thought.
What does it mean by not being in need? Contentment and hence a needlessness for God? But if we only go to God when we have a need for him, what do we make of him? Who are we to take on that premise and attitude?
Yes, God touches our lives, especially when we most need it but what about when we are good and well in our ways, we have no need for him? We should not and cannot think and live that way. It is God who made us in the first place and we belong to him whether we are in need or not. We have rejected him and that is our original sin. We need to return to him. Not because we are in need -- though we are, in our frailty -- but because he first loved us.
pearlie
