I was in a chapel meditating on the second reading, when I discovered something fascinating. Now what is important to note is that I have read this passage countless times. So, it is interesting to notice something different that I had never seen before: St. Paul calls us to have the attitude that is Christ’s and then describes it. The first thing he says is that Jesus, although divine did not see equality with God something to be grasped at. He then adds that Jesus humbled himself submitting himself to obedience to the Father in becoming one of us.

That line about not seeing equality with God something to be grasped at is something that we could spend a lot of time in meditation. The reason is that this brings us right back to the early pages of Genesis. If you remember, the first temptation is to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, because eating it would make us like gods. The first temptation was to see equality with God something to be grasped at and it is this temptation that Jesus renounces immediately.

So, if we are to maintain an attitude like that of Christ, then we must seek to be the human God created us to be, not the god we cannot be.

We need to look at what this means.

In the late part of the 19th century the man whose philosophies would dominate the twentieth century and bring forth great destruction as well, made his most famous statement. He said, “God is dead” This was Friedrich Nietzsche. In his philosophy he basically stated that since God is dead, we are now gods. He called us to remake morality as we see fit and I think our race has followed his ideas pretty closely even more so in the twenty first century. Yet, his philosophy is based on two premises: first that there is no longer any god. Second, that we have earned the right to become the gods that we followed earlier with all the rights and responsibilities.

Contrast that with the words of St. Paul, this temptation so prevalent in the world since the days of Friedrich Nietzsche is exactly the same temptation that the devil used with Eve and is the same temptation that Jesus rejects. Therefore, as Christians, Paul is asking us to make a choice, to follow Christ or to follow the world, but if we are going to be Christlike we cannot do both.

Second, notice something else: the key element here is not morality but obedience to the Father. So, it is important that we do not see morality as the end all and be all of our relationship with God.  It is obedience to the father which includes morality but it is not all inclusive. Nietzsche, on the other hand, defined everything in terms of morality and called for a new morality based on our status as the new gods of the world, because according to him, God is dead.

You cannot have obedience without relationship, so on one hand we define our morality based on the end of a relationship, on the other our morality is defined based on this relationship continuing. Therefore, not only are we called to imitate Christ, but we cannot do it, if we are not first in daily relationship with Him. we must seek to be the human God created us to be, not the god we cannot be.

These then are the defining moments of the Christian, to subject ourselves to His authority, in obedience to the Father through him, that we may experience the fullness of our humanity by being glorified in Him in eternal life.

This puts us at odds with those who reject gods in the name of their own alleged divinity, who will define their reality on their terms and who will define their morality on their terms. This week a group of atheists in trying to silence the voice of faith ripped up the bible on a beach in California. We all know what would happen if they did that to the scripture of another religion, but obviously this was considered freedom of speech, which it is and they in the interest of silencing Christianity acted in this way. This is exactly what Nietzsche spawned, the idea that there is no God, we are gods and we make our own rules.

Meanwhile, the Pope reminded people the danger of that philosophy when the spoke about the horrors of the NAZI regime in Germany this week. Hitler embodied the ideas of Nietzsche as did to a lesser degree Jim Morrison. They always lead to total destruction because we are not gods, we are human. The more we try to be what we are not, the more destructing we will cause.

If we walk down the same path, we too will be agents of great destruction.

However, if we are to have the attitude of Christ, we need to be center our lives on Him as he centered His life on the Father. This means our marriages must be not only Christ-centered but in submission to Him. Our work ethic must be not only Christ centered but in submission to Him. Our parishes, our priests, bishops, our church. This is what Paul called us to do. This puts us at odds with the We Are Now Gods crowd, but so be it, there is no other way. This is not only the way to life, but to abandon it is to walk a path down to our own destruction bringing others with us.

Let us make the choice to which St. Paul calls us: Let us seek to be the human God created us to be, not the god we cannot be.

God Bless You,

Father Robert J Carr

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