What is the best thing about long plane trips? You know. Besides cramped seats, crying babies, lines to use the restroom and rubber chicken dinners. It is the movies of course!! I mean, how cool is it to sit in your seat on a flight, stare straight ahead into the seat back in front of you and watch movies for 8 hours straight?! Who needs to sleep when you have an endless list of movies to scroll through. And how many of you when sitting next to your spouse try to watch the same movie and synch them so that you are watching the same parts as each other at the same time? Come on. Admit it. Wait, maybe it is just Elise and I who do that.
The other cool thing about this is that you can watch movies that you would never likely actually spend money to watch in a theater. I know I say to myself, “self…It’s free…let’s give it a shot”. And so it was this past week as we were flying back from Senegal. The flight from Dakar to DC was over 9 hours long. So what is the big deal if I wasted 2 hours watching the Christmas flick, “Spirited” I had never heard of this film before. But I was in the Christmas movie mood. And any movie that did not resemble How the Grinch Stole Christmas was an automatic winner in my book. For those of you, like me, who had never heard of Spirited, it is a take off on “A Christmas Carol” and it stars Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell in a, get this now, a MUSICAL. Yup. Ryan and Will do several over the top song and dance numbers. And…I am shocked that I am saying this…it kinda works. Ferrell plays a Scrooge like character whose mission, after himself being saved from Humbug, is to turn evil people to good. Ryan Reynolds plays an “incurable”. Someone who cannot be saved. And Ferrell is determined to prove everyone wrong.
One of the culminating numbers is a song called “Do A Little Good”. It is Reynolds revelation that we don’t have to always be like saints. We fail at times. As he says, sometimes we take two steps forward and there are days when we take one step back. But the key is are we trying to “do a little good”. Here is that number from the movie:
In today’s first reading from 1 John, the apostle tells us:
Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness,
for sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins,
and in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins;
no one who sins has seen him or known him.
So if you commit sin, you are done…right? You cannot know God if you commit sin. So we are told to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. So if we slip up, God is very disappointed with us and turns His back on us. Right? Wrong. We are not told that we must imitate God’s sinless nature. No one can do that. Well, except for Jesus. But we are not the Messiah are we? No, we are imperfect people in need of a Savior. What we are to imitate is God’s love for His people. His sacrifice for each other and His forgiveness and mercy. Jesus gave us the two great commandments. The second being to love your neighbor as yourself. To sacrifice and to forgive your fellow man. This is what “Do a Little Good” is getting at.
But what Will and Ryan are missing is the first great commandment. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind“ (Matthew 22:37-38). This led me, when considering how to approach this reflection, to the concepts of faith and works. This is an age old discussion between Catholics and Protestants. With Protestants claiming that we are saved by faith alone. Once saved…always saved. While as Catholics we believe that we are saved by faith, which is offered to us by God’s grace. But the result of that faith are works to implement God’s plan for the world. It is a collaborative process between God and us to be the hands and feet of God here on earth. Famously, St James says in Chapter 2 of his letter that “faith without works is dead”. To say to a homeless person, “may God be with you” but then not taking concrete steps to aid the person. It is a hollow faith.
But what are works without faith? What is wrong with being a good hearted atheist? And are there really many good people in hell? For a Christian a primary focus on works not centered on our faith in God can, over time, result in those works becoming an obligation. What starts out as helping others as joy in serving Christ, can become a ritual. A means of checking off a box to gain God’s approval. It is tantamount to acting according to the Law as many Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes were guilty of in Jesus’ time. As Catholics we can fall into the same trap where we focus on saying so many Rosaries or Novenas. Or working in our ministries as a means of gaining approval and admiration from others. Not that these things are bad. It is just a question of where does the motivation for our actions stem from? To please man or to please God and do His works in the world. James says again in Chapter 2: “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” AND “works without faith are dead.”.
And what about atheists? Does one have to believe in God in order to do good works? It is clear that, for an atheist, the goal of achieving eternal salvation is not present. So, this argument of whether faith or works is responsible for getting one to heaven is mute. But here is the issue with good works and being atheist. What constitutes “good”? By what standard is an action seen as good? What was good a century ago may not be today. Heck, what was good last week may not be seen as good today. Our moral compass, without faith, has no sense of true north. The sense of right and wrong can change based on culture, society and fads. But faith in God and His teachings, revealed through Jesus, is unchanging and, therefore, what we call good works is unchanging. Is it wrong to assist someone in getting an abortion? It was before Roe v Wade but not so much for many people now. But our faith tells us otherwise. It has always been wrong. What about assisting or advising a minor in getting a sex change operation? Or assisted suicide? Without the anchor and foundation that comes from faith, our determination of what is good can blow with the winds of societal pressure.
So, yes, faith without works is dead. A hollow promise to those in need. But works without faith can become a chore or obligation and loses its direction if not grounded in the will of God. So, go ahead and “do a little good” but don’t forget who we are ultimately doing good for.
