What is your Narrative of Jesus?

Seeing the Church and Christ as the Enemy

In the beginning, the evil one was able to convince Eve that God was: (1) a moralizing tyrant, (2) liar, and (3) in competition with our own good. These three lies summarize the dialogue between Eve who permitted her heart and mind to internalize such lies through “listening.” That term, “listening” is more than audible hearing, but with it comes a connation of surrender, docility, and bending. In her case, she bent her own mind to the narrative of the Enemy, who chose to look at God as the “enemy.”

It may happen more often than we realize, but it does occur where the people we do not trust results from us listening to the narrative of others. This is one of the reasons why gossip is a spiritual terrorism that genuinely recks communities, families and relationships. Where there is no trust, there is no relationship; and where the narrative has been apprehended falsely as untrustworthy, the diabolical mind of the enemy reigns.

I’ve been thinking about this for a number of years, as a type of phenomenon that I as a sinner am guilty of, but often more aware of it, where it negatively affects myself or those I care about. When a person’s reputation is poisoned, you often have to simply dig a new well instead of cleaning out the old one. Its a tough thing, and its why “murder” is a good term for ruining a person’s good-name. As guilty as we all are at this, its important for us to consider the mechanisms that bring it about so we won’t be caught off-guard by it, as a temptation. However, I’d like to particularly apply this logic to our relationship with God, and discuss how it might happen.

1. Entering into the Narrative of Satan

Good people, like St. Peter were known to think in a devilish way, and Christ rebuked their thoughts. So, we have to be careful when suggesting that those who adopt a diabolical attitude understand that it isn’t meant to be internalized as a demoralizing attack or an unfair demonization. We need to approach this error humbly, and admit ourselves, along with the saints, that this happens to all of us. That said, lets examine a brief verse from the Gospel of Luke:

“Ah! Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” (Luke 4: 34)

The automatic statement from the enemy is, “Have you come to destroy us?” which is worth not merely glossing over. We might think, “Well yes, Jesus came to destroy the kingdom of demons.” But is that what the this pure, yet fallen intellect (demon) said? No. He asked if God came to “destroy us.” That does not sound much different than what Eve came to believe about God in the garden. The narrative here about God is that He is not good, and wants to destroy our happiness, and freedom.

He then lies and says, “I know who you are…” This statement is a half-truth. The demon has internalized a narrative that God is the “bad guy” so we cannot say the demon genuinely knows God. Something has obstructed this very intelligent beings intellect to the point of understanding God’s infinite perfection, love and goodness as something worthy a type of unholy fear.

2. Cultural Application: Sexual Relativism

Listening to news reporters inserting their own bias into their questions, “Why are you okay with people being hated” immediately draws my attention to Luke 4:34, where a narrative has been adopted. People have been trained to internalize the Church’s teaching around sexuality to be something that leads to a type of inordinate shame, and then suicide. In other words, “Your church’s (Christ’s) teaching leads to our destruction” says the culture.

This is difficult to break through for a few reasons. First, if a person has been trained to the point of their own automatic thinking interprets the Church’s teaching to mean this, then giving them a basic reading of it will not really suffice. Where a person genuinely has come to believe that we are seeking their destruction (whether its a false narrative or not), it becomes a habitual thought, which taints everything we say and do. This is why propaganda is dangerous, because not only does it falsify facts, but trains interpretation. Furthermore, those who have bought into it become the free espousers of that false narrative, having come to genuinely believe it themselves. St. Thomas Aquinas says that the Devil is the principle deceiver, which means our enemy here is the lies that originate in his mind. And even those who became saints, can be guilty of this and speaking out loud, “Lord forbid it.”

3. Practically Addressing this Narrative

False narratives, whatever they might involve, are difficult to break through. In many cases the social construct around the narrative we have about various religious, minorities, and groups can be more authoritative than our actual experiences. The reason for this, is due to the fact that our habitual, speculative-thinking, doesn’t always change unless we’ve taken time to meditate and internalize our own experiences. For instance, a person can experience the love of several Christians and yet still mock them in a group of like-minded people. In that environment the false narrative eclipses the experience, because making a connection between their Christianity and their love hasn’t been internalized.

Nonetheless, what this teaches us is that experience of love is the phenomenon that needs to occur as a foundation to internalizing in part, the view that neither God, nor the Church seek to destroy anyone. Rather, the experience of being loved as an unrepeatable person, who is so entirely unique and special in God’s eyes is what we are called to witness to. This doesn’t occur rationalistically or merely theoretically. People do not learn what friendship is by reading a book, because friendships involve actual relationships and the “communion of subjects” not the mere digesting of objective principles around friendship. These certainly help, and are essential, but its in love that one comes to know the subject in a way that our minds, and external acts cannot accomplish.

4. Words, Deeds, and Something More Practical

Often we are mired by the debate about the importance of words vs. deeds. In reality these debates are superficial because we are debating over something that is external. We’ve all had the experience of someone who said something nice, yet their speech, while being like honey was actually vindictive and manipulative. Or we’ve encountered those who wear the sheep’s-clothing of charity, but in reality are ravenous wolves virtue signaling to protect themselves from the judgment of others, to “get ahead” of accusations, or simply wanting to be worshipped by others as “a good person.”

So what will get to the core? Pope St. Paul VI said that if a teacher was to be effective it wouldn’t be by what he/she taught, but by a witness. Some have erroneously interpreted that to mean by their “action.” And in fact, it is partly true. But the action is both an interior one and an exterior one. The interior act, where the Christians genuinely loves the other person as a person, in a manner that is objectively ordered to their own real good, this is where we offer others the phenomenon of a love that contradicts the false narrative. The term we use for this is “witness.”

A witness is not about doing, or saying, its about a type of integrity integrated into the doing and saying. Where we do not lie, but behave according to a good interior disposition of love, others can experience Christ through us. This means that loving those who have come to believe a false narrative about Christ in part depends on whether or not our heart and mind and will is cooperating with the very subjectivity or interiority of Christ’s Truth.

5. Counterfeit Christ

While we might say that Christ is loving, we often begin to define Jesus’ truth by our own prejudices about what we think love “ought to be.” Thus, many will create a dichotomy between the Church’s teaching and Christ’s because they would prefer to suggest the Church’s teaching is unloving and the “real Christ would never say that.” Thus, what we encounter here, amongst several errors, is an objectively false narrative, and the creation of a false-Christ.

This Christ does not insist on “doing this in remembrance of me.” Nor does this Jesus “judge.” Nor does this Christ condemn fornication, divorce, sexual relativism, receiving the Eucharist while in mortal sin, and the list continues (today). Thus the dichotomy now not only exists between the Church and Christ, but also the only other reference point to the real Christ.

What this reveals, however, is that attached to these subjects is a genuine disconnect between the demand of love in mandating full active participation in mass. It does not see the absence of love in fornication, divorce, sexual relativism, receiving the Eucharist in mortal sin, et cetera. People may come to a place where they genuinely believe, for whatever reason, that Christ would never condemn these things, and they’d avoid the cold-water of scripture which would offer a real “woke” movement.

6. Trust and Curiosity

Thus, we arrive at the problem again, people have been trained to think of these things as good, when they are actually a type of “destruction” that we should be fleeing. How ironic - sin is what demands us to say, “Have you come to destroy us” and yet we say it to God. This inversion is something that God understands. We are weak, easily manipulated, and fallen, allowing our ego, the pressure of the culture, and some genuine wounds to taint our interpretation. For instance, where a daughter is raised in a chauvinistic home, do we really wonder why she might have a difficult time accepting the Church’s teaching around why women cannot be ordained?

Thus, where we encounter this automatic, and binary reading of Christ’s teaching, what we need to foster is a type of trust that we genuinely care for each particular human person. This is done not by any fancy stunt, but getting to know each other as subjects and from within, caring for them. Second, we ought to develop a curiosity. When we encounter someone who automatically judges the Church in a certain way, they may not necessarily be open to an alternative and more nuanced narrative. Therefore, if we say things that induce them to “wonder” about why such a loving person would hold something they cannot appreciate, it connects the person through a relationship to the teaching. Finally, if they intuit you love the teaching and see it as something that is genuinely "what is good for others” this witness leads to curiosity. We do not need to necessarily start with an apologetic, but rather facilitate a type of curiosity towards the question, “Where is the love in this teaching?”

7. Casting out demons

We need to keep in mind, that while we are not exorcists, we all share in Christ’s ministry. Evil likes to lurk, and can be commanded out of people even when the truth in a genuine witness is proclaimed. When Jesus cast out demons he did it because he was not here to “destroy” but to “save” the prey of the enemy. So blinded by their own fear of being destroyed, the demons do precisely what they’d prefer God not do to them: destroy a person. Jesus’ heart was not towards torturing the enemy, but he saw the person imprisoned by their narcissism, and false-victimhood. The soul needed to be liberated from the cruel actions of these evil spirits who stole genuine freedom (the ability to do what is good, not whatever we want). For demons, destroying us is part of the “freedom” they want to exercise and feel oppressed by God for casting them out. But Christ’s heart is seeking the good of the human person, seeking that their soul cease to be tortured by this ego-stroking darkness. And when released from this liar who tortures the person with the lies that God hates them, and finds out that Christ dies for them, the person experiences the exact opposite of the devil’s narrative.

All of this is to say, make sure you are fasting, praying for, and sacrificing for those who are entrenched in the false narrative of the enemy. Ensure that you yourself are not abiding in it either. But we can help ourselves out of that narrative by calling to mind how much God loves others.