Should we be ashamed of the Gospel?

There is a beautiful concept about the origin of life that the Catholic Church proposes and teaches; we were created out of love. The basis of this proposal stems from an understanding that an omnipotent, all-knowing being took the time to make man after his image and likeness and further strengthened man’s identity through the creation of woman. From the moment of human existence, God, the author of life, intended to establish a continuity or complementarity of faith that reflects a reciprocity of love between the Creator and the created.

One may argue that there is nothing complimentary between God as Father and our first parents, Adam and Eve, because they ultimately chose to reject their identity, existence, and dignity as God’s children by their submission to the desires of the flesh. As the drama of this story began to unfold, God revealed his merciful love for our first parents through a proclamation of faith hermeneutically described as the proto-evangelium or first Gospel. In God’s endearing way, he reminds Adam and Eve that they should not have disregarded his instruction. At the very moment of the fall, the previous proclamation by God to his children was now in full-blown spiritual disarray, where the act of shame, deceit, and conceit entered man’s heart.

Gospel Indifference

The biblical saga of the Creation account reveals a fundamental distinction between embracing the Word of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and expressing indifference or antagonism because the message attributed to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, interferes with my own daily forbidden fruit. And, if it does, shame on the Gospel for creating a barrier toward my personal being. This outward expression of indifference expressed toward the Gospel should come as no surprise to many because the sin of indifference was, I argue, the ultimate motivating factor to convince Adam and Eve that they would be like God and thus not need Him since the Devil proposed that they would be like him.  

When the proclamation of the Gospel becomes an inconvenient pest in our daily affairs, we immediately follow up our actions by attempting to dispel the authority of the Gospel or even characterize it as shameful because it interferes with our way of personal living. And this is where it gets interesting when the Gospel needs to be reinterpreted to fit a personal narrative that deviates from the salvific narrative it has proposed for centuries. It goes even further to attempt to redefine what constitutes the premise of the Gospel and the creed.

St. Paul, in his exhortation to the Romans, takes a very firm position on the importance of the Gospel:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.[1]

St. Paul claims straightforwardly that the Gospel of Jesus Christ presents the way to salvation. He continues with his salvific discourse when he describes the link between Adam and Christ:

Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned—sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the effect of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.[2]

 

Ashamed of the Gospel?

Matter and form are two fundamental realities concerning the Word of God. Matter refers to the substance of God’s Word revealed through the Son Jesus Christ, hence Jesus the Incarnate Word. The form involves how the message is demonstrated and explicated or delivered with respect to the message or proclamation. St. John reminds us that the substance and form of the Gospel are meant to help us believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.[3]  

Strengthening St. John’s expression of the Gospel, the Catechism provides us with a blueprint on the matter, form, and content of the Gospel as the revelation in Jesus Christ of God’s mercy to sinners.[4] There is no shame in seeking salvation with the intent for our final resting state to be heaven and experience eternal joy with God our Father. However, this means that any attempt to misidentify the love of God for us through the death of His Son Jesus Christ through the promotion of a prosperity Gospel, or even more, through a mischaracterization of the language and content of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as hate speech is what it most shameful.   

I leave you with a loving reminder from St. John Henry Newman on how to proclaim the Gospel without shame.

Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go. Flood my soul with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.

Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine. It will be you, shining on others through me.

Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.

Amen.

St. John Henry Newman