Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Adventism Creeping into my Catholicism?

The Adventist Church is a bit of a drama queen.
I had friends in the little Adventist town of Keene, Texas who told tales of gas chambers being secretly built nearby, readying for the imminent one world order and Sunday laws! You see the Apostates--false Christians who worshipped on Sunday (lead by the Catholic church)--were about to vote for laws that ALL people MUST go to church on Sunday or they will be persecuted or even given the death sentence. These conspiracy theorists were ripe with warnings that Sabbatarians need to be prepared to march into these Americanized death camps rather than worship on any other than God's holy day--Saturday.

Even though I didn't buy into that one, as an Adventists I was taught to see a last-day correlations with every major news event, be it war, rumors of war, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. We were perpetually on red alert for the Christian terrorists who were lying in wait to release the powers of hell upon us, just because we had the testimony of Jesus and kept the commandments.

I was so relieved to study Revelation as a Catholic and discover that it is very possible the book is mainly historical. At the very least I didn't have to worry about becoming a martyr for the Sabbath anymore. Whew....

However, maybe I was a bit premature in assuming the world was now a lovely place for Christians. Or maybe it is some latent Seventh-day Adventist paranoia bubbling to the surface.

The news is full of stories about Christians being martyred in China and Turkey and other countries. (Hasn't that been happening forever, though? No worries about the land of the free and home of the brave, right?) Yet I am discovering that even in America if traditional Christian values are publicly spoken, the person or church is accused of being a bigot or hatemonger or intolerant or simply stupid. There is a rapidly growing pressure to keep one's views to oneself if you are a Christian.

If you speak about traditional Christian values that were held for two-thousand years, you are dismissed as a radical. You are laughed at, you are scorned, people flee from your side--even Christians!

Even among Catholics I am finding myself alone in believing what Catholicism teaches.

Can it be possible that those who live by and teach orthodox Christian morals will end up being thrown in prison? Wow... I sound so Adventisty. What a drama queen that still lives in me.....

Right?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even among Catholics I am finding myself alone in believing what Catholicism teaches.

Your comment reminded me of what Fr. Hatfield said in his article:

http://www.westernorthodox.com/options.html

Raechip Reads said...

"Even among Catholics I am finding myself alone in believing what Catholicism teaches."

There seems to be a lot of catholics out there who don't really believe but are just part of the church because that's what they were raised in. It's discouraging. This is one thing that made me think maybe it's not good to be a catholic then. But there are catholics out there who really do believe faithfully, and those are the people that inspire me very much. I hope to be like them someday. :)

Matthew said...

caJust yesterday the lady cutting my hair was a bitter, Italian ex-Catholic who suggested that the Church needed to "get with the times" and "learn from the world around them" when it came to issues like contraceptives.

It is a very "Adventist" thing to feel like there is a "falling away" around you, both in your church and in Christianity as a whole. But I don't think this necessarily equals paranoia. The Bible does have plenty to say about the end times (whenever it happens) and being thrown in jail and being persecuted and all of that. How you understand all that happening may differ now that you're Catholic, but that it's going to happen is universally accepted.

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