By Tom Klocek

Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. … And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt. 22:36-39, cf. Dt. 6:5, Lev. 19:18)

Dr. Peter Kreeft, in his book Because God is Real, notes: “The Church just delivers the mail she received from Christ. She didn’t write the mail and she stubbornly refuses to be so arrogant as to edit and correct God’s mail.” Today, however, we see lots of people within the Catholic Church trying to do just that — edit and “correct” God’s word. Tens of thousands of churches, little and big, are all claiming to be teaching the truth, yet in many ways they are contradicting each other. Some call themselves Christian while denying the Holy Trinity. Some even deny the divinity of Jesus as consubstantial with the Father. Yet these are doctrines of faith that are clearly declared or derived from Holy Scripture and the teachings of the Apostles.

Likewise, the message from God has not changed since the beginning, which can be summed up in one word: obedience; childlike obedience that comes from innocence and trust. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden until the devil persuaded them to mistrust God. Obedience to God’s will. Obedience to the commandments. And when we don’t obey, bad things happen. We see this from the command to Adam and Eve in the Garden: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Gen. 2:16-17) In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, “Truly I say to you unless you turn and become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 18:3) Jesus is telling them and us that we need to have the childlike trust and obedience of children in him and in the Father and that conversion is the necessary means to do this.

The Bible (Sacred Scripture; the inspired word of God) is the basis for Christianity. The canon of the Bible comes from Christian (Catholic) councils in the fourth century, after centuries of discernment of what is inspired and what is not. The Bible describes God’s revelation to us, his children. It also represents his continued calling to us to turn to him. It shows us that, despite the hard-heartedness of mankind throughout history — rejecting God regularly and God removing his protections, leaving them to their own devices, so to speak — when they realize they cannot do it on their own, he is ever present calling them back to them through the prophets and through the Church. Like the fallen angels, it is we who turn from God; He never turns from us. And his only condition for taking us back is obedience; obedience summed up in the greatest commandment.

Some say that an all-merciful God would not let anyone go to Hell. However, God always respects our free will. God doesn’t send us to Hell; we choose Hell by rejecting God with our disobedience. “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.” (Romans 1:28). Article 393 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states: “God forgives us, but we can choose not to accept His forgiveness. Forgiveness is a free gift of God, but a free gift needs to be freely accepted as well as freely given.” We are currently in the time of Grace. After this comes the time of Justice. As borne out by many exorcists, “There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death.” (CCC 393)

God loved us into being. When you love something you always want what is best for them, which would be to spend eternity with God in heaven, not Hell. He wants to save us so much that “He gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn. 3:16) “This does not mean that only Christians can be saved. But it means that when anyone is saved, it is Christ who saves him. … Christians don’t claim to be the only ones who are saved. But they do claim that Jesus is the only Savior.” (Kreeft, Because God is Real, p. 235)

1 Jn. 2:16-17: “For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.”

Mr. Klocek is a retired Naval Officer, systems engineer, and physical scientist with over 30 years involvement in Catholic teaching in various parishes and a Fourth Degree Knight of Columbus. He currently resides in Chesapeake, VA.