Our God is Non-Negotiable

It is always interesting to me when I hear Christians talk about God in a way that makes Him seem like we have some sort of a choice about who He is and what He commands. For example, just last week I was teaching a class at my parish on growing in the Holy Spirit and one of the interactions led down the road of the death penalty. As many good Catholics do, a few in the class stated that they do not believe in the death penalty. My question for them was simply this: But what do the Scriptures say and what does the Church teach?

As for the Scriptures, in regards to the death penalty, Scripture is abundantly clear. Genesis 9: 6, “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind.” (See also, Exodus 12: 29, Acts 5: 1-11 among others)

This Biblical Truth is affirmed in the Catechism:

2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

So, back to the original premise. One of the attendees, who adamantly opposed the death penalty, when presented with the Truth of Scripture and the affirmation of said Truth by the Catechism, actually said, “I refuse to believe that, that is not the Jesus I know.” That is not the Jesus I know. Let that sink in for a minute. Be honest, every one of us has either said or at the very least felt that exact same way. You see we try to make our Christ, our God, the Creator of literally everything, fit into our world view instead of changing our world view to obey Him.

You see, we live in a world today that many Catholics, through either willful choice or ignorance of the Truth pick and choose which parts of our God fit into our world. We have a Catholic Culture that arbitrarily applies what parts of God make us comfortable and the others we, in the best instances, simply ignore and in the worst attempt to actually change the history, traditions and Truth of our Faith to make us more comfortable. Conforming to a fallen, broken and sinful culture.

God is the constant. From the beginning He has never changed and for all of eternity he never will. When we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we did not enter into a negotiation. Only human arrogance, that of the created, could pretend to tell the Creator who He is and what we will or will not accept about Him. We live in a world within the Church where our members participate, whether intentionally or unintentionally in idolatry on a daily basis. We can only pick and choose which parts of God we like and ignoring those that we do not for so long, before He ceases to be the singular, one and only God and becomes one of many gods.

What we believe is irrelevant. What the Word of God teaches is all that matters. Proverbs 3: 5-6 states, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. ⁶ In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Study the Word, the Magisterium, the Catechism, Pray. These are the path to eternal life. But to finish the race, we must conform our views to our God, not our God to our views.