Addictions

Addictions. What are they, really? I see them as cancers that eat at our humanity until nothing is left but the drug -- whatever that "drug" may be. It's like that scripture, John 3:30: "I must decrease, He must increase." It seems that we cannot devote ourselves to a particular goal without handing over a piece of who we are. What is that now cliche scripture, "no one can serve two masters ... you must serve God or manna," pretty true isn't it? We seem to serve political paradigms, philosophies, faith, the world, self, money, morality, praise ... should I go on?

Let me share something with you: when I tried to fill my life with booze, sex, sports, and anything loud and distracting, I became more and more lonely. I really did. Looking back I could literally feel this gaping hole growing and enveloping all of who I was. I wanted peace, but all I got was angst. I became angry, alone, I lusted for more and more and more, and I was never satisfied. My life became empty, bereft of meaning and purpose. I thought the only thing left for me to do was to remain a lonely drunk. Then, out of nowhere, I saw God in the sky. I saw him in the northern lights. Not just ideologically, like "wow, nature must be made by something greater," but literally. Out of the blue, the Northern lights began to form a bunch of eyes -- in all sorts of dazzling colours. Then the eyes disappeared and an image of Mary holding the infant Jesus faded into the sky -- outlined by the Northern Lights! Then they disappeared, and an image of a dove was painted onto the sky with the Northern Lights. Soon, that image faded away, and the Northern Lights returned to their original colour and position in the sky -- the northern part (go figure!). Six months later, He spoke to me. I heard a voice inside of me, that was not my own, tell me that it loved me. The voice came from an image, a copy of a painting that some poor Polish nun composed -- a depiction of a vision that she saw, a vision of Jesus Christ.

What was significant about that voice was that it seemed to drown out every other noise that I had tried to fill my mind with. It penetrated my psyche, my intellect, and my loneliness. It offered me a choice: to "pick up my cross" and follow Christ, or not, and it was as if every single event in my life led me up to that choice. When I was confronted with it, I had a very lucid experience of viewing my entire life, and seeing it culminate to that very moment -- the moment of being confronted by Love. I said "yes," and At that moment my thirst was quenched and my longing was satisfied. That gaping hole was filled. I was filled. I wasn't empty any longer, and I knew that I had to strive to encounter Jesus Christ more intimately.

After, things weren't all that rosy. Although I had experienced many amazing supernatural things, I had to deal with the mess that was me. It was almost as if I experienced a type of detox from all the booze, sex, sports, and noise that I tried to fill that void with. It wasn't easy, and in many ways I am still experiencing that difficult and often confusing withdrawal.

I think that is what an addiction is like. It starts with a pain, a longing, and a thirst for happiness, a want to feel cool and to belong. We see on TV that sex satisfies those wants, that alcohol can make us forget, make us belong. Or if only we were rich, then we could have freedom, then we could buy anything we wanted, go anywhere and do anything -- then we would be happy. If monetary comfort, alcohol, and casual sex make us so happy, then why are we never satisfied? Addictions. They lead us away from genuine satisfaction:



If we want genuine satisfaction, then we need to hand Him not only a piece of who we are, but every fibre of our being. We need to give Him our hearts.

"Our Hearts are restless until they rest in you." - St. Augustine of Hippo

How We Got Married

A friend of mine asked me to share how I met my wife and how she became my wife. I actually met her when I was on outreach during bible school. The girls on my team stayed at her house and we spent a lot of time there -- they had a trampoline. I do remember meeting her and speaking with her, and I recall that there was something about her that set her apart from others, but I never dwelt on it. That was in May of 1998.

After bible school I lived as a type of missionary, off and on, until 2001. What I mean is that I had three years where I did Christian missionary work full time, and two years were spent doing retreats here and there, but not quite full time. In the fall of 2000, after a trip to Rome, I entered the seminary with the Companions of the Cross. I felt that I really had to discern the priesthood, since I wanted to give my life completely to Christ, and a few people had told me that I would make a good priest. So I checked it out. I enjoyed my time spent with the other guys in the sem. I learned how to play ping pong, and how not to cook. My time wasn't always peachy -- another gentleman and I had very similar stubborn qualities, needless to say, we clashed.

In the sem I had a chance to work on my spiritual life. I began to understand the spousal nature of my relationship with Jesus Christ, and I learned a little more about who I am. I was also introduced to the wide world of philosophy through an excellent college, College Dominicain. During my time there, I began to realize something very odd: that God wanted me to be happy. Imagine that. This God, whom we are told loves us, also wants to give us the desires of our hearts -- to make us happy here on earth. This concept was so foreign to me. I thought that I was destined to become a priest, not to become happy (the two were like a dichotomy for me).

Anyway, the people in charge of formation wisely discerned that I ought to begin thinking about leaving, about changing directions for a while and see where God might lead me. I did, and I wound up back in Radway, AB to work at the Bible School's farm as a maintenance person. That was where I met Kara.

She had received a vision that summer, before I met her, that God would bring a man into her life, and that she wouldn't need to approach him, but that he would approach her -- she told me that after we started dating. When I saw her the first time, there was something about her that made me say, "Lord, I want to marry THAT one!" So I took my time and tried to get to know as best as I could. I was well aware of the problems of infatuation, and I didn't want to make a mistake. I would often pray that the Lord would provide an opportunity for me to speak with her and get to know her better, and every time that I prayed that prayer, an opportunity knocked. For example, out of the blue she decided to eat at the Bible School farm, where I had quietly planned to have my lunch too. That is just one example, but there were many.

The next month I had decided to go to Ireland for another mission trip. Before I left, I made sure to tell her how I felt, and ask if she was interested in pursuing a relationship that might lead to marriage. The rest is history.

I will cut it short here, because this post is about to become too long. But if anyone wants to hear the rest of the story (there were a few bumps along the way), let me know, and I will post the rest.

The Virtue of Hope

Quite a few friends of mine have often told me that if I expect the worse, then I will never get disappointed. I never really had much of a reply to them, although I felt that somehow their depressing mantra was wrong. The reason why I never had a reply was that I hadn't really suffered yet.

The past few years of my life, although they have been amazing, have been riddled with anxiety. The kind of anxiety that doesn't seem to have any purpose, no beginning or "why" it started in the first place, or what it was trying to tell me. The Christians would say that I am anxious because I don't trust God enough, or that I must have done something to deserve it, that I made a wrong decision or something. The degree to which the above statements are true is debatable -- although I do not doubt that anxiety can often be an internal marker that tells us when something is wrong.

Another source of suffering, lately, has been arthritis. At 30 years old, I have debilitating arthritis that prevents me from working the jobs I enjoy, or doing some of the activities I used to love. But before I start giving you a sob story, I want to mention that it wasn't until I began to suffer like this that I began to understand the virtue of hope.

Hope is strengthened by despair and suffering. Rather, it is strengthened by the choice to move forward in spite of despair and great suffering. Pope John Paul II, when he addressed the people of Communist Poland, he told them to do two things: hope and pray. There, was a people who had been crushed and oppressed by an unjust Communist occupation of their precious homeland. They had nothing left but a will to live, and here was Pope John Paul II reminding them to do only two things, two things that would liberate them from Communist oppression: to hope, and to pray. So they did. Inspired by John Paul II's exhortation, the Polish Solidarity Movement pushed back their oppressors and paved the way for the destruction of Communist Russia -- only because they did two things: they hoped, and they prayed. They hoped in spite of their suffering, and they prayed in spite of the apparent death of God.

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shaow of death ..." (Ps. 23)

Hope can be strengthened by disappointment, only in so far as we move forward in spite of it. We move forward in spite of our dreams being crushed; in spite of our goals, thwarted; and in spite of our joys, dampened. Hope strives to struggle and reach for the things that seem so fleeting.

This is the gospel paradox, isn't it, that we need to enter into the passion of Christ, before we can enter His resurrection. That we need to embrace suffering before we can truly hope. The passion of Christ, our "passion," our "way of the cross," is Hope's garden. The torment, the anxiety, the uncertainty, and the apparent despair of this garden is what nourishes Hope and what allows it to blossom. It is watered by the pierced heart of Christ, tilled by his dragging cross, and pruned by his death.

All I want is to "know Christ, to know the power of His resurrection and to share in His sufferings, so that I may become like Him in death, in the hope that somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3:10,11). "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark 8:34).

The Problem of Same-Sex Marriage

hAlthough I have outlined in detail my logical response to an illogical institution, and outlined the various failures in objective thought that the "institution" of same-sex marriage holds, there is still a few more things that I would like to add. The issue of same-sex marriage carries a lot of stigma with it that seems to prevent some people from truly grappling with it at its core. The stigma is homophobia. Who wants to be known as homophobic? Not me, but the thought is that if one is against same-sex marriage, then that person is immediately pinned to be homophobic -- a stigma that carries with it such sentiments as "gay-hater," and is reminiscent of sexism and racism. I think that this association makes people afraid to oppose same-sex marriage, and forces them to suspend their "bias" in the name of tolerance. In fact, one of the major arguments that the proponents of same-sex marriage claim is that the opponents of same-sex marriage hold the same sentiments that fostered sexism and racism within our European culture. This is a sneaky attack against our logic, in fact it is a logical fallacy if you want to get technical. This presents to us a dichotomy that on one hand can clearly observe the inherent differences between marriage and same-sex unions, while on the other hand we are presented with a repulsion against anything "-phobic." This must stop. We must separate our fear of being seen as "homophobic" or "socially out-of-date" from the issue of same-sex marriage. We need to move forward, and the only way that society can move forward is if it adopts principles that sustain its existence and build up its nature. Same-sex marriage is an oxymoron which does not see the future of society as its aim, and it is an "institution" that can neither sustain our society, nor build it up.

Same-Sex Marriage: Sexual Identity

Since a major component of marriage is the complementarity of the sexes, can a homosexual couple fulfill this requirement? Let's look at what the word "complementarity" implies before we answer the above question.

The term "complementarity of the sexes" refers to the ways in which a husband and wife compliment each other. That is, it signifies the way in which the female "makes up" where the male lacks, and visa versa. To say that the relationship between the heterosexual spouses is complimentary, however, is not the same as two male or female partners making up where the other is lacking -- as in two business partners whose unique gifts and skills "complete" each other in order to form a unified and whole team. Although that is certainly a part of what is going on in the complimentary nature of heterosexual spouses, it delves further into the sexuality of the couple. What I mean is this: males and females differ in many ways other than just physically -- they live differently, they think differently, they act differently, they deliberate differently, in fact these differences lay deep within the core of who they are as individual persons (the core of what makes a male a male, and a female a female). It is this complimentary difference in the nature of the sexes that makes the marital relationship so unique. It is also precisely this inherent difference that children need in order to become fashioned into active, positive, and full members of our society. Within a heterosexual marriage they not only view the ebb and flow dynamic of their parents' relationship, but they are forced to live in it and experience firsthand the parents' interaction and communication. It is precisely this interaction, the complementarity of the sexes, that same-sex couples can neither facilitate nor reproduce. This leads me to my next point: can surgery change a person's sexual identity. This is relevant to my argument since if a male were to become a female, then he (now a she, according to pop-culture) will become complimentary to a male partner.

Let me answer it with a question. Suppose a female lost her sexual organs in a tragic accident. Is she no longer a female? Since she doesn't have a penis, can she be considered to be a male? Is she, therefore, genderless, neutered by fate? How would she see herself? Would she relate to others as a female, would she still think, act, and feel as a female feels? I don't think that we really know what it means to have a sexual identity if we continue to relate it with our sexual organs --since the person who has lost her genitalia still thinks, receives, feels, and communicates as a female. There seems to be something inherent, then, about our sexual identity, something that subsists within our soul, the core of our being. Something that only finds completion in the opposite sex. So will a simple surgery, a lifetime of medication, and a change in attire make a male a female? To put it negatively, would the usurping of a female's sexual organs make a male a female? The answer is no; there is something inherent within our being that makes us male or female, our sexual organs are the physical manifestation of that inherent quality of the human person.

Since a gay male couple can never occupy the role of a female in a marriage, and visa versa, same-sex marriage is oxymoronic by definition, and a failure in logic -- since a same-sex union can never be the same as a heterosexual marriage due to the lack of the complimentary nature of the sexes.