This month’s first column, as usual, is about the reasons for Catholic Fundamentalism in a world that increasingly shuns both Catholics and Fundamentalists.
Most of us are aware that computers have changed the way we see the world. Our minds are so barraged with information that we tend to spend most of our time looking sideways, absorbing more information about other programmed entities, rather than looking and moving “up” to our Creator, The Unprogrammed Programmer. As we grow more addicted to absorbing more information, we tend to grow farther from the God Who loves us and wants our souls to get closer to Him.
Getting closer to God requires us to do things that are a lot harder than opening and perusing another web site. We have to study His Operating Instructions and obey them.
It’s easier for some of us to do as Catholic Fundamentalists do, which is to picture Him as the Unprogrammed Programmer, Who programmed energies and particles before compiling them into systems and beings. When we look at each chapter of Scripture as its own web site, with its own lessons to be absorbed, it may be easier to learn their important lessons than by trying to fit ourselves into a God and Scripture removed from our own time and experience with a lot of Iron Age vocabularies. When we think of, and describe, the Unprogrammed Programmer of particles, energies, systems, and beings with words that have more meaning to us, we can more easily understand Him and our duties to Him just by looking at the many, many programs programmed by human programmers that we, ourselves, use every day of our lives.
