Many of us are, or were, Fundamentalists. We believe the Bible to be the word of God and interpret it as literally as we can.
Most Fundamentalists believe that the world, solar system, and universe were created within the past ten or twenty or thirty thousand years. Those who believe themselves to be more educated, enlightened, and intelligent believe that the universe began with a Big Bang, as long ago as twenty billion years.
There are three immediately idenifiable groups. There are Fundamentalists, who believe that God recently created the universe. At the other end of the belief spectrum are those who believe the universe is up to twenty billion years old and came into being by itself.
In the middle are those who believe in God, but waffle on when and what He did. Some of those in the middle think God directed and guided existing processes to do some of what He wanted. These people in the middle tend to believe in evolution, darwinism, and most of the popular scientific theories. They are uniformly quite pleased with themselves, and enjoy thinking of themselves as “intellectuals”.
The most complete Fundamentalists are found in Catholic Fundamentalism. Catholic Fundamentalists think: 1: God can program in at least three dimensions. He programmed particles and energies. 2. God compiled particles and energies into systems and beings. He downloaded those systems and beings into the vast Creation Program. 3. God’s most complex programs are His beloved Human Programs. 4. He downloads each of us into the greater Creation Program. 5. Each of us has free will to choose to believe in and obey God’s operating instructions, or not.
By visualizing God as The Loving Programmer, Catholic Fundamentalism extrapolates from the abilities of human programmers to make realistic-looking, computer-generated movies. “God just does it in real 3-D on a screen that’s billions of light years across, copying and pasting entire galaxies to fill up the empty spaces. There may not be anything out there but light, but He wanted to be sure we all had free will, even self-important intellectuals. He programmed lots of things that people were free to believe.
What’s involved in moving from Fundamentalism to Catholic Fundamentalism? How do we get to Catholic Fundamentalism? Well, we read more of the Bible. We see that Jesus said, in the 6th Chapter of John, “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood, you do not have life in you.”
We find that the only way one can eat His actual Body and drink His actual Blood is by taking Communion in a Roman Catholic Church. Why Roman Catholic? Because it’s the historical, logical extension of another passage beloved by Catholic Fundamentalists in which Jesus, Himself, says, “Thou art Peter, and on this rock, I build My Church.” So, Roman Catholic Churches are where we take Communion, once we start taking all of Scripture as literally as we can.
Moving from Fundamentalism to Catholic Fundamentalism, by taking John’s passages about Body and Blood seriously, gets us closer to God. It’s a joyful place to be.
