Jesus Brings Division
Division
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already! There is a baptism I must still receive, and how great is my distress till it is over!
‘Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on a household of five will be divided: three against two and two against three; the father divided against the son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’
Thruth and the Light
Jesus said, “‘Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” Jesus brings division because Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is the truth. Truth is the reality of what is right and wrong, good and evil. The Truth is light. People prefer darkness to the light because they are addicted to their sinful habits that are self-destructive. Now, they won’t say they prefer darkness to the light, instead they say we cant know the light, we can’t know what is true and good. This is what we call Skepticism which is a philosophy from the devil that tries to convince us to doubt that the mind can conform itself to the way things are. Skepticism is therefore an attack on realism. It’s an attack on truth. Descartes, Hume and Kant gave us skepticism and we have been fed a steady diet of it through our education system and it leads to relativism which denies there is truth – it denies the light.
Turn Toward God
Skepticism leads us to doubt we can know what is good and what is evil. This leads to really poor judgment and decision making. Here is the real danger, to sin, to turn away from God one time is bad, but to choose wrongly and sin repeatedly is deadly because repeated actions become habits, new pathways forged in our brain and soul and habits become second nature. Did you just catch that – habits become our new nature. If we sin repeatedly then turning away from God becomes our new nature – it becomes more natural for us to turn away from God – that is the path to hell which is self-exclusion from heaven. That is why we need Jesus who is the Light and the Truth so that we don’t get it wrong and choose badly and repeatedly forging a nature that turns away from God rather than toward God.
Come Out of the Darkness
Skepticism and Relativism are lies from the devil to sow doubt. We can know reality, the truth, what is right and wrong, good and evil, and we can know it with certainty. God gave us the light of reason and a conscience, a built in system to know right from wrong. But when we mess that up, God gives us another means to know the truth – Revelation. God reveals the truth to us. He did so through Moses and the 10 Commandments and God reveals the fullness of the Truth through His Son Jesus Christ. The full teaching of Jesus is handed down through Scripture and Tradition and guarded by the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Jesus remains with us as the Teacher of Truth through when Pope and the Bishops teach officially. We have had bad Popes, Cardinals and Bishops but they have never changed the teaching, never altered the truth when teaching officially. That is a miracle in itself. Part three of the CCC is the best synthesis of the full teaching of Jesus on what is right and wrong good and evil. Get a CCC and read that section. Come out of the darkness and into the Light.
All Will Be Made Clear
Finally, Jesus reminds us that in a world that prefers darkness to the Light - You will be hated by all men on account of my name; but the man who stands firm to the end will be saved…If they have called the master of the house the devil, what will they not say of his household? 'Do not be afraid of them therefore. For everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops. 'Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows. 'So if anyone declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven. But the one who disowns me in the presence of men, I will disown in the presence of my Father in heaven.