Where God is honoured, not man

Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Recently, I’ve been following a Taiwanese miniseries playing on the HBO Channel – The Teenage Psychic. I know – the name sounds “cheesy” and the plotline, perhaps, even ‘cheesier’. The protagonist is a teenage school girl, who also happens to work as a temple medium, a psychic who communicates with the spirit world. In its second season, we are witnessing a growing rivalry between our heroine’s guardian and care-giver, and his techno-savvy brother, both of them owners and operators of temples based on entirely different philosophies – the former runs a conventional traditional temple dedicated to a pantheon of Taoist deities and his techno-savvy younger brother operates a digital age New Age Spirituality centre – no stuffy incense smoke nor scary effigies – a modern religion for the modern man.

The rivalry between the two brothers escalates when one of the disciples of the former, the brother with the traditional temple, chooses to defect to his brother’s camp. When questioned by the younger brother on the reason for his defection, the disciple says that he wishes to move on with the times. The techno-savvy brother makes this poignant point by explaining the fundamental difference between his centre and his brother’s temple. He writes the Chinese character for ‘god’ or ‘deity’ and explains that in his brother’s more traditional temple, it is the gods who are honoured, the gods who are placated and it is the gods who matter. But in his popular and modern set-up, after writing the character for ‘man,’ he explains that the success of his enterprise is due to the fact that people are at the centre – “We cater to people’s needs, to their wants. The gods have nothing to do with it.”

This astute observation is why we are celebrating today’s feast. The Feast of Christ the King, originally celebrated on the last day of October, was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as an antidote to secularism; a way of life where man believes himself to be at the centre, which leaves God out of his thinking and living and organises his life as if God did not exist. In Quas Primas, the encyclical of Pope Pius XI that established this feast, the venerable pope noted that “the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics.” In the aftermath of what was called the Great War, society found itself on the brink of disaster. Most predominantly Catholic countries had fallen under anti-Catholic secularist regimes. Christian Europe could no longer claim to be Christian as a consequence of the widespread destruction engineered and inspired by the French Revolution and later by the Enlightenment. Orthodox Christian Russia had fallen under the Bolsheviks and their communist ideology. What united all these states and their governments was their common belief and conviction that the political and economic solutions they offered actually catered to the needs and wants of the people. God or Christ have nothing to do with it.

This, of course, is contrary to what the Church teaches. Pope Pius XI writes that “as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Saviour, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.” There can be no real peace or salvation, if God is not part of the equation.

Unfortunately, there are so many who reject the kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ because it seems outdated and alien. We live in a democratic age, and democracy, for all of its strengths, can also make people deaf to the language of faith. Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French political historian, described the difference between democratic man, and all of human history before the democratic age, as the difference between “two distinct humanities.” Democratic man instinctively distrusts any form of inequality, privilege or hierarchy. All legitimacy in a democracy flows from the sovereign individual and the state he helps create. But the Church makes a very different claim. The Church humbly recognises that her authority, indeed her very existence, flows not from human machinations and projects but mystically from the very side of our Crucified and Risen Lord, who reigns supreme from the throne of His cross. 

For centuries, men have deluded themselves by thinking that they could determine their destinies apart from God. Power over the natural world, seemingly granted by science and new technology, fed human vanity and man’s illusions of security. We think that we can call the shots. This is the extent of our delusion: we want to be gods but we’re not.  We want to create ourselves and our world, but we can’t. We see God and religion as threats to our power and sovereignty and Man will not tolerate any rivals. What we forget is that one little virus, one drunk driver, one “freak” accident, is all it takes to end our plans.

Unfortunately, the idea of man dethroning God is not just exclusive to a secular unbelieving world. Many within the Church today, in their quest to make the Church more relevant and trendy, have chosen to dethrone Him by placing man at the centre of religion. Just like the point made by the techno-savvy guru in the miniseries, God is no longer honoured, God is no longer placated, God is no longer pleased. It is easy to give in to a style of religion which is popular, a religion which claims to cater to the needs and wants of its constituents, a religion that follows and imitates the latest fad, a religion where man is at the centre. But such a religion is a false religion. A false religion is a scheme of making God available to man for man’s glory, and plans where God is dethroned and robbed of His glory. Such religion cannot save.

Such is the description given of the Antichrist in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.” (CCC 695) The thing that makes the Antichrist the Antichrist is not that he openly hates Jesus Christ — that’s a given — but that he offers a brilliant fake version of the Christian gospel. It would appear that the Church is indeed presently wrapped and blinded by this “mystery of iniquity” as she struggles with a myriad of troubles: sexual abuse, financial corruption, doctrinal relativism, homosexuality, threats of schisms and heresies and the doubts of the faithful who see the Church’s enemies even in their midst.

Man-made and man-centred religions always seek to reach salvation through human effort. In his hubris, man believes that he can save the world without any assistance from God. But true Christianity preaches, “May it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). Here at the cross, we see both a wondrous and scandalously mind-boggling coronation. The cross strips us of our pride and puts all our hope in the merits of the Saviour. In Him alone, the One who reigns from the throne of the cross, will we find our hope and salvation. And so, despite the violence of the attacks that the Church must continue to weather, she will not die. That is the promise of the Lord, and His words are infallible. If we wish to weather the storm, we must “bend the knee” to the King of Kings. We must renew our devotion. We must never cease to pray and cry out to God in supplication for the Church, her shepherds and the world. We must attest once again through our prayers, our deeds, our very being, that our sole purpose is to honour God and please Him, not man. Long Live Christ the King!