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Taking our cue from his new book Real Religion, we asked Father Jeffery Kirby to explain a distinction he makes between the religion of self-help and the religion of the Bible.
Cy Kellett:
Biblical religion is not just a self-help program. Father Jeffrey Kirby next.
Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett your host. And this time we welcome the author of a brand new book here at Catholic Answers. The book is called Real Religion: How to Avoid False Faith and Worship God in Spirit and Truth. The author is our friend, Father Jeffrey Kirby, who I always find it’s just so enlightening to talk with Father. It’s the first time he’s been on Focus so I think you’ll really enjoy our conversation and what he has to say.
We took a section from the book where he warns us about turning religion, this biblical religion that we have been given, rooted in the revelation of God, and rooted in the worship of God, and taking that religion and turning it merely into a self-help program. That actually doesn’t help any self. Here’s Father Kirby.
Father Jeffrey Kirby, the author of Real Religion: How to Avoid False Faith and Worship God in Spirit and Truth. Thank you for being with us.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
My pleasure.
Cy Kellett:
It’s a beautiful new book. Why’d you write it?
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Well, the book was really born from just a lot of questions I was receiving passionately or just things I would see in the hearts of believers. So oftentimes I would when people had ideas for worship or they would try to poke or ask questions or had great ideas how they could make the Mass better and so on, just receiving these questions a lot and again, kind of pressing a little bit for explanations, realizing more and more that there was a real misunderstanding in terms of what worship is called to be, what we are called to do during worship. So after receiving multiple instances of these questions or these experiences, I thought, let me just sit down and really just impart in my own mind, develop this argument and then try to provide as clear and readable a way of presenting that argument to other people.
Cy Kellett:
So, it’s fascinating. It’s in the context of worship, which is actually related to what you talk about in the book, but it’s in the context of worship that you get the sense that people, they’re not getting what this is about. They’re not. There’s a lot of false religion around that’s competing with real religion.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, regrettably, I would have to say just [inaudible 00:02:32], I would say that the false religion is the predominant in terms of why people are accepting the invitation to worship or what they’re looking for from worship, what they’re expecting. And then in terms of what they understand in terms of what they’re called to give for worship, there was just a real inconsistency and incompleteness in so many of the perceptions. And so I just thought we need to clarify this because worship is the heart of what we do. As human beings, we are hardwired for worship.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
And we become oftentimes what we worship. So I just felt that it was so important to sit down and just develop it because I knew that it was in my mind and heart, but even for myself, just how can I express this in a pastoral way, using pastoral stories, readable application of the scriptures so that people can begin to understand what worship is called to be and what we really are called to receive and to do during the act of worship.
Cy Kellett:
So throughout the book, you do confront some of the major, or maybe this is all, but the major kind of, I guess, ways of being religiously false in the contemporary world. And we’re going to do a couple of them over these two episodes with you on Focus. One of them, religion when it’s become self-help, and one, religion when it becomes social activism.
This time, we’re going to talk a bit about self-help. But before I do that, I want to say I was really excited to read the beginning part of the book, the tenants of biblical religion. Because here, well, I thought this is a very smart thing to do, because you want to give true religion before you get into the falsities.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Amen. Amen.
Cy Kellett:
And I was exciting. It was invigorating. I feel like, “Yeah, that’s our religion. And it’s not like everything else in the world. It’s not. It’s completely a special, unique thing.” So just before we get into the problem of making religion into self-help, say something about the biblical tenants or the tenants of biblical religion.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Yes, and we can just imagine that God loves us so immensely that when he revealed himself to us so that we might know him, and by knowing him we can love him. That intimately bound within that revelation was a disclosure of how we are called to worship, because he knows we’re fallen. He knows that we’re inclined to self-worship. So within the very act of revelation, he shows us, “Okay, this is how you’re supposed to worship me.” And not because we add anything to his greatness. So it’s not like he’s looking for a pat on the back. In fact, when we worship, we add nothing to his greatness. In fact, we only allow his grace to work into us when we are transformed more into being like him. So it’s to our benefit.
And he’s showing us, “This is how you are to worship so you’d know that I’m God, you’re not. You don’t try to play God,” with all the danger and disaster that comes with that. But this is, “I’m God, you’re not. You’re a human being. You’re members of my family by baptism, by grace. This is how you are to worship me.”
And from that biblical revelation and our vast, beautiful intellectual tradition that flows from that revelation, we can draw these certain tenants and basic tenants. Like, for example, God is God and we are not. That we are bound to show him gratitude. That we owe him a certain obedience or deference. These are all bound up in what our tradition has called the virtue of religion.
Now, once you start talking like that, people really look at you like, “What are you talking about? The virtue of religion?” You can imagine the person saying, “Well, you say that, it makes it sound like it’s something I’m supposed to do.”
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Yes, absolutely because this is something where if you want to live a fully human life, if you want to truly live as a child of God and flourish by his grace, then yes, we are called and bound to worship. So we speak about the virtue of religion. So, the five tenants I drew from revelation, from our theological tradition and tried to make them as succinct and approachable as possible. There’s some more theological language that could have been used. I really wanted to try to make it as readable and understandable as possible.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. That’s probably why I was excited because you didn’t confuse me at all. But Father, it strikes me in reading it, too, that the idea that there are tenants of this biblical revealed, given, religion that we have that often when you meet someone who gets it, you really know. Like you go, “Oh, that person.” And not that you’re judging everybody else, but it’s often a very impressive person where you go, “Oh, man, that person gets it. Their response to other people shows that they get this religion. Their way of praying shows that they get this religion.” Do you have that experience, too?
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Absolutely. And even how they approach sacred things.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
So, through their conduct in the church itself, their conduct during the Mass and other worship moments. So, yeah, very much. If someone walks in and they’re walking into the church as they would walk around a department store and they are not blessing themselves with holy water. And they don’t think that they have to genuflect or even know what that is. And they’re sitting in the pew as if they’re lounging in some couch somewhere and they’re chatting and they’re thinking, “This is funny.” And then they’re chewing gum and they’re doing their various other things. Say, okay, it would appear that there is something missing in this heart because to the heart that understands the tenants of revealed religion, of true worship, we know that we are standing in the presence of the all powerful, all holy God.
That should cause just almost like this immediate natural sense of deference and reverence. And so the people who get that, it just flows from their hearts, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
They don’t even realize they’re doing it, right? This is the one who doesn’t get it. They don’t realize it. The one who gets it, they just naturally walked in and there’s a posture of docility. There’s a desire to bless themselves and to realize that they are entering a different place. There’s a consecrated place. There’s a natural adoration to acknowledge the presence of God. There’s a certain reverent quietness.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
A quietness in front of his presence. So very much like, I mean, as body soul. If our soul doesn’t get it or if it’s incomplete, it’s going to be reflected. In similar fashion, if the soul gets it, they understand this is worship. I’m a human creature who has been made a son of God, daughter of God. And God has called me to fellowship with him, to worship him, so that I can know what it means to be a child of God and to be a part of his divine family. That changes everything in terms of what the person, how they act, how they approach things, everything.
Cy Kellett:
And I know at least in my, you see, you’re a pastor so you’ll know this better, but they don’t seem to be the people who are complaining all the time about, like you said, they walk in with reverence, but they’re also not people who are complaining about the singer or about this or that. They’re busy doing something else. They’re not preoccupied with if somebody is putting on a good, I don’t know, Mass for them, like it’s a show or something.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Very much. And then they’re also not the ones who want to constantly suggest how we can make the Mass better.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
As a Christian and as a priest, whenever I hear that type of language, it bothers me because look, we can’t make the Mass better. If this is the re-presentation of the eternal Son of God, his sacrifice to God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit, and we are able to be a part of this as members of the baptized, there is no making this better, right?
Now certainly there are ways of making the ceremonies of the Mass more enhanced or more beautiful, but the idea of turning the Mass into some type of circus or entertainment show, because it makes me feel better, that’s what better is, it makes me feel better or more emotionally engaged, is to really strip worship of its depth and those moments that God wants to have with us.
Our world is so busy and so active. Oftentimes when people are talking at church, I just say, “Let’s not talk in here because for many people this is the only place where they can come and rightly expect silence.”
Cy Kellett:
Amen.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Because we do not live in a quiet world. So, if anywhere, it should be the church that is quiet so you can come in and have peace and naturally want to pray. So I think that those tenants of religion are a great help to us in these areas.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. And I really appreciate that you started because there you really get a sense reading it how often we fall short of that, how I will forget this is God’s religion. He made it. He doesn’t need me to fix it. He doesn’t need me to… He invites me to be part of it, but he’s doing fine. Like he’s got this. So, I like that reorientation. Allow God to be in the God place and I’ll take my place. And it’s just not the same at all.
But then, so we get through various kind of false religions. You cover sentiment when religion becomes just feeling and sentiment and when religion becomes a commodity. But the two we want to focus on in these two opportunities we have to talk with you on Focus, are first, religion becomes self-help and next time we’ll do social activism.
But it does seem to me that this person that we’ve been describing who gets it, who is really practicing religion the way that it was given to us by the prophets and by the Psalmist and by Christ himself, they’re practicing that religion, they do feel deeply and profoundly helped by that religion. So what’s the problem with self-help?
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Yeah, and I’m glad you asked that question, Cy, because just to clarify, I mean, obviously we want to be made better. We want to be transformed, and we want to grow as the scriptures say from glory unto glory. So, all the areas are positive things. The problem becomes, the difficulty or the deviation in terms of right worship, comes in when that is the focus.
Cy Kellett:
Ah.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
So, for example I lay down my life in service to Christ and in that act of love and oblation, he blesses me with his grace and I am made a better creation, a new creation, but I don’t go to Christ looking for the new creation as if I’m just going to use him to get something else, right?
Cy Kellett:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
So in many areas of life, of course, we can find ourselves in an error because we missed a point of emphasis or we missed the right starting point, or we exaggerate something. And in these different parts of warship, sometimes that’s what happens, right? So worship is no longer about God. Well, God is just the means for me to get better, right, so I can stop this habit or this bad vice or because I want to take on this new thing, right? So he becomes almost this, again like this, as I mentioned, the life coach from on high, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
And that’s not right worship. That’s not the proper heart or disposition when we enter worship.
Cy Kellett:
In part, because we’re turning the relationship the wrong way. We’re making the master the servant, so to speak. And he does make himself our servant. I mean, when he washes the apostle’s feet, he’s saying, “Here’s an example, do this. If you want to try living, try living this way.” And so he does make himself our servant, but he never stops being the master.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Amen. And then I that’s key right there that even as the Lord becomes our servant, we are never his master. And what we do is we take that beautiful prayer in the scriptures from the prophet Samuel, he says, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening,” and we inverse it. And we end up saying, “Listen, Lord, your servant is speaking.”
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
We expect him, right, to obey us and to make us better people. And let’s be honest as well. Oftentimes when we carry the cross of our Lord, how the world defines health and prosperity, sometimes we won’t have those. Sometimes in fact by carrying the cross of our Lord, we will have poor health. Imagine the parent who truly tries to live up to their vocation as a parent and they get less sleep and they’re always putting their children first. They’re going to have less health than the person who neglects the children, who worries about themselves and so-on. So, we’re trying to live as Christians and truly worship God. There will be times when self-help just is misplaced because oftentimes that itself is the cross that we give up these otherwise worldly goods in order to show our love and to serve our Lord.
Cy Kellett:
The taking up the cross is a real corrective to the self-help mentality. And again, there’s such a strange paradox in that the cross that Christ carries, he carries for us. The cross is about nothing but gratuitous help given freely from God. So there’s nothing in here where you denigrate the idea of God helping his children, but he calls us now, “Take up your cross and follow me.” And that’s not the same as a self-help fad.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Absolutely. We could imagine, just for example, in human terms if someone were to say, “I’m going to help you. You want to go to school, I’m going to help you with your education,” and so on. “Wow, this is great. Thank you so much,” right? And then a spirit of gratitude and deference and piety that is rightly shown to this person, this benefactor. And imagine over the course of time, the person who is the recipient of the support says, “Oh, by the way, you have to do this. And you will do this,” and becomes this kind of disengaged, ingrateful, ungrateful, pseudo master where suddenly what was meant to be given as a gift in the midst of a relationship now suddenly becomes this power play almost where it’s like, “You will do this and I’d better see this and this is the only reason why I’m doing this. You’re only in my life because I want your money to get my education,” right, how that relationship becomes perverted.
In the same way, that’s what we do with worship in our fallenness when we just want to be self-help. “Look, I just want to stop drinking.” Or, “I just want to lose weight and you’re going to help me do this. And then once I get what I want, well, you need to go away.” And it’s a real offense to the authentic help that the Lord desires to give to us, wants to give to us, in order to build us up as his children.
Cy Kellett:
So you even go so far as to say, I believe you used the word narcissism and self-worship, that treating religion only as self-help, that is something that I do to improve my life and to get God involved in improving my life, live my best life might be the one way to say it, then that could lead me, because I’m a fallen creature, to becoming a self-worshiping narcissist. What do you see as the process that makes that happen?
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
So you could imagine, say for example the person who has the noble resolution to say, “I’m going to lose weight.” And then they begin to draw closer to God because they understand, “Well, there’s a power here, there’s a strength here that can help me.” But they approach God, not as God who is all good and all benevolent and all loving and holy to worship him. They approach him as, “What can I get? And this is what I want from you. And I’m going to use your revelation, your teachings, your grace, solely to get this for my benefit.” And then once that’s received, then the person begins to slide away from aspects of religion or they’ve got what they wanted and they’re willing to move on.
Also what happens in this process is oftentimes the person begins to really begin to worship themselves. Like this is not the God of revelation. This is not the the God that we see throughout the course of salvation history. This becomes more and more a projection of themselves, this type of a pseudo deity that is an image of like a life coach popular in our culture today, right, so that just is there to kind of encourage them or to empower them. So it becomes this projection of themselves that’s worshiped and that’s relied upon as their strength.
And because it’s an act of transcendence and because God is so good to us, there is grace there given by God, but the very God who is being betrayed or used, the very God who is being abandoned, and then once the person gets what they want, they’re gone. So you can see like the real deviation that’s involved spiritually in this course, this movement where religion simply becomes self-help.
And it’s very prominent. And you can see, even in the course of our conversation, we have to distinguish so many parts of the language-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
… because it can be very deceptive and hide, where someone can look and say, “Well, no, that person’s a good believer. They’re relying on God,” and so on. But then the person has to ask questions with the hardness and we start to see the fruits of the tree, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
We start to understand if that’s true religion, then why are the poor not being served? If that’s true religion, where’s holy fellowship? If that’s true religion, why do we not see a growth of holiness and spirituality? So there’s something lacking in the tree.
Cy Kellett:
So, and that’s where I wanted to get to with you before we finish this conversation about a false religion, and this comes from your book, Real Religion: How to Avoid False Faith and Worship God in Spirit and Truth, the section on turning religion into a self-help program. What I wanted to ask you about before we concluded was, if I’m listening to you, Father Kirby, and I’m saying, “I kind of have done that. I’m doing a little self-examination here. I kind of have done that.” What’s the therapy, what’s the cure? What’s the way towards, out of my kind of self-centered practice of religion towards a wholesome practice of biblical religion?
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Amen. And Cy, it’s kind of what we were talking about earlier as the cross is the best corrective, I would say to that person and that person could be any of us at different times in our lives. I would say to get out of ourselves. In those moments, just get out of ourselves. Stop worrying so much about ourselves or what we desire, what we want, what we think is best for us and to take up the cross. So if someone says, “Well, I think I’m falling into this kind of self-help religion.” Okay, good. Then go serve the poor. In fact, the worst of the poor, the ones who make you completely uncomfortable, right? Get out of yourself.
Or take on a spiritual resolution that’s going to make you uncomfortable, right? So maybe a holy hour at two o’clock in the morning, right? Just something that totally brings a real death to self, where this is not about me. I really desire to encounter you, God, the living God. I want to be with you, Lord Jesus. Help me. So a kind of death to oneself.
Cy Kellett:
I love that, Father, but I also hate it because I find death of the self very hard.
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Amen.
Cy Kellett:
Yes. But again, the book is Real Religion: How to Avoid False Faith and Worship God in Spirit and Truth. It’s available now. You can get it at catholic.com. You can get it wherever you get fine Catholic books. If you want to get it at your Catholic bookstore, which we always recommend, just go to them and ask them to get it for you. They can order it for you if they don’t have it in stock.
Father, we’re going to talk to you again, this time about religion as social activism, but we’ll do that in the next episode. May we here in the studio and our listeners have your blessing before we go?
Father Jeffrey Kirby:
Absolutely. Let us pray. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May he let his face shine upon you. May he bring you all his blessings and may he bless you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Cy Kellett:
Thank you, Father Kirby.
Cy Kellett:
I tried to make sure as I interviewed Father Kirby, that he’s still on board with the fact that God is our help and God wants to help us. And I’m pretty sure that he has not abandoned that, but there is this danger of turning religion merely into self-help and forgetting about our duty to worship God, a duty that actually brings life and joy and wholeness into our lives, the proper worship of God.
You can read more in Real Religion: How to Avoid False Faith and Worship God in Spirit and Truth. You can get that over at shop.catholic.com, shop.catholic.com. Or if you like to shop at your local Catholic bookstore, please do. Just ask them to get the book for you. It’s called Real Religion and it’s from Catholic Answers Press.
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