Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer joins Cy Kellett to tackle a thought-provoking question from a listener who grew up in Mormonism and is curious about why he should consider becoming Catholic.
Transcript:
Caller: I left the Mormon Church when I was 8. I left because I didn’t think it was true. I also left because I think my friend oversold it for me when I was baptized in the Mormon Church. When I was baptized, he said that I would feel the love of God. I came from a broken family, and I just wanted my family back together.
Joe: Oh, man, I’m so sorry. That’s tragic.
Cy: That’s awful.
Joe: And I want to apologize. I know we’re not Mormons, but I want to apologize on behalf of your friend, because that’s such a rough thing to do to a kid, to promise, like, hey, you know, this terrible tragedy you’re experiencing. Just undergo this ritual, and then you won’t feel that tragedy. You’ll feel the love of God instead. That’s a terrible thing to do to a person. I’m sure he meant well, but that’s awful. I’m so sorry about that. You know, you were right to not go where the truth wasn’t. In other words, not being Mormon because it isn’t true. That’s enough of a reason not to be Mormon.
And the flip side to that is, I think the best reason to be Catholic is that it’s true if you are someone who loves Jesus Christ, and if you take him seriously in Matthew 16, when he says he’s building the Church and that the gates of hell won’t overcome the Church.
And if you take… You know, I mentioned in Acts 5 earlier that Gamaliel the Pharisee lays out this challenge, that there’ve been all these failed messianic movements that splinter and fracture and all of that and kind of peter out when the leader of the movement dies. It’s one of the ways we know they’re not real, that the Catholic claim is that for 2,000 years, the Church has stood here, and it can make that historical claim.
Mormonism, of course, can’t. You know, it’s claiming, no, the Church actually failed and had to be rebooted by a prophet in the 19th century in America. Now, there are times when being Catholic feels totally amazing, and there are times where it really does not. So I don’t want to oversell it to you. Being Catholic is the beginning of a journey, and it’s by no means a completion of it, but the completion of it is that this hunger you have for truth and goodness and beauty will one day be satisfied by a God who loves you infinitely, who loves you more than anyone’s ever loved anyone. I think that’s the best reason to be Catholic.
Cy: What do you think, Adam?
Caller: Well, I definitely am curious. So that’s why I’m calling in because, yeah, I was hoping you can help me get directed towards the truth and clarification.
Joe: Yeah, let me give you a very brief 5,000-year sketch. I know I’m not going to do this justice. There is a longing in the human heart to see God. Even when God reveals himself just a little bit to Abraham and then a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more, he’s fulfilling something that’s always been in the human heart. We want to know, love, and serve God. We want to be known by God, and we want to be loved by God, and we want to spend eternity with God.
You read the writings of pagans like Aristotle and Plato when he’s recounting the Symposium of Socrates; this is baked into us. We want union with God. It’s why religion exists. We don’t feel that in the way that we all know we should, and we can’t do anything on our end to close that gap in any meaningful sense. Every religion in the world has tried and has failed, has come up short.
The radical difference between those religions and Judaism and Christianity is that the Judeo-Christian message is that God is going to close the gap. God comes to us because we can’t actually go to Him. Like the Tower of Babel is us trying to reach up to God. Pentecost is God coming down to us. The incarnation is God coming down to us. These things are… God’s search for man is what it’s sometimes called, because our search for God without his help is totally fruitless.
God ultimately enters history not just through revelation, not just by telling us things, but from the second person of the Holy Trinity taking on a human nature. That entrance into history isn’t just a one-and-done kind of thing, but that endures. In the Church, we see the manifestation of the incarnation lived out. That’s why the Church, which is, if you know anything about the Catholic Church, you know it’s very often incompetent and corrupt and can’t seem to get anything done, and yet it’s the oldest government in the world.
It has survived all of the odds; all of these much stronger, better human enterprises have failed and collapsed and crumbled. This strange little Church has continued to grow and endure. That’s all a sign that God is in control. That’s all a sign that in the midst of our ineptitude and our sin and our evil, God is still active and working among us for our good and out of love for each of us. So that’s why I’m Catholic, and that’s why I think you should be Catholic.
Caller: Well, I definitely am curious, and I’m definitely going to pay a visit to my local church.
Cy: God bless you, Adam.
Joe: Excellent. Why don’t we send you Trent Horn’s book?
Cy: Our colleague Trent Horn wrote a book called *Why We’re Catholic*, and it just goes through bit by bit why we’re, you know, various explanations of why we’re Catholic and why we believe the specific things we believe. I’d love it if you call back maybe when Joe’s on, and we can continue this conversation, because it’s about the most inspiring thing in the world that can happen to people like me and Joe. For someone to say, I’m seriously considering it, because it is. And by it, I mean the person of Jesus as given to us in the Catholic Church, is worth considering. It’s worth taking the time to consider. And we’re so grateful and moved by the fact that you are.
So you want to hang on the line, and we’ll send you a couple of books?
Caller: Okay.
Cy: Call us back when Joe’s on.
Caller: Okay.
Joe: All right. Can I ask something for everybody else listening just to offer up a prayer right now while we’re doing the boring part in between now and the next caller just for Adam’s journey?
Cy: Yes, please do that. It’s not the… When I’m talking, it’s not the boring part between callers.
Joe: That’s what everybody… That’s what we call it.
Cy: No.
Joe: Can you pick up the line with Adam and make sure he gets those books before Adam’s attitude turns him off to the whole Catholic thing?
Cy: This is not boring right now.
Joe: This is what people look forward to. You’re distracting people praying right now.
Cy: Oh, I’m sorry. Stop saying horrible things, Joe.
Joe: All right.