{"id":4701,"date":"2025-06-16T07:52:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T11:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4701"},"modified":"2025-06-16T07:52:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T11:52:20","slug":"making-the-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/16\/making-the-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

\u201cLet me play devil\u2019s advocate for a few minutes.\u201d

Most of us have heard that before. Someone makes a point or proposes a plan. It definitely has merit, and listeners nod their heads in agreement.

Then one person decides to push back \u2013 not necessarily because they disagree with what they\u2019ve heard, or can think of anything better, but because testing the strength of a proposal is always a healthy thing to do. \u201cYou say we should do thus and so, but what if we can\u2019t make that deadline? Or the weather turns ugly? Or the bank turns us down?\u201d Or any number of other possibilities that might doom an otherwise brilliant plan.

The devil\u2019s advocate is someone who intentionally looks on the dark side. Whether they end up validating the original idea or blowing it to smithereens, they\u2019ve played an important role in a group\u2019s process of discernment.

Interestingly, the Catholic Church used to employ such an individual. Beginning in 1587, a lawyer was given the official title promotor fidei<\/em>, or Promoter of the Faith. Unofficially<\/em> he became known as advocatus <\/em>diaboli <\/em>\u2013 the Devil\u2019s Advocate, or the one who tries to put into words Satan\u2019s strongest case against a candidate for sainthood.

After all, if a man or woman was being promoted for canonization, someone had to do some serious background checks.

Had significant character flaws been overlooked? Would the \u201cmiracles\u201d attributed to this candidate turn out to be nothing more than hearsay? Had this individual\u2019s ministry been misrepresented?

It was the Devil\u2019s Advocate\u2019s job to play the skeptic, to sniff out fraud, and to make, if possible, a watertight case that this person was unqualified for sainthood.

It was up to the Church not to ignore such negative feedback, but to take it into account. That\u2019s never an easy thing to do.

Pope John Paul II reduced the role of the Devil\u2019s Advocate in 1983. But the Vatican still has the freedom to do spiritual background checks on candidates for canonization. In 2003, for instance, when the Church was considering the late Mother Teresa\u2019s case for sainthood, officials chose to interview one of her most outspoken critics \u2013 Christopher Hitchens, one of the so-called New Atheists. Did he have specific information or perspectives that would doom her candidacy?

It\u2019s unlikely that any of us will ever have to play devil\u2019s advocate with regard to the spiritual standing of another human being.

But that doesn\u2019t get us off the hook.

All of us, in one fashion or another, have to decide if the case against<\/em>God<\/em> is so strong that we simply cannot entrust ourselves to him as Ruler of the cosmos.

For many people, the Holocaust is a dealbreaker.

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel recalled seeing a wagonload of dead children being thrown into a flaming ditch during his first night as a prisoner at Auschwitz. He writes, \u201cNever shall I forget\u2026the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed\u2026 Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.\u201d

How can we affirm that \u201cGod is great and God is good\u201d in the face of God\u2019s inexplicable silence at Auschwitz? \u00a0

Then there\u2019s Agnes.

Even as a young girl, her only desire was to please God \u2013 \u201cto love Jesus as he has never been loved before.\u201d She welcomed the call to become a missionary. She journeyed far from home. \u201cMy soul at present is in perfect peace and joy,\u201d she wrote in her journal. She felt overwhelmed by the nearness of God\u2019s presence.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, that nearness vanished.

For no reason she could ever discern, Agnes lost her sense of God\u2019s proximity, God\u2019s love, even God\u2019s existence. She didn\u2019t quit serving and didn\u2019t stop praying. But the sense that she had somehow \u201clost\u201d God haunted her thoughts. \u201cMy God,\u201d she wrote, \u201chow painful is this unknown pain\u2026 I have no faith<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0

Except for one brief intermission, her inward experience of dryness and doubt lingered for the better part of 50 years.

As a Catholic nun and founder of the Missionaries of Charity, a religious community dedicated to serving \u201cthe poorest of the poor,\u201d she reckoned it would be better if the world never found out about the struggles that filled the pages of her journals. She insisted they be destroyed upon her death.

But wise people chose not to do so. That\u2019s how the world became acquainted with the inner life of Agnes, better known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

When word of her decades-long spiritual struggles became known, atheists like Hitchens pounced. \u201cShe was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself.\u201d

It seemed as if the Devil\u2019s Advocate had been handed a slam-dunk case.

But the strangest thing has happened since Mother Teresa left us almost 30 years ago. She has become not just one of the world\u2019s great examples of compassionate service. She\u2019s also revered today as a \u201cmissionary\u201d to those who doubt.

That\u2019s because she never stopped believing, in her heart of hearts, that God is really God. She did not give her feelings, in other words, permission to cast the deciding vote on the nature of Reality.

Nor should our own feelings during these last few days of spring be granted the power to cast a spiritual veto \u2013 to determine, above every other line of evidence, whether there is in fact an infinite-personal Creator who is closer to us than our next breath.

A faithful devil\u2019s advocate would no doubt insist on revisiting that important question: Are there good reasons for believing that God cannot be trusted in a world torn by suffering?

Why does God so often seem so far away? How can we reconcile divine love with the Air India jet crash, senseless gun violence in Minnesota, deadly flash floods in Texas and West Virginia, and yet another war gearing up in the Middle East? And that\u2019s just the past week.

We must be honest. We rarely receive final answers to such questions in this world.\u00a0

But there are a few things that we can<\/em> know.

We can know that just because we ourselves cannot see any good emerging from a particular situation doesn\u2019t mean an infinite God is limited by our imagination.\u00a0If God is God, he is free to have reasons to permit tragedies, even though we cannot fathom, for now, what those reasons might be.

We also know that most people would acknowledge that the most important lessons they have ever learned \u2013 the very things that have most shaped their character \u2013 have come through disappointment, struggle, and loss.\u00a0Sometimes it is God\u2019s mercy not <\/em>to rescue us from trouble.\u00a0

Followers of Jesus know that they live in the hope that their suffering means something<\/em>. \u201cSuffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.\u00a0And hope doesn\u2019t disappoint us, because God\u2019s love has been poured into our hearts\u201d (Romans 5:3-5).\u00a0

So where is God when it hurts?<\/em>

According to everything we know from Scripture, God never leaves the side of the one who is hurting.\u00a0He weeps with those who weep.

And God never stops rallying us to be his hands and feet in a world that is more desperate than ever to experience his justice, mercy, and love.

The devil\u2019s advocate may think he has a ripping good case.

But \u201cwe have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous One\u201d (I John 2:1).

And he\u2019s got a better record in God\u2019s court than Perry Mason.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u201cLet me play devil\u2019s advocate for a few minutes.\u201d Most of us have heard that before. Someone makes a point or proposes a plan. It definitely has merit, and listeners nod their heads in agreement. Then one person decides to push back \u2013 not necessarily because they disagree with what they\u2019ve… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[945,112,501],"class_list":["post-4701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-devils-advocate","tag-suffering","tag-theodicy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4703,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4701\/revisions\/4703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}