10/11/26 Blind Spots: Practical Atheism

2:11 Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. May you have a seat. So growing up, my older brother was legendary. My older brother is legendary. But growing up, he was legendary for one particular thing. He was legendary for his incredible, unique ability to have selective hearing. It was a situation where, I mean, this would happen all of the time. All of the time. Where someone's, hey, Mike, go get your brother. And so I go up to his room and I'd be calling his name, calling his name. Or downstairs. Like, this would often happen. Mark, dinner's ready. Nothing. Mark, dinner's ready. Come to go downstairs. I'm on the stairs. I can see him. Sometimes actually standing in front of the TV. I don't know why he would watch TV that way, but he would stand up. I'm like, Mark, Mark, Mark. It'd be nothing. So I get within 10 feet of him. I'm like, Mark, Mark, and nothing. I would get next to him and I'd be like almost shouting his name.

3:05 And then he would look at me as if he was surprised. Like, why are you shouting? What's going on? And I'm like, are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. He was, that he would be so completely shocked had this incredible, incredible ability to selectively hear. And I think this is, I know that was him, but I think that this is, it was truly amazing. I think, but all of us have this ability to some degree, like in some area of life where there's just some things that either we just don't hear. I just weren't, I didn't hear that. Or there's some things we just don't see. Maybe your roommate just never really sees that pile of dishes in the sink. They just walk by and And you pointed out that really, I didn't even notice. Or that half-eaten bowl of cereal that's been sitting on the coffee table for the last week. That kind of situation. They just keep walking by it. They don't even notice it. Boxes of pizza boxes that no one picks up.

3:57 That I'm as guilty of this as anything. The things that I become so used to it, it's become invisible. I moved into this house 22 years ago, basically. And ever since I moved in, in the little apartment where I live. And there's these floorboards and they don't have the floorboard. They just kind of have nothing. And I just, or there's a piece that falls off and I put it back up and prop it against there, falls off and put it back up there. And I realized I've lived here for two decades and I've never even bothered to fix it. Never even tried to fix it. I was just like, yeah, that's what it looks like. In fact, it's so bad that right inside the door, I walk into the house. On the ground, there is an unopened box of ant traps since June. It is currently October. I walk by it every single time I walk in or out of this apartment. I walk by this unopened box. I want to emphasize that it's unopened because it's not like gross. It's this unopened box of ant traps that I just don't see. We have this ability, right? Our ability to ignore something we'd rather not deal with is remarkable. I'll say that again.

5:03 Our ability to ignore something we'd rather not deal with is truly amazing. This is the sixth of a six-part series we've been going through here called Blind Spots. And what are blind spots? Blind spots are those acceptable sins, right? Psalm 19, from hidden faults, O Lord, acquit me, heal me, like free me from these things that are in my life and I'm not paying attention to. This is remarkable because there are those sins that are always there. They're not insignificant, they're not small, but we just have come up with socially acceptable excuses for them. So we have gone through this list of five until now. Gossip and anger and entitlement and complaint. Last week was worry. And I think there's many others, right? But it's possible that all of them can be traced to this one today.

5:58 in the gospel, there's the king, right? He has a wedding feast for his son. Everyone's invited. This is incredible. And some of the reactions of people who have been invited is a little extreme. They said they lay hold of his servants, mistreated them and killed them. I've never been invited to a wedding and then killed the messenger. But the thing I have done is very just, it's subtly in Jesus' parable. Here's the king. wedding feast for his son. He's invited many, many people. Again, some have this overreaction, but it says others ignored the invitation.

6:38 One went to his farm, other to his business. Our ability to ignore things we'd rather not deal with is remarkable. And I think our blind spot, maybe the number one blind spot that we can be facing is our ability to ignore God. Like the reality say, I like doing what I'm currently doing and I do not want to be bothered at this moment. I don't want to be bothered. You know, years ago, I came across this article about the population crisis in Asia, specifically the population crisis in Japan, that the projection was by 2060, Japan's population would fall by a third, which is the point in the article pointed out, which is the same percentage as the Black Death in the 14th century. and the reason why is because the Japanese people, the young Japanese people, are just not interested in children. In fact, the article went on to say they're not interested in relationship.

7:35 They said they're not even interested in sex. This was in 2011, that 61% of men who were ages 18 to 34 were not in a relationship and had no interest to be in a relationship. 49% of women, same age, were not in a relationship, had no interest in relationship. It was something along the lines of, almost half the women from 16 years old to 24 years old either said they were not interested in sex or they despised the very idea of this. One 31-year-old man was interviewed and he said this. He said, I find some of my female friends attractive, but I've learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated. I just can't be bothered. This is crazy. This, I can't be bothered. In fact, there's a Japanese term for I can't be bothered. And mendukasai, simply, that's all it means. It means it's too complicated.

8:30 It means it's not worth it. It means I just, I can't be bothered. And think about this. Think about this perspective of when it comes to, even for the chance at a life-changing relationship, the response is, mendukasai. I can't be bothered. I just ignore the opportunity or ignore the invitation. Because the reality is I don't want a life-changing relationship because I don't want my life to change. And this is what's happening in the gospel. Here's this invitation into joy. This invitation to be in the king's presence. The invitation to be at the wedding feast of his son. I just ignore it. You know, I love the etymology of words. So the etymology of the word, the origin of the word ignore, is obviously Latin. and it comes to the first part is in, which means not.

9:25 And second part, noris in Latin means knowing or being acquainted with. So to ignore it, it's not knowing. In fact, the word ignorant and the word ignore clearly have the exact same root, but they don't mean the same thing. To be ignorant of something means I just don't know. Ignorant is not knowing. but to ignore something is to act as if I didn't know.

9:55 There's a huge difference between being ignorant and ignoring. And so many of us, we act as if we don't know. Again, you can say this, that to ignore is despite what I know or even despite what I believe, I'm going to live as if I didn't know. John Paul II, years ago, John Paul II, he had a term for this, we have, this blind spot we have of ignoring God. He called it practical atheism. So I don't know if you know, the atheism means of someone who, an atheist is someone who does not believe in God. They had a study, 2023, 2024, a religious landscape survey said, here's a question. What percentage of Americans do you think are atheists? Like just lock a number in your head right now. What number, what percentage of Americans would you say claim to be atheist? In 2023, 2024, this Religious Landscape Survey found out that 5%, only 5% of Americans actually claim to be atheist, right?

10:55 Check the box, I do not believe in God, check. Which means that incredible, incredible number of Americans say, no, I believe in God. So I'm not atheist, I'm a theist. What John Paul II was pointing out is, is practical atheism, is someone who checks the box, okay, I believe in God, and yet, they live as if God doesn't exist. They're not ignorant. They just ignore his existence. That's practical atheism. Practical atheism is believing in God, even professing faith in Jesus. And I always say this, even really meaning it, like really meaning, I believe in Jesus, but then for all intents and purposes,

11:39 living as if God didn't exist, living as if Jesus never set us free. I'm a practical atheist when I check the box that says I know, and then I live as if I don't know. That I know I've been invited. But then I ignore the invitation.

12:02 And again, you look at our lives and we say, I'm not like those other people who got the invitation and mistreated the messengers and killed them. I don't want to kill anybody. I'm just in the middle of something. and so I'll pretend that I don't hear. I'll pretend that I didn't notice. I'll selectively pay attention to what I want and I'll simply ignore what I don't want and the question we have to ask of ourselves is, is that me? That when it comes to the John Paul practical atheism, is that me? And the good news is I guess that the thing about practical atheism is that it's really practical. So there's this quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. You might have heard it before. Some people really, really like it. I've seen it even on bumper stickers. And the quote is, preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. It's a nice idea, except for two problems. Number one, St. Francis of Assisi never said it. And the second problem is that the gospel always needs words. Like the preaching of the gospel always needs words. In fact, 1 Peter 3.15 says, always be ready to give a reason for your hope.

13:12 You need to do that with words. Always be ready to give an explanation for the faith that's within you. So hopefully people will hear the gospel from us. But the question is, do they ever see the gospel in us? Again, not perfectly, but just practically. Practically speaking, if someone followed you around for a week, would they get to see anything different from someone who wasn't Catholic?

13:40 If someone just observed your life on a regular basis. would you or I look any different from someone who was not a friend of Jesus? Would your life or my life look any different than someone who wasn't striving to be a saint? I think, let's be practical, that there are, let's say, three areas, three areas of life. Our speech, our schedule, and our stuff. Our speech, that question of, if someone listened to how I talk about other people, would they say, wow, that's really interesting. other people the way most people do. Like you actually give people respect even if you disagree with them. Even when they're not in the room, you still are kind. Years ago, our diocese was going through a number of lawsuits. And there was a certain gentleman down in the Twin Cities who was a lawyer who was just making bank off of going to different dioceses and really capitalizing on some of these horrible cases, of course, that had happened, but going after our bishop.

14:46 And it was fascinating because our bishop never talked about, ah, that knucklehead from the cities or that jerk down. He always called him by his full name. He always called, he said, Mr. So-and-so. He always said, Mr. So-and-so. I had a conversation with Mr. So-and-so. And I remember thinking, man, this guy is making your life so difficult, but you always speak of him with respect.

15:09 I could look at our bishop, Bishop Paul Serba, and say, he died, he passed away about six years ago. I could see a man whose speech had been changed by his following Jesus. Not only how we talk about other people, how we talk about our God. How we talk about our God is fascinating. Years ago, I have a friend who, she's not Catholic, but she went to a Bible college. She said one of her instructors at the Bible college pointed this out.

15:35 No other world religion uses their God's name as a curse, except for Christians, except for people who claim to be Christian, that we so quickly can say things like, oh my God, we so quickly can say the name of Jesus Christ, that God has revealed his name to us, and no other religion uses the name of their God as a curse like we do.

16:03 that's practical atheism because why because i'm not allowing what i believe or what i know to actually make a difference i'm acting as if i'm saying the name of jesus as if i don't actually believe that he is the lord god who died for my sins so i look at be practical my speech my on my schedule my schedule is the the biggest one the schedule is is if someone followed me around? Would they see any change, any difference between how I live and how someone else lives? Do I take time for the Lord? Did I throw up a prayer just before meals? I throw up a prayer before I go to sleep? Does he get any time? Does the God of the universe get any time? Or even this, when it comes to Sunday rest, how many of us as Catholics treat Sunday any differently than any other day.

16:57 Hopefully, you know, because we have this command, right? On the Lord's Day, we have the command both to worship God at Mass and to rest. But does Sunday look any different for us? Hopefully, we're getting to Mass. But does it look any different for any of us? Or do we just ignore that? I mean, that is literally from the Gospel, the parable today. They're invited to the wedding feast of the Son of the King. but the mass is the wedding feast of the son of the king. And so many of us just ignore the invitation. We ignore the invitation not only to worship God, we ignore the invitation to enter into rest. So our speech, our schedule, and our stuff. If someone looked at my bank statement, would it look any different than someone who didn't believe in God? Someone who didn't wasn't trying to be a saint. You know, it's just remarkable, I think, in so many ways.

17:55 If someone followed me around, would they see any difference? I remember years ago, I remember when I was first captivated by the stories of martyrs. Martyr means witness, right? The stories of martyrs. And I used to think that, wow, to live way back in the day, that's what martyrs were, were so long ago. You may know this, but in the 20th century, there were more martyrs for Christianity than in all of the previous 19 centuries combined.

18:28 Even just 11 years ago, almost 11 years ago this February, there were 20 Egyptian Christians who were migrant workers in Libya. were captured by Muslims and tortured with the 21st guy. He was a worker from Ghana who wasn't even a Christian. But these 20 Christians were tortured and then these Muslims brought them to the shores of the Mediterranean in the shores of Libya with the 21st man. And that's where they beheaded them as their blood flowed into the sea.

19:10 that 21st man from Ghana, who wasn't a Christian, at one point, the Muslim terrorists gave him a chance to leave. He refused. Because he saw how these men lived. He saw how these men stood up to torture. He saw how these men prayed and cared for each other. And he said, their God is my God.

19:35 and his blood was mixed with the blood of these Egyptian Christians, mingled with Christ. You know, again, I always used to think, like, that would never happen. How could that ever possibly happen? What if it happened right now? What if it happened wherever you're living? What if all of a sudden it became illegal to be a Christian? If wherever you are right now, it became illegal to be a Christian,

19:58 and if you were accused of being a Christian, here's the question, Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? I came across a man named Dr. David Gibbs. David Gibbs is a lawyer and a preacher. I had never heard of him until a couple weeks ago, but I heard him tell a story. The story was, he was invited to give kind of a, well, to give some sermons at a local church or a church across the state from him. And he says that on Saturday, before this, before he left, someone at the church. And he said, Dr. Gibbs, there's been a horrible tragedy. He said, two of the best men in our parish, young men, young husbands, young dads, they were out. They were out because they wanted to go door to door, do visitations and invite people to your event tomorrow, to our service and your event. They wanted to invite people to hear you preach tomorrow.

20:58 And at some point they're at an intersection and someone didn't see a stop sign and a car struck them and both young men, both young dads were killed. And Dr. Gibbs was like, oh my gosh, what do you want me to do? He's like, hey, I'll, are you still going to be there? Like I'll show up and you just pray. You know what I'll preach? If you want me to preach, I'll just sit there and pray. If you want me to pray, I'll be there. And then the guy in front of the church says, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Let me pray about it. So hangs up the phone. A couple hours later, he says, Dr. Gibbs, you've got to get here. You have to come tomorrow. He says, how come? He says, I don't know, there's some kind of revival happening. But what happened was the two wives of these two men, Anita and Carol are their names, they were devastated. Their husbands were out there just trying to do good, right? Trying to invite people to church and their husbands were killed. And so they went to the pastor, said, pastor, please take us, take us to the wreck, take us to that, the site where our husbands have killed. And he's like, no, you don't want to see it. You don't want There's blood on the ground.

21:59 You don't want to do this. They said, yes, we have to. We have to go there. So what they did is he brought them to their car. They went inside the car and they found the list of names that these dads had been on the road to go visit and invite to the event the next day. And they took these names and they went door to door. And he said this, he said, he said, no, take us door to door. We want to finish their mission.

22:29 and so Anita and Carol went to the first house and they said our husbands gave their lives to get this message to you would you would you please come come tomorrow we'd be so grateful and the word spread and so he said he said the word spread because people could see something when he got there the next morning the place was overwhelmed there was there's news stations there were so many people there um because people had heard about this. People had heard, they said, do you see these women, these two ladies who had never preached a sermon, had someone worth looking, had something worth looking at? These women who had never taught a class had something worth looking at. And David Gibbs asked that question, what in your life is worth looking at? Or is it all words?

23:25 and we can ask that question right now. In my life, does my life have something worth looking at? It doesn't have to look like Anita or Carol's life, but the question is, is it different at all? So what's the remedy? What's the remedy for this practical atheism? What's the remedy for this temptation we all have to ignore God's invitation? I think it's two things. I think it's very simple. The remedy for practical atheism is to pay attention and to ask one thing. Now, before I get to that, I do have to blame someone for this problem.

24:06 For this massive blind spot, God. Because here's God. God is so good. God is holy. God is the source of all being. In so many ways, God should be unavoidable. but God is so humble that he's made himself ignorable.

24:31 God has made it so if we don't want to pay attention to him, he won't make us pay attention to him. Why did he do that? I believe he did that for the sake of love. I believe God made himself ignorable for the sake of love. Why? Because love pays attention. So the remedy for this blind spot is to pay attention. So my brother with the amazing selective hearing, you would think that would be a horrible ingredient to bring into a marriage. And I think it probably would be pretty bad too. But he's been married for 27 years.

25:07 And I'll tell him this. I've told he and his wife this. I think they have one of the best relationships I've seen. Incredible, incredible marriage. They say they've worked on it a ton. But it's remarkable. And one of the things I see is there was a meme that I really, it stuck in my head. It was a meme that said something along the lines, about marriage and it said, this person had posted and said, after 20 years of being married, I realized that 80% of marriage is yelling the word what from the other room.

25:36 My brother and his wife, they've decided, you know what we want? We don't want to bicker. Too many couples just fall into this trap of bickering, fall into this trap of just kind of sniping at each other, doing these drive-bys where you're going to say that whatever the passive-aggressive thing is, you're walking by the room. So what they've done is they've decided they have some rules. We're not going to bicker. So we have three rules. And the first rule is this. If I have something to say to you, or if you have something to say to me, we're going to go into the same room. We're going to be in the same room. I'm not going to call from across the house. I'm not going to call from the other room. I'm going to be in the same room. Number one, be in the same room. Number two is get attention. Get the person's attention. And the other person, the rule is give your attention. And the third rule is say the thing clearly. Again, no sniping, no passive aggressive, just say the thing clearly. And it's remarkable that that does something to be able to say, okay, with my spouse, I'll be in the same room, I'll get attention and give attention and I'll say the thing clearly. How many arguments, how many gripes, how many tension, tense moments are alleviated because of this.

26:45 And same thing is true when it comes to God. To be able to say this with God, get in the same room. If I'm tempted to this blind spot of ignoring God, tempted to this blind spot of living as if I did not believe God exists, to consistently get in the same room with God and simply pay attention. And thirdly, you know, the second part is to ask one thing. That's the thing we say clearly. To pay attention and to ask one thing. and this has changed my prayer. This has changed my life.

27:18 is in any given moment to pay attention to God and ask this one thing. God, right now, how would you have me be? Just ask that question. God, right now, how would you have me be? It's so simple, but the crazy thing is there's no one answer. Because as life changes, God's answer changes. And as the need changes, is asking might change. But if I consistently do those two things, if I pay attention and ask that question, God, right now, how would you have me be? It leads me to a place where I'm in relationship with God. And in those big moments and those small moments, in that joy, in sorrow, in pain, in rest, you're inviting God into all moments. And when he's invited in, Here we go.

28:15 we can't ignore him. So at the end of all things, this is the remedy. Pay attention to God and ask one thing. God, right now, how would you have me be? And here's the crazy thing. God is real, so he's going to answer. He's going to remind you of your blind spots. He's going to give you the grace to bring to the light, to not ignore the one in whom we believe.