In 1986, Peter Gabriel had a hit with the song “Big Time,” in which a man with an inflated self-worth declares his liberation from the provincial values of his community of origin. He aspires to be what the American writer Tom Wolfe called a “master of the universe” in his 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities. The protagonist of Gabriel’s song declares, “There’s so much stuff I will own” and “I’m on my way, I’m making it.” Most significantly, he imagines himself the author of his own spiritual destiny: “I will pray to a big god as I kneel in the big church,” and finally, “my heaven will be a big heaven, and I will walk through the front door.”
Gabriel’s song, like Wolfe’s novel, offers a critique by way of a caricature of the self-made man.
For him, everything is always getting bigger, but is he happier or healthier than anyone else? No.
And most importantly, what happens in the soul of a person who is finally his own god? “My heaven” is no heaven at all.
There is a quote, related in various ways and often falsely attributed to John Steinbeck, that says the United States does not have poor people, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires. That is, it is deeply ingrained in our psyche that there are no natural failures in the land of the free, and that only a lack of will (or someone else’s cruelty) holds us back from success. Likewise, Protestantism’s emphasis on an individual relationship with God and the individual Christian’s interpretation of the Bible has tended to infect society, including Catholics, more widely. The result has been a Catholic Church that we define in as many different ways as there are different individuals—a “big church,” as Gabriel sings, but “big” in the wrong way.
In reality, the Catholic Church is big in another way. This is the way that precludes any idea of “my heaven” or of using our own credentials to get in.
The Church is big because God is big.
Indeed, in 1 Corinthians, which may still be the greatest document ever written about the Church, St. Paul wraps up by describing how, in the Resurrection, all things are placed in subjection under the feet of Christ the King, “that God may be everything to every one” (15:28). In this way, man feels indescribably small, with small words inadequate to express his gratitude for belonging to God. This person will inevitably face hardship and humiliation in life that make him feel smaller still, and his faith may shrink and expand throughout his life, depending on the trials he must face. Although as a Catholic he stands on the ground of everything, the sheer cliff face of nothingness strangely beckons sometimes. But at least he recognizes what is at stake. The person who belongs to Christ in the Catholic Church is not larger than life, but an integral part of a common life that is larger than him by an infinite measure. He may, in fact, look forward to taking the straight path through the narrow gate to heaven, which has already come near to him.
On the same album as “Big Time,” Peter Gabriel has another song, “In Your Eyes,” which portrays the point of view of almost the exact opposite sort of person. In this song, which some people wrongly interpret as merely a human love song, the man confesses at the beginning that he feels lost and empty and that he wants to run away. But something bigger and stronger keeps pulling him back from nothingness into everything. Gabriel sings, “I see the doorway to a thousand churches”—a far cry from the big man’s self-styled big church. He continues, “The resolution of all the fruitless searches—I see the light and the heat. I want to be that complete.”
I wonder myself whether I will ever feel truly comfortable in the Catholic Church, just as I wonder whether I will ever fully enjoy my experience of life in the world. But in both cases, I have come to see the mark of my belonging to Christ in the Catholic Church as my inability to consider other options.
Light, heat, complete. I’m in.
Are you ready to feel the heat of Christ? Order your copy of The Faith Unboxed today.