The Annoynance of the Gospel

By Fred Vilbig


In 1972, there was a movie about St. Francis called “Brother Son, Sister Moon.” Basically, Francis was portrayed as a hippie. After returning from an unsuccessful military campaign, he becomes a nature lover. He rejects his father’s materialism and begins to sort of float through life. I get the impression that St. Francis lived according to the philosophy of self-fulfillment where you do what comes naturally. It’s wrong to resist those feelings.

The problem with this image is that it is a lie. Francis fell in love with Jesus. He was a true son of the Church. In order to control his passions, he fasted seven times a year for 40 days. That’s right; he had 7 Lents a year.

The annoyance of the Gospel is that Jesus did not only say, “Believe in the good news.” That would have been easy. Just believe. How simple!

But Jesus said, “Repent, and believe the good news.” Mark 1:15. Repentance and faith were intricately connected.

You really can’t have one without the other.

We live in a broken world. We are surrounded by selfishness, sickness, brutality, and war. It seems that suffering is the norm.

But deep in our hearts, we sense that this is not the way things ought to be. We don’t think that creation is supposed to be this way. We look at sunrises and sunsets; beautiful fall days and the eruption of flowers in the spring; we look at the innocence of a new-born baby and the hopes and dreams of a newly-wed couple; and we see an underlying plan and design that is profoundly, fundamentally beautiful. And we sense that things are not the way that God intended them to be.

That brokenness is the result of our sins: both original sin and our own individual sins. When we choose our own way over God’s, when we make ourselves our own god, we push God away. With God there is order, truth, beauty, and love. Away from God, there is chaos, selfishness, pain, and suffering: the beginnings of hell.

So Jesus calls us to repentance; not because He is mean, but because He loves us. He calls us to the unity, truth, and beauty that are found only in God. He tells us to choose God and not ourselves.

What “Brother Son, Sister Moon” did get right was that happiness is all about love. Just not self-love. God wants us to be happy, but He knows we will only find true happiness in Him, and not in ourselves. “Repent, and believe the good news.” How annoying!