Cafeteria Christians

Many Catholics I know refer to themselves as ‘Cafeteria Catholics’. They disagree with many of the tenets of the Catholic church, so they pick what they like and ignore the rest.

C.S. Lewis says the following about an ideal Christian society:

“If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic…but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old fashioned…We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest.” (-from Mere Christianity)

I admit, I’m one of these ‘Cafeteria Christians’. I cherry pick the principles that I like and pretend the rest are not relevant to this time.

“Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.” (James 1:27 NLT)

Although we see ourselves as Christians, our society is moving away from allocating resources to the underprivileged. We equate looking after the welfare of the poor with socialism. Likewise, we tend to ignore Bible verses that mention submission, obedience, divorce, selling all possessions, turning the other cheek, etc. We sift through Christ’s teachings according to current societal standards and then convince ourselves that our human modifications are part of the original plan.