Jeremiah 35:12-17. God tells Jeremiah to tell Judah that he is done trying to warn them. He has sent them prophet after prophet, telling them to turn back to him and stop their evil ways, but they refuse to listen. God compares the errant people of Judah to the Rechabites. He says the Rechabites have followed the command not to drink wine for generations, they did not need to be reminded or sent prophets to keep the law. Since Judah will not listen, God will bring all of the evil he has pronounced upon them.

The Rechabites were a nomadic tribe with certain strict rules, including not drinking wine, which they kept for hundreds of years. They did not ease up on their rules because the rest of the Jews and the rest of the world saw no problem with drinking. God obviously looked favorably on this, since he uses them as an example of a people who follow the law without having to be reminded. Not drinking wine must have seemed like an overly strict law, even in the time of Jeremiah. But we often do not understand God's laws - we don't think like him and we never can. It does not matter if we don't understand them, or even if we disagree with them, we are to trust him and follow them anyway. This is not because he wants us to suffer, or he wants to lord his power over us, it's because he knows what rules and laws are good for us. We should not have to be continually reminded, and we certainly should not ignore the prophets he sends to get us back on track when we've gone astray - that way lies destruction.

In today's world we are making exceptions for all sorts of bending and breaking of God's laws. The source of God's law for Cathlics is Jesus' Church. We know that the Holy Spirit will guide the Church to stand firm in truth. We must trust that the Church is God's - the one institution that he promises to guide through all of history, and the Holy Spirit is guiding her, and her human (and therefore fallible) earthly leaders. It is not the leaders we trust, necessarily, but God. He told us that the Church is his, so if the Church tells us that something is a sin, it's a sin. Don't argue about it, just accept it.

If we substitute our judgment because we can't understand why something is a Catholic teaching, then we are sinning, and leading others into sin. The Church does not have to move the times, we, God's people, have to stay with the Church, even if it means following rules that everyone else is breaking, and even if it means mockery or punishment by people who don't understand us. There are many Catholics, even priests, these days who are substituting their judgment for God's. If that is allowed to reach critical mass, spiritual physics will kick in and we will all suffer. The Church will still survive, though, that promise has been made.

The warnings are here - there are all around us. We must open our ears, listen, and change our ways back to God's laws. Then, perhaps, we can avert the coming evil.