God’s attributes
Have you ever thought about God and wondered, “Why is He so complicated?”
Well, the fact is He isn’t. God, being pure spirit, is utterly simple. God is the fullness of perfection, and therefore has no parts and does not change. If He could change, He wouldn’t be perfect, because a change implies movement either from a state of lesser perfection to greater (improvement) or from greater perfection to lesser (deterioration or degradation). But God is simply perfect, and so can never be either more or less perfect than He already is. So He cannot change.
To understand how a spirit can have no parts, you only have to realize that it is completely immaterial. Try this: think of an idea (any idea on any topic). Now, what part of that idea forms the idea’s boundary? OK? What are its dimensions & how does it work? Or is there one corner of the idea that isn’t touching the center of the idea? Get it? These questions make no sense, right? They don’t apply to ideas because ideas don’t have parts. Neither do spirits. (The big difference between an idea and a spirit is that a spirit is a person that possesses an intellect and a will, and it controls both. An idea is not a person but merely a function of an intellect and cannot control itself, but is controlled by the person who generated it.) The only other major hurdle I can see regarding the nature of spirits is to understand how a being can be considered living without having a material body. But that is a discussion for another time.
God isn’t big or small, fast or slow, old or young. He simply is. That’s why the best way to describe Him—the best name we can give Him—is the name He gave to Himself: “I am who I am” (Ex 3:14). We know from this that He is a living and personal entity, not an impersonal “force,” (and so can identify Himself as “I”) and that He exists outside of time (with its relations of past and future) and is therefore eternal (everything to Him is present, now—“am”—not was or will be, but only am). And He is the only being who fits this description, since there can only be one eternal, infinite and perfect thing (if there were two, for example, there would be some sort of “boundary” separating or distinguishing the two, which would be a limit, so by that fact they wouldn’t be infinite).
The reason He seems complicated to us is that we are so limited that we can only understand Him by mentally dividing up His divine essence into individual attributes and looking at them one at a time. (Not that they are actually separate from one another, they are actually all the same thing—they are God—but this is too much for our created intellects to grasp.) And so in order to understand anything about Him we have to study these attributes individually, and then try to understand how they aren’t really separate or opposed to one another at all, but actually all simultaneously and integrally the same thing—God Himself.
God’s justice and mercy
So we can take two of these attributes, which we recognize as good things, and say that God is both infinitely and perfectly just, and infinitely and perfectly merciful (all of His attributes are infinite [without limit] and perfect [impossible to improve upon]). To our human way of understanding things, justice is usually viewed as something harsh—punishment for wrongdoing—and mercy as somehow opposed to it—softening or taking away from real justice. But God’s justice really is merciful, and because of His infinite love for us, His mercy really is justice.
At the end of time (as-we-know-it), there will only be heaven and hell. Heaven is defined as eternal life with God, and hell is eternal “life” [conscious existence] without God. In the end, each created spirit will be in one or the other of these “places.” (We can’t really imagine what heaven or hell will be like (1 Cor 2:9), since time-and-space-as-we-know-them will have passed away (2 Pet 3:10). They probably won’t be places like places on earth, but rather conditions or states of being which are determined by each spirit’s own attitude toward and relationship with God and the other spirits He created. The holy ones (the ones who love God) and the reprobate (the ones who reject God) will somehow be invisible to each other and incapable of either interacting with each other or changing their respective states from one to the other, so for all intents and purposes they may just as well be in completely different places.)
The angels will remain as they have always been since the moment of their creation (incorporeal beings with intellect and will) and the human souls will be reunited with their human bodies (which will have been transformed into incorruptibility). Those in heaven will enjoy eternal bliss and those in hell will experience eternal torment. The exact nature of this bliss and torment has not been revealed to us (hell has been described as an unquenchable fire; that may be just a metaphor, or maybe not), and it will probably be as individuated to each person as his experiences were on earth. What has been revealed is that they will be beyond anything we can imagine in this life.
Now, each human person alive today can choose either to believe that revelation or disbelieve it. But given the stakes, are you really willing to risk the loss of bliss beyond measure and end up in torment beyond measure if you choose disbelief and then turn out to be wrong? It boggles my mind to think that there are actually people who, after hearing the gospel message, decide to “take their chances” and live like there is no God, that this present existence is all there is and they can live as they please, and that there will be no hell to greet them when they die. Call me a coward, but I’m not willing to risk it. I am content to sacrifice a little pleasure and submit to a little pain and humiliation in the here-and-now in exchange for just the possibility of heaven on the other side of the door of death.
God’s perfect justice will ensure that those who can’t stand the idea of spending eternity with Him will have someplace else to spend their eternity. And that’s also a mercy, giving them exactly what their hearts desire. But those who would rather be with Him, He will gather to Himself. By our sins, we deserve hell; that’s justice, because any offense against the Eternal deserves eternal separation from Him. But in His mercy, He chose to take upon Himself the eternal penalty for our sins in the Sacrifice of love in the Person of His Son. In justice, only an eternal Person could adequately compensate for an eternal penalty. In His human nature, He returned to humanity the possibility of eternal life with Him. All we have to do is choose to serve Him in this life, and ask for His mercy for our sins, submitting to the operation of His grace.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Sunday, February 19, 2006
And another thing, ...
There was another aspect of Catholicism that I intended to cover in my last post [February 14: Life from the inside (Part 2)], but forgot. And that is: why Catholic teaching seems so, well, so complicated.
Non-Catholics typically look at the well-known practices & beliefs of Catholics and think of them as an eclectic, jumbled hodgepodge of unrelated and eccentric ideas and behaviors. A veritable grab-bag of nonsense invented or accumulated in pack-rat fashion over the centuries. I mean, just look at them:
That’s the outsider’s view.
But once a person makes the decision, moved by grace, to take the teachings and practices of the Church seriously and begins to look into their meaning and history, it’s as if he takes the huge pile of fabric he once mistook for a “grab-bag” and begins to open and unroll it and takes a hard look at it. He then realizes that it is actually a tapestry, ingeniously woven in a seamless integrated pattern. The images depicted on it are not random and confused, but interconnected, historically organic & rationally sound. (Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman said to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.)
And as he looks more closely, he begins to notice certain threads in the fabric that can be traced from one doctrine to the next, to the next … tracing them all the way to the central figure: Jesus Christ, true God & true man, His life, passion, death and resurrection. It’s called the unity of faith.
Everything, no matter how remote it may seem at first, eventually relates to and takes its meaning from the person of Jesus Christ. Catholicism, properly understood, is a unified whole, not a random mishmash. This is why, once you begin to “tug” on a particular thread (say, you think there’s nothing wrong with artificial contraception), you very soon start to see that one thread, once pulled out of place, begins to mar and distort the others nearby (e.g., the total gift of self in marriage, the dignity of the human person, the sanctity of human life, reliance on divine providence …). Before long, the whole pattern starts to come undone, just because you thought “one little thread … way down here in the corner” wasn’t to your liking, wasn’t necessary, and it was OK to pull it out.
It doesn’t work that way, though. “Cafeteria Catholicism” (the practice of picking and choosing the doctrines you like and skipping over the ones you don’t) is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Once you reject the magisterial (teaching) authority of the Church, in effect making yourself the final judge of the way things should be, you cease to be Catholic and become, well, something else. Politicians (to use the most common example) who claim to be Catholic, yet maintain that it is desirable to protect the heinous practice of abortion by every possible law are lying. They are not Catholic because they dismiss fundamental Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life (and a whole lot more besides, because you can’t reject one without implicitly rejecting a host of others).
On the other hand, once, through the operation of grace, you make the act of faith that you “believe and profess all that the Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God,”* while you may not understand every detail of every article of the faith, you still believe, on the word of Jesus, that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church (Matt 16:19), that it would never formally teach an error as truth to be believed by all. And, if you choose to dig deeper into any of the individual tenets of the faith, that truth is always borne out to an amazing degree, bringing with that understanding a deep sense of peace and satisfaction (and even love) that an “outsider” cannot know.
* (part of the Profession of Faith made by adult converts)
Non-Catholics typically look at the well-known practices & beliefs of Catholics and think of them as an eclectic, jumbled hodgepodge of unrelated and eccentric ideas and behaviors. A veritable grab-bag of nonsense invented or accumulated in pack-rat fashion over the centuries. I mean, just look at them:
Papal infallibility, praying to saints, fish on Fridays, “the Mass” as a
sacrifice, penance & personal mortification, confession to a priest, rosary
beads, mortal & venial sins, crucifixes & statues, holy water,
condemnation of contraception, marriage tribunals, priestly celibacy, the whole
Mary thing, sign of the cross, seven sacraments, yada, yada, yada ….
That’s the outsider’s view.
But once a person makes the decision, moved by grace, to take the teachings and practices of the Church seriously and begins to look into their meaning and history, it’s as if he takes the huge pile of fabric he once mistook for a “grab-bag” and begins to open and unroll it and takes a hard look at it. He then realizes that it is actually a tapestry, ingeniously woven in a seamless integrated pattern. The images depicted on it are not random and confused, but interconnected, historically organic & rationally sound. (Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman said to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.)
And as he looks more closely, he begins to notice certain threads in the fabric that can be traced from one doctrine to the next, to the next … tracing them all the way to the central figure: Jesus Christ, true God & true man, His life, passion, death and resurrection. It’s called the unity of faith.
Everything, no matter how remote it may seem at first, eventually relates to and takes its meaning from the person of Jesus Christ. Catholicism, properly understood, is a unified whole, not a random mishmash. This is why, once you begin to “tug” on a particular thread (say, you think there’s nothing wrong with artificial contraception), you very soon start to see that one thread, once pulled out of place, begins to mar and distort the others nearby (e.g., the total gift of self in marriage, the dignity of the human person, the sanctity of human life, reliance on divine providence …). Before long, the whole pattern starts to come undone, just because you thought “one little thread … way down here in the corner” wasn’t to your liking, wasn’t necessary, and it was OK to pull it out.
It doesn’t work that way, though. “Cafeteria Catholicism” (the practice of picking and choosing the doctrines you like and skipping over the ones you don’t) is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Once you reject the magisterial (teaching) authority of the Church, in effect making yourself the final judge of the way things should be, you cease to be Catholic and become, well, something else. Politicians (to use the most common example) who claim to be Catholic, yet maintain that it is desirable to protect the heinous practice of abortion by every possible law are lying. They are not Catholic because they dismiss fundamental Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life (and a whole lot more besides, because you can’t reject one without implicitly rejecting a host of others).
On the other hand, once, through the operation of grace, you make the act of faith that you “believe and profess all that the Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God,”* while you may not understand every detail of every article of the faith, you still believe, on the word of Jesus, that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church (Matt 16:19), that it would never formally teach an error as truth to be believed by all. And, if you choose to dig deeper into any of the individual tenets of the faith, that truth is always borne out to an amazing degree, bringing with that understanding a deep sense of peace and satisfaction (and even love) that an “outsider” cannot know.
* (part of the Profession of Faith made by adult converts)
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Life from the inside (Part 2)
The Catholic Church is not a human institution. It is a divine institution with human members.
This is because it was founded by a divine Person, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ. And the life (animating principle) of the Church is also a divine Person. The New Testament refers to the Church as the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27; Eph 1:22-23, 4:12; Col 1:24). Christ died for us all on the hill of Calvary at one moment in history (approximately 1,975 years ago), but rose again from the dead less than 48 hours later, never to die again. Therefore, the Body of Christ today is a living Body. The life principle (soul) of the living Body of Christ, the Church, is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit, originally manifested in the infant Church on Pentecost Sunday (Acts 2), ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven (Acts 1:8-9).
For this reason, membership in the Catholic Church cannot be compared to membership in any merely human institution, such as a club or other fraternal, social or religious organization. Each of these was founded by a human being, even the various Protestant churches. (This also explains why the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed—despite the best efforts of both its enemies and its members. It is maintained in existence through time, not by human effort or ingenuity, but purely by the power of God to be Christ’s presence in the world until He returns at the end of time.)
It is more like membership in a family than in some other human institution. While it is possible for a non-member to study the principles and tenets of an organization in order to understand why it exists and what it’s all about, the same cannot be said of a family. The only way to thoroughly understand and appreciate a family is to join it.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard stories by former Protestants who, following the path of truth, heeded the unmistakable call of God to find His “One True Church,” the original Christian Church founded by Jesus Christ.
Typically, they’d start in one of the Protestant denominations (the church of their youth) and over time come to realize that there were certain elements among the traditions or teachings of their church that didn’t quite square with the Biblical principles they’d been taught, or certain passages in the New Testament that made absolutely no sense given their church’s standard interpretation. So they left it and “went shopping” for another church that made more sense.
Well, after years (or even decades) of searching around the denominations, finding elements of Christian life and truth in each one, yet also finding each one somehow seriously flawed, eventually they would find they had run out of options. They realize that the fullness of the Christian life and Christian truth was not to be found among the Protestant denominations.
At this point, they often report breaking out in a cold sweat: “No, no, NO!!! (they would typically pray), NOT the ‘Whore of Babylon’—not the Catholic church!! Please, God, Noooo! Anything but THAT!!”
So they might try one of the Eastern Orthodox churches instead, recognizing their valid priesthood and the validity of their sacraments (beyond Baptism and Matrimony which were already valid in Protestantism, not requiring priestly ordination). This will do, they think. “I can have all the biblical sacraments, and not have to join the Catholic church. Whew! Far out!”
But after a while the nagging thoughts come back and they sense that this too is only a detour, not their final destination. This realization always centers in some way on the question of authority, especially of the Petrine office, the principle of visible unity in the Church Jesus established on earth (Matt 16:17-19; Lk 22:32; Jn 21:15-17).
So, in time, they find themselves on the threshold of the Catholic Church.
There is a time (sometimes a long time) of confusion and indecision, not unlike the period of time when a man is making up his mind to ask the woman he loves if she will consent to become his wife. In both situations, such a one realizes that he is on the verge of a life-changing moment—a defining moment in his existence as a person. Joining the Catholic Church (he realizes) is most definitely not like joining the Lutherans or the Baptists. It really is more like getting married. Jesus is the biblical Bridegroom (Matt 9:15, etc.) and the Church is his Bride.
Once they are finally received into full communion with the Church however—they already enjoyed an imperfect, partial communion within their Protestant denominations by virtue of their baptism—they are invariably flooded almost immediately with the deep, mystical and joyful sense that they are finally home. They realize now that they could never be happy anywhere else, and wonder why they took so long to find the ONE place they were meant to be all along!
So just as it is impossible for an “outsider” to perfectly understand a human family, the same holds for the family of God, the Catholic Church.
This is because it was founded by a divine Person, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ. And the life (animating principle) of the Church is also a divine Person. The New Testament refers to the Church as the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27; Eph 1:22-23, 4:12; Col 1:24). Christ died for us all on the hill of Calvary at one moment in history (approximately 1,975 years ago), but rose again from the dead less than 48 hours later, never to die again. Therefore, the Body of Christ today is a living Body. The life principle (soul) of the living Body of Christ, the Church, is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit, originally manifested in the infant Church on Pentecost Sunday (Acts 2), ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven (Acts 1:8-9).
For this reason, membership in the Catholic Church cannot be compared to membership in any merely human institution, such as a club or other fraternal, social or religious organization. Each of these was founded by a human being, even the various Protestant churches. (This also explains why the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed—despite the best efforts of both its enemies and its members. It is maintained in existence through time, not by human effort or ingenuity, but purely by the power of God to be Christ’s presence in the world until He returns at the end of time.)
It is more like membership in a family than in some other human institution. While it is possible for a non-member to study the principles and tenets of an organization in order to understand why it exists and what it’s all about, the same cannot be said of a family. The only way to thoroughly understand and appreciate a family is to join it.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard stories by former Protestants who, following the path of truth, heeded the unmistakable call of God to find His “One True Church,” the original Christian Church founded by Jesus Christ.
Typically, they’d start in one of the Protestant denominations (the church of their youth) and over time come to realize that there were certain elements among the traditions or teachings of their church that didn’t quite square with the Biblical principles they’d been taught, or certain passages in the New Testament that made absolutely no sense given their church’s standard interpretation. So they left it and “went shopping” for another church that made more sense.
Well, after years (or even decades) of searching around the denominations, finding elements of Christian life and truth in each one, yet also finding each one somehow seriously flawed, eventually they would find they had run out of options. They realize that the fullness of the Christian life and Christian truth was not to be found among the Protestant denominations.
At this point, they often report breaking out in a cold sweat: “No, no, NO!!! (they would typically pray), NOT the ‘Whore of Babylon’—not the Catholic church!! Please, God, Noooo! Anything but THAT!!”
So they might try one of the Eastern Orthodox churches instead, recognizing their valid priesthood and the validity of their sacraments (beyond Baptism and Matrimony which were already valid in Protestantism, not requiring priestly ordination). This will do, they think. “I can have all the biblical sacraments, and not have to join the Catholic church. Whew! Far out!”
But after a while the nagging thoughts come back and they sense that this too is only a detour, not their final destination. This realization always centers in some way on the question of authority, especially of the Petrine office, the principle of visible unity in the Church Jesus established on earth (Matt 16:17-19; Lk 22:32; Jn 21:15-17).
So, in time, they find themselves on the threshold of the Catholic Church.
There is a time (sometimes a long time) of confusion and indecision, not unlike the period of time when a man is making up his mind to ask the woman he loves if she will consent to become his wife. In both situations, such a one realizes that he is on the verge of a life-changing moment—a defining moment in his existence as a person. Joining the Catholic Church (he realizes) is most definitely not like joining the Lutherans or the Baptists. It really is more like getting married. Jesus is the biblical Bridegroom (Matt 9:15, etc.) and the Church is his Bride.
Once they are finally received into full communion with the Church however—they already enjoyed an imperfect, partial communion within their Protestant denominations by virtue of their baptism—they are invariably flooded almost immediately with the deep, mystical and joyful sense that they are finally home. They realize now that they could never be happy anywhere else, and wonder why they took so long to find the ONE place they were meant to be all along!
So just as it is impossible for an “outsider” to perfectly understand a human family, the same holds for the family of God, the Catholic Church.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Life from the inside (Part 1)
You may have been wondering what the point was of that post below titled Different (Dec. 4, 2005). It was intended as an elementary illustration of the principle that quite frequently things look completely different from the inside than they do from the outside. So different, in fact, that it is impossible to truly know the thing until you experience it from the inside. I intended to post subsequent examples in a similar vein, but “never got around to it ....” The other two posts were to be on the topics of love & marriage, and the Catholic Church. I will try to sum up my thoughts on those topics in this present post & the next (I hope), but without the elaborate illustrative narratives.
Love is something everybody knows something about. Every person has some experience on some level of something they call “love.” Love is a thing that is generally hard to define with any precision, but usually people claim that they “know it when they see it.” And it’s safe to say, I think, that no two people experience love in quite the same way. I’m sure everyone would agree that love is probably the most precious thing on this earth.
Whether it is the love experienced between spouses, parents & children, or close friends, it is a treasure that is universally recognized and prized. It is quite distinct from the person we love (or sense loves us). Love is not the other person; it is a separate something that is shared between two persons (or, sadly, that is wasted on a material object or some other impersonal concept that cannot return it), and distinct even from the manner in which we express it to the other person (e.g. gentle words, a caress or kiss, conjugal embrace, etc.). Love is absolutely intangible because it is a spiritual reality, not physical. (It frequently spills over, it is true, from the spirit into the emotions, and we experience such physiological manifestations as accelerated respiration, mental preoccupation and/or confusion, but real love isn’t the only thing that can produce these effects, so it is always wise to proceed with great caution.)
It’s the stuff of poetry and music. Popular “love songs” attempt to describe it. It is a beauty that cannot be seen or heard, but is absolutely and inescapably real.
(It is tragically also true that there are some people who mainly experience love as a void because they see others experience the joy of love, but they themselves are so alone in life that they do not have anyone to love themselves, or to love them back.)
Now I could talk about love all day long in sentimental, analytical, allegorical, metaphysical or theological terms and, although that might give you a few new insights (or thoroughly convince you I was crazy), it still would not give you the actual experience of love itself. When two persons experience real love, their view of life itself changes—drastically. When you’re “in love,” colors seem brighter, sounds seem sweeter, everything around you takes on a newness and clarity that is startling. Of course, things don’t actually change, only your perception of things is heightened because love has changed your outlook on everything around you—on life itself.
Life itself looks different from the inside of a loving relationship than it does from the outside.
Love comes through knowledge of another person. It is impossible to truly love anyone you know nothing about. A man courts a woman, for example, in order to get to know her better, and to let her know him better. And, hopefully, with mutual knowledge will come mutual love; the more insightful the knowledge, the deeper the love.
Before I met my wife, she was a stranger, and I might not have given her a second glance (had circumstances been different). Once we met, we decided we wanted to get to know one another better, and over time, I began to appreciate her personality (and personal quirks) in ways that couldn’t be imagined before. Our love deepened and now she’s my wife. And our love continues to deepen over the years. Someone who doesn’t know my wife or me would never understand why we love each other the way we do. But that’s OK; they don’t have to. I understand, because I see it from the inside.
But true love isn’t limited to married love. Siblings can love one another very deeply, as can parents their children, of course, and vice versa, as well as close friends of the same or opposite sex. (Deep love need not be expressed genitally, as that is appropriate only to the state of marriage—between one man and one woman.) There is also the love of a priest or religious (sister/nun or brother) for the Lord or for His bride, the Church. And someone outside that relationship cannot understand it properly. Only those who experience the love from the inside can truly know what it’s all about or truly appreciate it.
Love is something everybody knows something about. Every person has some experience on some level of something they call “love.” Love is a thing that is generally hard to define with any precision, but usually people claim that they “know it when they see it.” And it’s safe to say, I think, that no two people experience love in quite the same way. I’m sure everyone would agree that love is probably the most precious thing on this earth.
Whether it is the love experienced between spouses, parents & children, or close friends, it is a treasure that is universally recognized and prized. It is quite distinct from the person we love (or sense loves us). Love is not the other person; it is a separate something that is shared between two persons (or, sadly, that is wasted on a material object or some other impersonal concept that cannot return it), and distinct even from the manner in which we express it to the other person (e.g. gentle words, a caress or kiss, conjugal embrace, etc.). Love is absolutely intangible because it is a spiritual reality, not physical. (It frequently spills over, it is true, from the spirit into the emotions, and we experience such physiological manifestations as accelerated respiration, mental preoccupation and/or confusion, but real love isn’t the only thing that can produce these effects, so it is always wise to proceed with great caution.)
It’s the stuff of poetry and music. Popular “love songs” attempt to describe it. It is a beauty that cannot be seen or heard, but is absolutely and inescapably real.
(It is tragically also true that there are some people who mainly experience love as a void because they see others experience the joy of love, but they themselves are so alone in life that they do not have anyone to love themselves, or to love them back.)
Now I could talk about love all day long in sentimental, analytical, allegorical, metaphysical or theological terms and, although that might give you a few new insights (or thoroughly convince you I was crazy), it still would not give you the actual experience of love itself. When two persons experience real love, their view of life itself changes—drastically. When you’re “in love,” colors seem brighter, sounds seem sweeter, everything around you takes on a newness and clarity that is startling. Of course, things don’t actually change, only your perception of things is heightened because love has changed your outlook on everything around you—on life itself.
Life itself looks different from the inside of a loving relationship than it does from the outside.
Love comes through knowledge of another person. It is impossible to truly love anyone you know nothing about. A man courts a woman, for example, in order to get to know her better, and to let her know him better. And, hopefully, with mutual knowledge will come mutual love; the more insightful the knowledge, the deeper the love.
Before I met my wife, she was a stranger, and I might not have given her a second glance (had circumstances been different). Once we met, we decided we wanted to get to know one another better, and over time, I began to appreciate her personality (and personal quirks) in ways that couldn’t be imagined before. Our love deepened and now she’s my wife. And our love continues to deepen over the years. Someone who doesn’t know my wife or me would never understand why we love each other the way we do. But that’s OK; they don’t have to. I understand, because I see it from the inside.
But true love isn’t limited to married love. Siblings can love one another very deeply, as can parents their children, of course, and vice versa, as well as close friends of the same or opposite sex. (Deep love need not be expressed genitally, as that is appropriate only to the state of marriage—between one man and one woman.) There is also the love of a priest or religious (sister/nun or brother) for the Lord or for His bride, the Church. And someone outside that relationship cannot understand it properly. Only those who experience the love from the inside can truly know what it’s all about or truly appreciate it.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Catholics in American public life
A news commentator makes the pointed observation that, with the expected confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito, there would be 5 Catholics on the U.S. Supreme Court. Was there any emotion in his words, any hint that he felt either good or bad about this fact? I don’t know; I didn’t actually hear the remark, but only a report about it from a colleague. What difference does it make what religion the respective justices profess? What would prompt the pundit to remark on it in the first place?
According to one theory, it shouldn’t make the slightest difference, any more than his hair or eye color. Aren’t we still free to exercise any religion we choose without any interference from the government? (Isn’t that guaranteed by the First Amendment?) Well, that’s the theory anyway.
But religion is almost universally considered a “hot button” topic, especially in regard to public policy and public behavior (and getting more so every day), and this seems to be true a fortiori with respect to the Catholic religion. Why is this? Most likely because the unique doctrinal claims of the Catholic Church and its firm stand on many moral issues seem to rub some people the wrong way, and perhaps the demands placed on individual Catholics by Church discipline cause some people (both Catholics and non-Catholics) to chafe, and at the same time make faithful Catholics an easy target for derision.
A common assumption seems to be that “the Catholic Church” is monolithic, that the pope wields enormous power over virtually every aspect of the lives of Catholics, and for their part, individual Catholics generally obey the pope without question. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. While the Church does make a concerted effort to instruct the faithful (and everyone else) unambiguously about doctrine and practice (and the pope is the only individual who can speak officially for the whole Church on his own authority)—and Catholics have a moral obligation to receive such instruction with a degree of reverent assent and obedience—Catholics are still human beings with free will and sinful tendencies, and are therefore free to reject it. (Sadly many Catholics prefer to accommodate themselves to “this world” and so choose to reject Church teaching, and yet insist on retaining the name “Catholic.”)
But I think most people would agree that one of the principal functions of any religion is to inform the consciences of those who allegedly profess it, to teach them what things are right and what are wrong. And the Catholic Church, as everybody knows, has some very strong things to say about right & wrong with respect to a number of specific behaviors that are very much in dispute in American life today (e.g., abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia and the nature of marriage).
Americans who favor (for example) the unrestricted practice of abortion or homosexuality fear that if enough Catholics (who take the teachings of their Church seriously and use them to inform their individual consciences) are elected or appointed to positions of power in the halls of government, that they will try to institutionalize Catholic doctrine in public policy. Consequently, long before the candidacy of John F. Kennedy, it was a common enough opinion that the only good Catholic (i.e. one considered suitable for public office) was a bad Catholic (i.e. one who rejected the authoritative teachings of his Church)—even if people didn’t consciously think about it in those terms. And a lot of people thought that the only way Kennedy could win a national election was for him to stipulate that he would in no way permit his Catholicism to have any effect on his decisions regarding public policy. And so he did, and so he was. Could he have been elected had he not made that promise? Given the attitudes of most Americans—and especially of the “power brokers”—at that time, probably not. And that has been the accepted standard for Catholics seeking public office ever since.
Now back to Judge Alito for the Supreme Court. On the nine-member Court, any 5 justices constitute a majority which can nowadays pretty much have its way with the American legal system. (Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be this way, as the framers of the Constitution considered the judiciary to be the weakest of the 3 branches of government and nothing to worry about—but that’s another story.) This is how the infamous Roe vs. Wade decision became the purported “law of the land” on Jan. 22, 1973.
Actually, I don’t think it’s so much Catholics they’re worried about as social conservatives. After all, it’s “Catholics” like Ted Kennedy who are among the strongest opponents to Alito’s confirmation! And one or two of the “Catholics” already on the Court are on the “liberal” end of the ideological scale. But for them to say in effect “social conservatives need not apply” would only highlight their own social-liberal ideology and agenda, which ordinarily only works when it’s kept “under the radar” and away from intellectual scrutiny.
But since Samuel Alito is (*gasp*) both reportedly a social conservative and a faithful Roman Catholic (not to mention a “strict constructionist” who bases his interpretation of the law on what the Constitution actually says (what a concept!) rather than what he wishes it to mean)—as was John Roberts before him—his opponents feel the safest course of action is to insinuate unspecified fears about his Catholicism (the object of the last “socially acceptable” bigotry at work in America today) into the public discussion in order to rally public opinion against him.
Historically (until fairly recently), this country has looked to its traditional Christian ethos as perhaps its most prominent foundational principle. However, this ethos or philosophical paradigm was not merely “Christian,” but specifically Protestant (Puritan) in nature, which from its roots in the late Middle Ages in Europe had a deep-seated suspicion of & even antagonism against the Church of Rome. Given this native cultural attitude among most Americans, it is understandable that Catholics who conscientiously followed the teachings of their Church would be only just tolerated most of the time in most places, and even at times actively and viciously persecuted (as they were in the mid to late 19th Century).
Many dyed-in-the-wool liberals today are beginning to sense that the “icon” of the left-liberal agenda (the Roe vs. Wade decision & the practice of abortion-on-demand it legally permitted) is hanging by a thread and that its days are numbered, and they are desperate to save it. Their main problem is that because it was cut from the cloth of pure ideology there is no rational argument they can marshal to defend it. So their only hope is to keep principled judges off the Court. And without a Bill Clinton making the nominations, they have to keep emotions high and rely on “smear” campaigns.
According to one theory, it shouldn’t make the slightest difference, any more than his hair or eye color. Aren’t we still free to exercise any religion we choose without any interference from the government? (Isn’t that guaranteed by the First Amendment?) Well, that’s the theory anyway.
But religion is almost universally considered a “hot button” topic, especially in regard to public policy and public behavior (and getting more so every day), and this seems to be true a fortiori with respect to the Catholic religion. Why is this? Most likely because the unique doctrinal claims of the Catholic Church and its firm stand on many moral issues seem to rub some people the wrong way, and perhaps the demands placed on individual Catholics by Church discipline cause some people (both Catholics and non-Catholics) to chafe, and at the same time make faithful Catholics an easy target for derision.
A common assumption seems to be that “the Catholic Church” is monolithic, that the pope wields enormous power over virtually every aspect of the lives of Catholics, and for their part, individual Catholics generally obey the pope without question. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. While the Church does make a concerted effort to instruct the faithful (and everyone else) unambiguously about doctrine and practice (and the pope is the only individual who can speak officially for the whole Church on his own authority)—and Catholics have a moral obligation to receive such instruction with a degree of reverent assent and obedience—Catholics are still human beings with free will and sinful tendencies, and are therefore free to reject it. (Sadly many Catholics prefer to accommodate themselves to “this world” and so choose to reject Church teaching, and yet insist on retaining the name “Catholic.”)
But I think most people would agree that one of the principal functions of any religion is to inform the consciences of those who allegedly profess it, to teach them what things are right and what are wrong. And the Catholic Church, as everybody knows, has some very strong things to say about right & wrong with respect to a number of specific behaviors that are very much in dispute in American life today (e.g., abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia and the nature of marriage).
Americans who favor (for example) the unrestricted practice of abortion or homosexuality fear that if enough Catholics (who take the teachings of their Church seriously and use them to inform their individual consciences) are elected or appointed to positions of power in the halls of government, that they will try to institutionalize Catholic doctrine in public policy. Consequently, long before the candidacy of John F. Kennedy, it was a common enough opinion that the only good Catholic (i.e. one considered suitable for public office) was a bad Catholic (i.e. one who rejected the authoritative teachings of his Church)—even if people didn’t consciously think about it in those terms. And a lot of people thought that the only way Kennedy could win a national election was for him to stipulate that he would in no way permit his Catholicism to have any effect on his decisions regarding public policy. And so he did, and so he was. Could he have been elected had he not made that promise? Given the attitudes of most Americans—and especially of the “power brokers”—at that time, probably not. And that has been the accepted standard for Catholics seeking public office ever since.
Now back to Judge Alito for the Supreme Court. On the nine-member Court, any 5 justices constitute a majority which can nowadays pretty much have its way with the American legal system. (Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be this way, as the framers of the Constitution considered the judiciary to be the weakest of the 3 branches of government and nothing to worry about—but that’s another story.) This is how the infamous Roe vs. Wade decision became the purported “law of the land” on Jan. 22, 1973.
Actually, I don’t think it’s so much Catholics they’re worried about as social conservatives. After all, it’s “Catholics” like Ted Kennedy who are among the strongest opponents to Alito’s confirmation! And one or two of the “Catholics” already on the Court are on the “liberal” end of the ideological scale. But for them to say in effect “social conservatives need not apply” would only highlight their own social-liberal ideology and agenda, which ordinarily only works when it’s kept “under the radar” and away from intellectual scrutiny.
But since Samuel Alito is (*gasp*) both reportedly a social conservative and a faithful Roman Catholic (not to mention a “strict constructionist” who bases his interpretation of the law on what the Constitution actually says (what a concept!) rather than what he wishes it to mean)—as was John Roberts before him—his opponents feel the safest course of action is to insinuate unspecified fears about his Catholicism (the object of the last “socially acceptable” bigotry at work in America today) into the public discussion in order to rally public opinion against him.
Historically (until fairly recently), this country has looked to its traditional Christian ethos as perhaps its most prominent foundational principle. However, this ethos or philosophical paradigm was not merely “Christian,” but specifically Protestant (Puritan) in nature, which from its roots in the late Middle Ages in Europe had a deep-seated suspicion of & even antagonism against the Church of Rome. Given this native cultural attitude among most Americans, it is understandable that Catholics who conscientiously followed the teachings of their Church would be only just tolerated most of the time in most places, and even at times actively and viciously persecuted (as they were in the mid to late 19th Century).
Many dyed-in-the-wool liberals today are beginning to sense that the “icon” of the left-liberal agenda (the Roe vs. Wade decision & the practice of abortion-on-demand it legally permitted) is hanging by a thread and that its days are numbered, and they are desperate to save it. Their main problem is that because it was cut from the cloth of pure ideology there is no rational argument they can marshal to defend it. So their only hope is to keep principled judges off the Court. And without a Bill Clinton making the nominations, they have to keep emotions high and rely on “smear” campaigns.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
No, I'm not dead.
Nor have I abandoned this blog. I've just been ... well, busy. Either busy or exhausted (I'll spare you the details).
I have lots of ideas about things to post about, but no time to write them down, so they just rattle around in my head, and time marches on, and you folks wonder if I'm still around or what. I hope to write something interesting sometime soon (promises, promises), so stay tuned....
I have lots of ideas about things to post about, but no time to write them down, so they just rattle around in my head, and time marches on, and you folks wonder if I'm still around or what. I hope to write something interesting sometime soon (promises, promises), so stay tuned....
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Different
“What’s that, Mommy?”
Little Charlie pointed out the car window to the imposing gray stone edifice looming ahead as they drove down Ridgeline Avenue.
“Hm? … Oh, it’s a church,” his mother replied.
“Like our church?”
“No, honey … it’s a Catholic church.”
By now they had passed and the building was behind them. Charlie thought for a moment. “What’s it like?”
“What do you mean?”
“The church. On the inside. What’s it like?”
Charlie and his parents attended the Hosanna Evangelical Lutheran Church on 16th Street. It was the only church 4-year-old Charlie had ever been in. He was familiar with its clean white walls and comfortable seats. He liked to go there on Sundays and listen to the singing of the grown-up choir and he was even learning many of the hymns by heart. He liked to hear Pastor Willis talk about Jesus, but sometimes Charlie fell asleep when he no longer understood what he was saying.
After a moment’s pause, his mother said, “Mm … I’m not sure. I’ve never been in a Catholic church. But I’ve heard it’s dark and spooky.”
Charlie was surprised at this answer. How could a church be dark and spooky? Don’t they have any lights? A church—at least his church—is bright and cheerful. Then he remembered his mother’s words, that it wasn’t like his church.
“Like a dungeon?”
“Mm … I suppose … (Now let’s see … post office … grocery store … roast for dinner …)”
And that was all they said.
Years went by.
Whenever Charlie rode in the family car or by himself on the bus past that big gray church he heard those words in the back of his mind: “…dark & spooky … like a dungeon …” Sometimes when he walked along Ridgeline with his friends and had to pass in front of it, he found himself unconsciously quickening his footsteps to match the faster beating of his heart. When he walked there by himself, he would often cross to the other side of the street so he didn’t get too close.
One Summer afternoon when he was 15, Charlie was walking home with his pal Rick after playing baseball at the playfield. As they turned onto Ridgeline and the big gray church came into view, Charlie felt a sudden curiosity.
“What religion are you, Rick?”
“Huh? … Oh, I’m Catholic. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know … Where do you go to church?”
“Saint Agatha’s … that big gray-stone church over there.”
“How … could you go in there?” Charlie asked in spite of himself. “It looks so … gloomy.”
“No it isn’t. Hey, ya wanna go in?” Rick’s face suddenly beamed with an excitement that took his companion by surprise.
Charlie stopped in his tracks. “What!? Are you kidding? I’m not going in there!”
“Why not? It’s OK,” Rick reassured him.
“No! I … I mean … I’m a Lutheran!”
“So what? It’ll be all right …”
“I … I can’t … I just remembered. I gotta get home. My mom said we have to go somewhere so we’re eating dinner early.”
“… Okay …” Rick sensed Charlie’s apprehension and decided to let it drop. They walked on together in silence punctuated by brief and unrelated comments on various subjects until they got to Charlie’s house, where he said, “See ya,” and ran inside.
By the following Saturday Charlie found he was unable to control his curiosity any longer. About three in the afternoon, he told his mom he was going to walk to the playfield. As he approached St. Agatha’s his pulse quickened and his breathing became oddly irregular. Would he be able to see inside the church? He had to try, somehow.
He gazed intently at the structure for a long time as he got nearer, as if trying to discover some strange secret. He found paved pathways that he’d never noticed before along the sides and all around the building. He looked high up on the stone walls at where he thought there should have been windows, but the long, narrow window “holes” seemed to be filled—blocked—not by glass, but by strange black and gray things that at first glance didn’t look much different than the rest of the wall. There were similar structures lower down at about eye level, and now that he was walking along the side wall, he noticed odd flashes of color—red, green, blue and yellow—coming from those black-and-gray “windows.” What kind of place was this? He carefully stepped between the flowers that were planted beside the wall and reached out to touch the window, and realized then that it wasn’t made of smaller stones as he thought, but of dark chunks of broken glass cemented in place!
He wanted to peek inside, and he saw the doors, of course, but knew they’d be all locked since nobody was around. As he reached the door on the side along which he was creeping, he gave it an experimental tug and—it opened. His hand jerked away from the handle as if he’d been shocked. He stared at it for several seconds and swallowed hard before deciding to go ahead and open it again. Slowly he pulled the door open and peered inside, noticing that although it was quite dim, he could still easily see the structure and furnishings around the huge interior. There were no lights on inside, but as his eyes became acclimated to the reduced light streaming in through the high windows … the windows!! My God! Look at them …
Pictures! Suddenly he saw faces and people depicted in them, and … There was Jesus! And there He was again in a different window! There’s the Christmas scene—angels and the manger and Mary! And there’s another scene of Jesus stretching out His hand over what look like big dinner rolls—the story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, of course! This was no dungeon—it was a … a storybook! Why hadn’t he seen these images before? They all looked so … black … from the outside, but from the inside—everything was different. Everything was so beautiful—the colors, the pictures—this was great!
Just then, the door—the same door he had entered through a few minutes before—opened and a man dressed in black clothes stepped in, touched something on the wall beside the door, and made a sign or gesture of some kind around his head and shoulders. He then went down on one knee while facing the center-front of the church. Surprised, Charlie took a step backward and sucked in his breath. The man stood up and seemed to notice Charlie for the first time. Charlie thought of running, expecting the man to chase him, but the man in black only smiled and nodded at Charlie and, without a word, he turned away and stepped through another door near the front of the church.
Charlie was standing right in the middle of the huge church so he could see all the windows when the minister(?)—no, the priest—had surprised him by his sudden entrance, and equally sudden disappearance. He thought for a few seconds and decided he’d seen enough for one day and started again for the same side door to leave when it opened again and a lady stepped in, quickly touching the wall as the priest had done and making the same gesture around her head—oh! It’s that … thing Catholics do … what do they call it? He thought it had a name, but didn’t know what it was. The lady gave no indication that she noticed Charlie, but turned in the opposite direction the priest had gone and walked calmly along the side aisle and stopped by another door—in fact it was three doors all together in a group. That was really odd. The lady stopped by the first door she came to, but instead of opening it, turned to face the middle of the church and put her back against the wall, looked up and noticed Charlie for the first time. They made eye contact, but the lady’s expression didn’t change, as if she wasn’t the least bit surprised to see him there. She looked at him for about 3 seconds and then looked down at the floor, as if she was lost in thought. Then another man came in the same way, making the same gesture and walked back by where the woman was, but then stepped into a pew, seemed to do something with his foot and … what? … knelt down? He didn’t notice Charlie at all. What were these people doing? Waiting for something? But what?
Charlie headed for the exit again and almost reached it when a few (but only a few) of the interior lights snapped on. A second later the priest reappeared from the door he’d gone into several minutes before, but he was now wearing a white robe and what looked like a long purple scarf over both his shoulders and hanging down in front. He smiled again at Charlie and walked right past him in the direction of the two other people, but no words were exchanged among any of them. Charlie put his hand on the door and took one last look at the people—hey, where did the priest go? Then he recognized the kneeling man as Rick’s father, who still didn’t seem to notice Charlie at all. He just knelt there, staring up at the front of the church. Charlie glanced over his other shoulder in an effort to see what held his attention. He saw a big table … a shiny golden box … a single candle in a red glass beside the box … a HUGE cross … with a life-sized Jesus on it! He pushed against the door and ran outside, all the way home.
What a strange—no, what a wonderful place! … It looks so different from the inside than it does from the outside. Who ever would have thought that?
Little Charlie pointed out the car window to the imposing gray stone edifice looming ahead as they drove down Ridgeline Avenue.
“Hm? … Oh, it’s a church,” his mother replied.
“Like our church?”
“No, honey … it’s a Catholic church.”
By now they had passed and the building was behind them. Charlie thought for a moment. “What’s it like?”
“What do you mean?”
“The church. On the inside. What’s it like?”
Charlie and his parents attended the Hosanna Evangelical Lutheran Church on 16th Street. It was the only church 4-year-old Charlie had ever been in. He was familiar with its clean white walls and comfortable seats. He liked to go there on Sundays and listen to the singing of the grown-up choir and he was even learning many of the hymns by heart. He liked to hear Pastor Willis talk about Jesus, but sometimes Charlie fell asleep when he no longer understood what he was saying.
After a moment’s pause, his mother said, “Mm … I’m not sure. I’ve never been in a Catholic church. But I’ve heard it’s dark and spooky.”
Charlie was surprised at this answer. How could a church be dark and spooky? Don’t they have any lights? A church—at least his church—is bright and cheerful. Then he remembered his mother’s words, that it wasn’t like his church.
“Like a dungeon?”
“Mm … I suppose … (Now let’s see … post office … grocery store … roast for dinner …)”
And that was all they said.
Years went by.
Whenever Charlie rode in the family car or by himself on the bus past that big gray church he heard those words in the back of his mind: “…dark & spooky … like a dungeon …” Sometimes when he walked along Ridgeline with his friends and had to pass in front of it, he found himself unconsciously quickening his footsteps to match the faster beating of his heart. When he walked there by himself, he would often cross to the other side of the street so he didn’t get too close.
One Summer afternoon when he was 15, Charlie was walking home with his pal Rick after playing baseball at the playfield. As they turned onto Ridgeline and the big gray church came into view, Charlie felt a sudden curiosity.
“What religion are you, Rick?”
“Huh? … Oh, I’m Catholic. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know … Where do you go to church?”
“Saint Agatha’s … that big gray-stone church over there.”
“How … could you go in there?” Charlie asked in spite of himself. “It looks so … gloomy.”
“No it isn’t. Hey, ya wanna go in?” Rick’s face suddenly beamed with an excitement that took his companion by surprise.
Charlie stopped in his tracks. “What!? Are you kidding? I’m not going in there!”
“Why not? It’s OK,” Rick reassured him.
“No! I … I mean … I’m a Lutheran!”
“So what? It’ll be all right …”
“I … I can’t … I just remembered. I gotta get home. My mom said we have to go somewhere so we’re eating dinner early.”
“… Okay …” Rick sensed Charlie’s apprehension and decided to let it drop. They walked on together in silence punctuated by brief and unrelated comments on various subjects until they got to Charlie’s house, where he said, “See ya,” and ran inside.
By the following Saturday Charlie found he was unable to control his curiosity any longer. About three in the afternoon, he told his mom he was going to walk to the playfield. As he approached St. Agatha’s his pulse quickened and his breathing became oddly irregular. Would he be able to see inside the church? He had to try, somehow.
He gazed intently at the structure for a long time as he got nearer, as if trying to discover some strange secret. He found paved pathways that he’d never noticed before along the sides and all around the building. He looked high up on the stone walls at where he thought there should have been windows, but the long, narrow window “holes” seemed to be filled—blocked—not by glass, but by strange black and gray things that at first glance didn’t look much different than the rest of the wall. There were similar structures lower down at about eye level, and now that he was walking along the side wall, he noticed odd flashes of color—red, green, blue and yellow—coming from those black-and-gray “windows.” What kind of place was this? He carefully stepped between the flowers that were planted beside the wall and reached out to touch the window, and realized then that it wasn’t made of smaller stones as he thought, but of dark chunks of broken glass cemented in place!
He wanted to peek inside, and he saw the doors, of course, but knew they’d be all locked since nobody was around. As he reached the door on the side along which he was creeping, he gave it an experimental tug and—it opened. His hand jerked away from the handle as if he’d been shocked. He stared at it for several seconds and swallowed hard before deciding to go ahead and open it again. Slowly he pulled the door open and peered inside, noticing that although it was quite dim, he could still easily see the structure and furnishings around the huge interior. There were no lights on inside, but as his eyes became acclimated to the reduced light streaming in through the high windows … the windows!! My God! Look at them …
Pictures! Suddenly he saw faces and people depicted in them, and … There was Jesus! And there He was again in a different window! There’s the Christmas scene—angels and the manger and Mary! And there’s another scene of Jesus stretching out His hand over what look like big dinner rolls—the story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, of course! This was no dungeon—it was a … a storybook! Why hadn’t he seen these images before? They all looked so … black … from the outside, but from the inside—everything was different. Everything was so beautiful—the colors, the pictures—this was great!
Just then, the door—the same door he had entered through a few minutes before—opened and a man dressed in black clothes stepped in, touched something on the wall beside the door, and made a sign or gesture of some kind around his head and shoulders. He then went down on one knee while facing the center-front of the church. Surprised, Charlie took a step backward and sucked in his breath. The man stood up and seemed to notice Charlie for the first time. Charlie thought of running, expecting the man to chase him, but the man in black only smiled and nodded at Charlie and, without a word, he turned away and stepped through another door near the front of the church.
Charlie was standing right in the middle of the huge church so he could see all the windows when the minister(?)—no, the priest—had surprised him by his sudden entrance, and equally sudden disappearance. He thought for a few seconds and decided he’d seen enough for one day and started again for the same side door to leave when it opened again and a lady stepped in, quickly touching the wall as the priest had done and making the same gesture around her head—oh! It’s that … thing Catholics do … what do they call it? He thought it had a name, but didn’t know what it was. The lady gave no indication that she noticed Charlie, but turned in the opposite direction the priest had gone and walked calmly along the side aisle and stopped by another door—in fact it was three doors all together in a group. That was really odd. The lady stopped by the first door she came to, but instead of opening it, turned to face the middle of the church and put her back against the wall, looked up and noticed Charlie for the first time. They made eye contact, but the lady’s expression didn’t change, as if she wasn’t the least bit surprised to see him there. She looked at him for about 3 seconds and then looked down at the floor, as if she was lost in thought. Then another man came in the same way, making the same gesture and walked back by where the woman was, but then stepped into a pew, seemed to do something with his foot and … what? … knelt down? He didn’t notice Charlie at all. What were these people doing? Waiting for something? But what?
Charlie headed for the exit again and almost reached it when a few (but only a few) of the interior lights snapped on. A second later the priest reappeared from the door he’d gone into several minutes before, but he was now wearing a white robe and what looked like a long purple scarf over both his shoulders and hanging down in front. He smiled again at Charlie and walked right past him in the direction of the two other people, but no words were exchanged among any of them. Charlie put his hand on the door and took one last look at the people—hey, where did the priest go? Then he recognized the kneeling man as Rick’s father, who still didn’t seem to notice Charlie at all. He just knelt there, staring up at the front of the church. Charlie glanced over his other shoulder in an effort to see what held his attention. He saw a big table … a shiny golden box … a single candle in a red glass beside the box … a HUGE cross … with a life-sized Jesus on it! He pushed against the door and ran outside, all the way home.
What a strange—no, what a wonderful place! … It looks so different from the inside than it does from the outside. Who ever would have thought that?
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Summoning the Ascended Masters
“OOOoooooOOOhhh … coooooome toooo meee, ooohh Androgyni, god/dess of sexual confusion … Cooome and caaassst ooouut my eeenemeeeey, Bumuuurrga, the goddess of menstrual cramps (the fat old witch), so that I, Bishtar, eternal Son of a bish that I Am, can bid loooong farewell to Owhooooya, angry god of couch-sleepers, and can create My Own Reality of Pleeeaaasure with beautiful Guuuishtar [Bumuuurrga’s other manifestation], divine daughter of Swishtar, athletic goddess of tennis shoes, That our geologically brief Embrace may laaaast Eteeerrnally, or at least until that other one, you know … What’s-her-name? … (oh yeah)—Aaaaphrodiaper, goddess of eternal youth and beauty, should join us and mud-wrestle with Guuuishtar & rip off her skimpy linen things, thereby giving meee even mooooore Pleeeaasure … (how did I miss those?) … … Ooooohhh cooooome ooooohhh … um … (oh yeah)—Aaandrooooogyneee, and through your Inspiraaaaation I will create my ooooown Reality, and all Pleeeeaaasure will be Miiiiiiine (and maybe I’ll let you have a little on the side) … And maaaayybeee togeeether we can get Fishtar, ancient god of sea chanteys to take a Baaath … restoring heavenly fresh air to the Astral Spheres and the Great Celeeeeestial Reeeaaalms for aaaall the Ascended Masters of the Universe …
“By the Power of My Own God Within, this is my Commaaaand to yooouu, O Andooogyneei, … do you HEAR me? … I Commaaaand you to do myyyy bidding … as I create my ooowwn reality of Pleeeaasure with all those goddess Babes … because there’s no jealousy among all us gods, right? And it’s OK if I Am the center of aaaall pleeeaaasure!!! (Suffering is for all those foolish, sick-o, superstitious Christians, right?) If only they would puuuurifyyy themselves and become gods like uuusss, then aaaall suffering would just goooo awaaaayyy & I wouldn’t be sleeping here on the couch with Owhooooya, god of angry couch-sleepers, after being kicked out by Bumuuurrga, angry goddess of menstrual cramps … Ooohh coooome Aaandrooogyneei … Giiiive meeee a siiiiign … (?)” …
… *Thump* … *Thump* …*Thump* …
“Oh Androgyni … is that You? …”
… *Thump-thump-thump-thump* …
“… Oh, it’s you, Fido, dog—I mean god of eternal tail-waggers. Get outta here, I wasn’t calling you … (stupid mutt!) …
“Aww, come on, Androgyni … I’ve got my sacred crystal—just play along, will ya? …
“… Well how about your eternal half-brother, Mephistopheles?—is he around? …”
(… Oooooooo … mmmm … Hey, now that’s more like it! I’m starting to feel the effects already …
(I don’t need that fat old witch anyway … I’m outta here!)
“Hey Fido! Let’s go have a pizza! I’m buying … after all, it’s MY reality! (Maybe we can pick up a few Temple Prostitutes while we’re at it…)”
Fido: “Mrowrr” *pant-pant-pant*
“By the Power of My Own God Within, this is my Commaaaand to yooouu, O Andooogyneei, … do you HEAR me? … I Commaaaand you to do myyyy bidding … as I create my ooowwn reality of Pleeeaasure with all those goddess Babes … because there’s no jealousy among all us gods, right? And it’s OK if I Am the center of aaaall pleeeaaasure!!! (Suffering is for all those foolish, sick-o, superstitious Christians, right?) If only they would puuuurifyyy themselves and become gods like uuusss, then aaaall suffering would just goooo awaaaayyy & I wouldn’t be sleeping here on the couch with Owhooooya, god of angry couch-sleepers, after being kicked out by Bumuuurrga, angry goddess of menstrual cramps … Ooohh coooome Aaandrooogyneei … Giiiive meeee a siiiiign … (?)” …
… *Thump* … *Thump* …*Thump* …
“Oh Androgyni … is that You? …”
… *Thump-thump-thump-thump* …
“… Oh, it’s you, Fido, dog—I mean god of eternal tail-waggers. Get outta here, I wasn’t calling you … (stupid mutt!) …
“Aww, come on, Androgyni … I’ve got my sacred crystal—just play along, will ya? …
“… Well how about your eternal half-brother, Mephistopheles?—is he around? …”
(… Oooooooo … mmmm … Hey, now that’s more like it! I’m starting to feel the effects already …
(I don’t need that fat old witch anyway … I’m outta here!)
“Hey Fido! Let’s go have a pizza! I’m buying … after all, it’s MY reality! (Maybe we can pick up a few Temple Prostitutes while we’re at it…)”
Fido: “Mrowrr” *pant-pant-pant*
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Body, Soul and Spirit
(and a little bit about heaven and hell)
[This is an excerpt (p. 128-133) from Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing by Peter Kreeft (available from: Ignatius Press, San Francisco).] (Note: the parts set off below with square brackets appear as footnotes in the book.)
The life of the body and soul together is the “life” the New Testament calls bios, natural life. The life of the spirit is more than natural life, or zoë. If we choose it, it is our spirit’s participation in God’s own life as Father, the source of life. Our spirit’s consciousness is then a participation in the Word of God, the divine consciousness, the “light that enlightens every man who comes into the world” [John 1:9], the cosmic Christ. And our spirit’s joy is a participation in God’s own eternal inner joy of love between the Father and the Son: the Holy Spirit.
The body is our relation to what is less than ourselves (the material world); the soul is our relation to ourselves, or self-consciousness; and the spirit is our relation to what is more than ourselves (God). That is why we usually discover the real, living God and the reality of our own spirit at the same time and why we can’t find our own deepest identity until we find God.
It is our spirit that thirsts for God, whether or not our conscious souls do. We have six thirsts. On the bodily level, we thirst for pleasure and sense experience (curiosity); on the soul level, for happiness and knowledge; on the spirit level, for joy and wisdom. Pleasure and sense experience come from the world; happiness and knowledge come from ourselves (though many try in vain to find them in the world); joy and wisdom come from God (though many try in vain to find them in themselves or in the world).
Pleasures and sensations are like ripples on our surface; happiness and knowledge are like undercurrents in our inner waters; joy and wisdom are sunken treasures at the very bottom.
Each step deepens the one before it. Knowledge is a kind of depth perception or X-ray of sense perception; it sees forms and structures and essences behind external appearances. In turn wisdom discovers the deepest significance or ultimate meaning and value of what knowledge turns up. Similarly, happiness is a deepening of pleasure; we can see this when we are happy even when in pain. (Yes, it happens; ask any mother in childbirth!) And joy is deeper than happiness, for our joy can remain even when our feelings are upset. There are deeper feelings than the feelings, just as there are deeper reasons than the reason: “The heart has its reasons which the reason cannot know.”
Joy can be in the spirit without happiness being in the soul, but joy usually flows out into the soul and even into the body. A joyful spirit inspires joyful feelings and even a more psychosomatically healthy body. (For example, we need less sleep when we have joy and have more resistance to all kinds of diseases from colds to cancers.) But the home of joy is the spirit. We feel joy in the conscious soul only because the spirit is the life of the soul, as the soul is the life of the body. Joyful feelings are not joy, but joy’s overflow, not the wave but the wave’s imprint in the sand.
Not everyone knows what the spirit is and how it is distinct from the soul. Does it really make a difference? Only the difference between life and death. The soul makes the difference between life and death to the body, and the spirit makes the difference between life and death to the soul. A body without a soul is not a living body but a corpse. The difference between a living body and a dead body is not a bodily difference. Immediately after death the body has the same weight, shape and size; but its life has departed. Life is not a thing, like the body, but the life of that thing. Similarly, a soul without a spirit is a dead soul, and the difference between a dead soul and a living soul is not a soul difference. Dead souls think (dead thoughts) and feel (dead feelings) just as living souls do, but they have no life. If you want to see dead souls, or at least dying souls, just walk through certain city streets.
Greek philosophy (or at least Socratic-Platonic philosophy) teaches the immortality of the soul. The Bible does not: The only immortal one is God. [1 Tim. 6:15-16: “the King of kings and Lord of lords who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light.”] We attain immortality not by the unfree passivity of being born but by the act of free choice to be “born again.” [John 3:3: “Unless one is born anew he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”] Without the divine miracle of raising the dead, there is no hope for immortality. [1 Cor. 15:17-19: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.”] That immortality is bodily as well as soul and spirit immortality. [1 Cor. 15:35, 38: “But some one will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? … God gives it a body as He has chosen.”] Finally, souls are not said to be immortal but mortal, that is, able to die. [Matt. 10:28: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.”] Hell is precisely that: the death of the soul.
Spirit is unchanged by bodily death, which only clarifies its “fundamental option” for or against God. Souls are purged and perfected by bodily death (if their spirits live). Bodies are killed.
Spirit has only two choices: for or against God, for spirit confronts God, the absolute, the one and only. Here is the only area of absolute either/or: yes or no to God. (That is why conscience, which is the voice of spirit, is so absolutistic: it is the voice of God.) C. S. Lewis is thinking of the spirit when he says, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God: ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says in the end: ‘Thy will be done.’” [C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Macmillan, 1946), p. 72.]
Soul has many choices, not just one, for our thoughts and feelings are multicolored, not black or white. And body is the most dispersable of all, for it is part of the world of matter, which is maximally dispersable.
Spirit is where we decide who we are—our identity, our I. It is where we are selves, where we are ones. Our Dionysian and Apollonian halves are not selves, not wholes. Where are they one? Or are we only tow halves glued together? No, we are wholes, and we find this wholeness only at the bottom of the bowl where the two sides converge. Just as “everything that rises must converge” in God [The Flannery O’Connor title is from Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1964)], everything that descends must also converge at the heart of the self, which is the image of God. The human I reflects the divine I Am. This is the spirit or “heart” (as Scripture calls it). It is both center and bottom.
Here at the bottom of the canyon the waters of life flow together and mingle; joy and wisdom are one. Deepest joy is deepest wisdom; beatitude is “the beatific vision.” Happiness is not of itself knowledge, but joy is wisdom and wisdom is joy. The reason for this unity is that the object of joy and wisdom, unlike that of knowledge and happiness, is not an abstract, partial ingredient in the whole; and it is not known with an abstract aspect or part of ourselves, the intellect. Rather, in joy and wisdom the living God lets himself be touched by the human heart, center to center, heart to heart, spirit to spirit, I to Thou, “deep calling unto deep.” [Ps. 42:7.]
Scripture invites us to “know the Lord” with the heart, not (first of all) the head. The biblical sense of “know” is “to love.” The word is even used of physical love: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived.” [Gen. 4:1.] She did not conceive a concept but a conception, a child. On the spiritual level, there is an incredible and wondrous parallel: God wants to be our spirit’s husband. [Isa. 54:5.] Our spirit’s love and intercourse with God conceive ourselves, our new identity, our destiny. We are our own mothers (in the sense that by choosing God, we receive his grace, and we give life to our own spirit—G/F). What we are now is only our womb, our raw material, our potential self. But we cannot be our own fathers, our own gods; that is the Oedipus complex, the dream of getting rid of our father and marrying our mother, and being our own father, that is, our own god. It is our primal sin, “original sin,” the refusal of the divine marriage proposal. Its result is death, spiritual barrenness—ultimately, hell, “the outer darkness,” the only ultimate alternative to joy. [Matt. 8:12.]
[This is an excerpt (p. 128-133) from Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing by Peter Kreeft (available from: Ignatius Press, San Francisco).] (Note: the parts set off below with square brackets appear as footnotes in the book.)
The life of the body and soul together is the “life” the New Testament calls bios, natural life. The life of the spirit is more than natural life, or zoë. If we choose it, it is our spirit’s participation in God’s own life as Father, the source of life. Our spirit’s consciousness is then a participation in the Word of God, the divine consciousness, the “light that enlightens every man who comes into the world” [John 1:9], the cosmic Christ. And our spirit’s joy is a participation in God’s own eternal inner joy of love between the Father and the Son: the Holy Spirit.
The body is our relation to what is less than ourselves (the material world); the soul is our relation to ourselves, or self-consciousness; and the spirit is our relation to what is more than ourselves (God). That is why we usually discover the real, living God and the reality of our own spirit at the same time and why we can’t find our own deepest identity until we find God.
It is our spirit that thirsts for God, whether or not our conscious souls do. We have six thirsts. On the bodily level, we thirst for pleasure and sense experience (curiosity); on the soul level, for happiness and knowledge; on the spirit level, for joy and wisdom. Pleasure and sense experience come from the world; happiness and knowledge come from ourselves (though many try in vain to find them in the world); joy and wisdom come from God (though many try in vain to find them in themselves or in the world).
Pleasures and sensations are like ripples on our surface; happiness and knowledge are like undercurrents in our inner waters; joy and wisdom are sunken treasures at the very bottom.
Each step deepens the one before it. Knowledge is a kind of depth perception or X-ray of sense perception; it sees forms and structures and essences behind external appearances. In turn wisdom discovers the deepest significance or ultimate meaning and value of what knowledge turns up. Similarly, happiness is a deepening of pleasure; we can see this when we are happy even when in pain. (Yes, it happens; ask any mother in childbirth!) And joy is deeper than happiness, for our joy can remain even when our feelings are upset. There are deeper feelings than the feelings, just as there are deeper reasons than the reason: “The heart has its reasons which the reason cannot know.”
Joy can be in the spirit without happiness being in the soul, but joy usually flows out into the soul and even into the body. A joyful spirit inspires joyful feelings and even a more psychosomatically healthy body. (For example, we need less sleep when we have joy and have more resistance to all kinds of diseases from colds to cancers.) But the home of joy is the spirit. We feel joy in the conscious soul only because the spirit is the life of the soul, as the soul is the life of the body. Joyful feelings are not joy, but joy’s overflow, not the wave but the wave’s imprint in the sand.
Not everyone knows what the spirit is and how it is distinct from the soul. Does it really make a difference? Only the difference between life and death. The soul makes the difference between life and death to the body, and the spirit makes the difference between life and death to the soul. A body without a soul is not a living body but a corpse. The difference between a living body and a dead body is not a bodily difference. Immediately after death the body has the same weight, shape and size; but its life has departed. Life is not a thing, like the body, but the life of that thing. Similarly, a soul without a spirit is a dead soul, and the difference between a dead soul and a living soul is not a soul difference. Dead souls think (dead thoughts) and feel (dead feelings) just as living souls do, but they have no life. If you want to see dead souls, or at least dying souls, just walk through certain city streets.
Greek philosophy (or at least Socratic-Platonic philosophy) teaches the immortality of the soul. The Bible does not: The only immortal one is God. [1 Tim. 6:15-16: “the King of kings and Lord of lords who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light.”] We attain immortality not by the unfree passivity of being born but by the act of free choice to be “born again.” [John 3:3: “Unless one is born anew he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”] Without the divine miracle of raising the dead, there is no hope for immortality. [1 Cor. 15:17-19: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.”] That immortality is bodily as well as soul and spirit immortality. [1 Cor. 15:35, 38: “But some one will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? … God gives it a body as He has chosen.”] Finally, souls are not said to be immortal but mortal, that is, able to die. [Matt. 10:28: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.”] Hell is precisely that: the death of the soul.
Spirit is unchanged by bodily death, which only clarifies its “fundamental option” for or against God. Souls are purged and perfected by bodily death (if their spirits live). Bodies are killed.
Spirit has only two choices: for or against God, for spirit confronts God, the absolute, the one and only. Here is the only area of absolute either/or: yes or no to God. (That is why conscience, which is the voice of spirit, is so absolutistic: it is the voice of God.) C. S. Lewis is thinking of the spirit when he says, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God: ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says in the end: ‘Thy will be done.’” [C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Macmillan, 1946), p. 72.]
Soul has many choices, not just one, for our thoughts and feelings are multicolored, not black or white. And body is the most dispersable of all, for it is part of the world of matter, which is maximally dispersable.
Spirit is where we decide who we are—our identity, our I. It is where we are selves, where we are ones. Our Dionysian and Apollonian halves are not selves, not wholes. Where are they one? Or are we only tow halves glued together? No, we are wholes, and we find this wholeness only at the bottom of the bowl where the two sides converge. Just as “everything that rises must converge” in God [The Flannery O’Connor title is from Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1964)], everything that descends must also converge at the heart of the self, which is the image of God. The human I reflects the divine I Am. This is the spirit or “heart” (as Scripture calls it). It is both center and bottom.
Here at the bottom of the canyon the waters of life flow together and mingle; joy and wisdom are one. Deepest joy is deepest wisdom; beatitude is “the beatific vision.” Happiness is not of itself knowledge, but joy is wisdom and wisdom is joy. The reason for this unity is that the object of joy and wisdom, unlike that of knowledge and happiness, is not an abstract, partial ingredient in the whole; and it is not known with an abstract aspect or part of ourselves, the intellect. Rather, in joy and wisdom the living God lets himself be touched by the human heart, center to center, heart to heart, spirit to spirit, I to Thou, “deep calling unto deep.” [Ps. 42:7.]
Scripture invites us to “know the Lord” with the heart, not (first of all) the head. The biblical sense of “know” is “to love.” The word is even used of physical love: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived.” [Gen. 4:1.] She did not conceive a concept but a conception, a child. On the spiritual level, there is an incredible and wondrous parallel: God wants to be our spirit’s husband. [Isa. 54:5.] Our spirit’s love and intercourse with God conceive ourselves, our new identity, our destiny. We are our own mothers (in the sense that by choosing God, we receive his grace, and we give life to our own spirit—G/F). What we are now is only our womb, our raw material, our potential self. But we cannot be our own fathers, our own gods; that is the Oedipus complex, the dream of getting rid of our father and marrying our mother, and being our own father, that is, our own god. It is our primal sin, “original sin,” the refusal of the divine marriage proposal. Its result is death, spiritual barrenness—ultimately, hell, “the outer darkness,” the only ultimate alternative to joy. [Matt. 8:12.]
Friday, October 28, 2005
More on Sin & Suffering
I’d like to formally introduce you to my other antagonist, a gentleman who goes by the moniker God of Biscuits.
He hasn’t left any comments around here for quite some time, but I still encounter his peculiar “wit” with fair regularity at Bloghogger and at hoody’s site. But he did see fit to deposit a few choice words on my last post (which was on the topic of global warming). His remarks focused on one sentence in my closing paragraph about the general link between sin & suffering.
I posted previously and at some length on this link way back on May 8 of this year in a post called “Offer it up…” and more recently (September 6) in the post What “caused” Hurricane Katrina? I don’t recall whether he read those or not. Any comments he may have left have been archived by HaloScan and I’m not able to access them. [You can read those posts yourself (scroll down) if you wish.]
I’ll duplicate his present comments (and my replies to them) here [this seems to really tick him off for some reason] and then I’ll offer some further elucidation afterward.
------------------------
(Quoting me) Sin is the cause of all suffering
Well, march your ass on down to any children's hospital or any oncology hospital and please tell all those people they're just sinful.
You're a christian gem.
--God of Biscuits 10.25.05 - 12:18 am
------------------------
Suffering is the result of sin. Any given individual's suffering may be the result of either his own sin or someone else's, or a combination of both.
Not everyone is the cause of his own suffering. Each person's sins affect not only his own life and person, but everyone with whom he comes in contact, and in fact (at least to some degree) the whole world. Stones tossed into a pond don't merely sink to the bottom, they send ripples across the whole body of water, and if the ripples are large or frequent enough, the banks can be eroded and things that live along the shore can potentially be destroyed. A man who is aware he has a communicable disease and yet remains unconcerned about those around him whom he may infect is responsible for their loss of good health. The directors of a company that uses hazardous or deadly chemicals can be responsible for degrading health and environmental conditions within the community and beyond if they are careless in their use or disposal of said chemicals or agents. Etc., etc. Stop acting like an imbecile.
--the Green Flash 10.25.05 - 9:07 am & 10:26pm --[2 comments edited together]
------------------------
Before you were saying that A -> B.
Now you're changing it to say that B -> A.
You said, and I QUOTE: "Sin is the cause of all suffering" (your emphasis).
So. Cancer.
If those poor bastards had just stuck to the 10 commandments and whatever parts of Leviticus you buy into, they'd be A-OK healthy.
that's exactly what you're saying.
You stated it unequivocally.
And then you change your mind. How cavalier.
--God of Biscuits 10.26.05 - 12:04 am
------------------------
I changed nothing. You are refusing to understand (or are pretending not to). Your logic is defective: you are drawing a false inference. Your analytical method is too rigid (perhaps your brain is becoming ossified).
All suffering (including cancer) is caused by sin—somewhere. Every sin causes (or in some way contributes to) suffering—somewhere. Attempting to determine or judge exactly whose sin is at the root of what suffering is (in general) a vain and futile exercise. I nowhere said that a given person’s suffering is always the result of his own sins, as you seem to think.
What’s important is (a) to avoid sinning yourself and (b) to give aid to anyone else who is suffering (to the extent you are able), not try to figure out which sin (or who committed it) that contributed to which guy’s suffering.
--the Green Flash 10.27.05 - 12:18 am
------------------------
------------------------
OK, that’s it. Now please understand that we (myself, hoody and others) have been around the block on this sort of thing time and time again with Mr. Biscuits and the result is always the same. He doesn’t seem to hear what we are saying, but rather baits us with taunts and accusations without any apparent interest in what we are really trying to communicate. His typical behavior is that of a playground bully--attempting to intimidate and not concerned about anything but his own opinions, attitudes and desires which, to him, trump all else. He’s very predictable, too. (I can’t always predict when he’ll show up, of course; but when he does show, the point and thrust of his remarks are, well, unremarkable.)
I’m not here to convert him or anyone else who steadfastly refuses to acknowledge God or His revelation. I’m not attempting to prove anything. My purpose is merely to state what has been revealed by God (through the prophets before Christ & through the Church He established) and then to make a few observations & draw some inferences on my own from it (for whatever it’s worth). Faith in God & His revelation is my first premise. It is not a conclusion to an argument; it is a “given.” I cannot prove it (beyond pointing to how it all fits and hangs together), nor do I try to. (If it could be proven it wouldn’t be faith, but empirical knowledge.) And yet, Mr. Biscuits keeps showing up with his demand to “prove it [in scientific or mathematical terms].” Sorry.
Personal faith in God (and by extension, trust in the revelation He gave) falls into 4 basic categories: (a) you receive it & accept it as true; (b) you receive it and accept it provisionally (while you “check it out,” searching for the truth); (c) you are entirely ignorant of it (you never received it, through no fault of your own); or (d) you did receive it at one time, but subsequently chose to reject or ignore it (for whatever reason). People sometimes move between these categories (& there may be others, but these serve to illustrate my point) at various times in their lives. At present, I am in category (a), while Mr. Biscuits is (as near as anyone can tell) in category (d). (I know he doesn’t like categories; I guess they cramp his style. But that’s how I see it. Don’t ask me to prove it.)
Regarding the specific taunting reference he made to hospitals, I will not try to trace the pathology of a particular cancer (or any other disease or natural calamity as an immediate or proximate cause of suffering) step-by-step back to sin X, Y or Z committed by person A, B or C. It doesn’t work that way. Sorry if I gave the impression that I could, but I don’t think I did. I think (judging from Mr. Biscuits’ manifest M.O.) that he was just looking for some excuse to attack me and try to make me look foolish, and this time, this is the excuse he found. But I don’t mind. We’re called to be “fools” for Christ’s sake anyway (1 Cor 1:18-31; 3:18-19; 4:10). I hope I didn’t disappoint anyone.
It’s easy for nearly everyone to see how some sins cause some suffering. (Our criminal justice system routinely pursues this connection with rigor.) A single murder can send huge shock waves through an entire community (or even a whole nation). (And there’s no telling how many smaller sins by many individuals may have led eventually to the one murder.)
This requires a bit more effort, but most people can at least intuitively grasp a connection between the greed (avarice) and/or laziness (sloth) of a relative few and the suffering caused by (for example) the environmental effects produced by careless disposal of certain materials and irresponsible exploitation of some natural resources (e.g. by some directors, executives or managers, and even line workers in manufacturing & energy industries).
We don’t always see the short- or long-term effects of the sins we commit. The murderer may not see (or even think about) the manifold suffering of his victim’s children or grandchildren. But that does not obliterate the connection between his sin and the suffering it caused. A reasonable person can understand this with ease. Such a person may also recognize that some adverse environmental factors (resulting from the greed or laziness of some irresponsible businessmen) may have eventually facilitated the onset of some cancers in some people. (I am speaking here in general terms to illustrate a general principle. I am not trying to prove anything, but only pointing out that there is a real connection between evil choices/actions and suffering in general, even if we don’t happen to see it and can’t trace it directly—or even acknowledge that the choices/actions in question are evil.)
Now the propositions that all suffering is caused by sin and that all sin causes suffering isn’t readily apparent. They are derived from divine revelation. I recognize & accept divine revelation as true. Mr. Biscuits does not. I cannot force him to accept the gift of faith in divine revelation any more than he can “prove” to me that such faith is altogether unreasonable. We are at an impasse.
I came to this realization some time ago, so while I may occasionally respond to his accusations, allegations, attacks and distorted fits of logic (as in the present instance), I don’t attempt to engage him (i.e. instigate any discussions—pick fights—with him). The manifest differences & barriers between our respective worldviews make rational discourse logically impossible. They are mutually exclusive and utterly irreconcilable.
Well, as the old song goes, “Somethin’s gotta give.” I am unlikely to change my perspective regarding the Catholic faith (and by God’s grace, I never will). Biscuits should have realized this by now. So unless there is some potential for change on his side, I am mystified by his occasional but persistent forays to this and other [Catholic] sites on the Web. I don’t drop in on his blog & leave snide comments (at least not any more). I don’t pester him. He doesn’t have to come here if my material offends his sensibilities.
Is it that he feels some compulsion to attack me as a stand-in for the Church he hates—am I simply a symbolic focal point for his rage? Or is it possible—am I so obtuse—that I misunderstand him? Is his act of spiritual suicide actually a cry for help? Or does he just find it hilarious that he can so easily goad me into a complete waste of my time? I can’t tell. (Please note: I am not condemning him. I’m just trying to figure him out.)
Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind answering his questions, such as they are. In fact, I find it kind of fun (in a weird sort of way). There’s always an answer for them, although I confess I sometimes have to dig to find it. (There’s always an answer, but not always one he’ll accept.) I just wonder why he keeps trying.
“Somethin’s gotta give.”
I’m not going to change.
Will he?
He hasn’t left any comments around here for quite some time, but I still encounter his peculiar “wit” with fair regularity at Bloghogger and at hoody’s site. But he did see fit to deposit a few choice words on my last post (which was on the topic of global warming). His remarks focused on one sentence in my closing paragraph about the general link between sin & suffering.
I posted previously and at some length on this link way back on May 8 of this year in a post called “Offer it up…” and more recently (September 6) in the post What “caused” Hurricane Katrina? I don’t recall whether he read those or not. Any comments he may have left have been archived by HaloScan and I’m not able to access them. [You can read those posts yourself (scroll down) if you wish.]
I’ll duplicate his present comments (and my replies to them) here [this seems to really tick him off for some reason] and then I’ll offer some further elucidation afterward.
------------------------
(Quoting me) Sin is the cause of all suffering
Well, march your ass on down to any children's hospital or any oncology hospital and please tell all those people they're just sinful.
You're a christian gem.
--God of Biscuits 10.25.05 - 12:18 am
------------------------
Suffering is the result of sin. Any given individual's suffering may be the result of either his own sin or someone else's, or a combination of both.
Not everyone is the cause of his own suffering. Each person's sins affect not only his own life and person, but everyone with whom he comes in contact, and in fact (at least to some degree) the whole world. Stones tossed into a pond don't merely sink to the bottom, they send ripples across the whole body of water, and if the ripples are large or frequent enough, the banks can be eroded and things that live along the shore can potentially be destroyed. A man who is aware he has a communicable disease and yet remains unconcerned about those around him whom he may infect is responsible for their loss of good health. The directors of a company that uses hazardous or deadly chemicals can be responsible for degrading health and environmental conditions within the community and beyond if they are careless in their use or disposal of said chemicals or agents. Etc., etc. Stop acting like an imbecile.
--the Green Flash 10.25.05 - 9:07 am & 10:26pm --[2 comments edited together]
------------------------
Before you were saying that A -> B.
Now you're changing it to say that B -> A.
You said, and I QUOTE: "Sin is the cause of all suffering" (your emphasis).
So. Cancer.
If those poor bastards had just stuck to the 10 commandments and whatever parts of Leviticus you buy into, they'd be A-OK healthy.
that's exactly what you're saying.
You stated it unequivocally.
And then you change your mind. How cavalier.
--God of Biscuits 10.26.05 - 12:04 am
------------------------
I changed nothing. You are refusing to understand (or are pretending not to). Your logic is defective: you are drawing a false inference. Your analytical method is too rigid (perhaps your brain is becoming ossified).
All suffering (including cancer) is caused by sin—somewhere. Every sin causes (or in some way contributes to) suffering—somewhere. Attempting to determine or judge exactly whose sin is at the root of what suffering is (in general) a vain and futile exercise. I nowhere said that a given person’s suffering is always the result of his own sins, as you seem to think.
What’s important is (a) to avoid sinning yourself and (b) to give aid to anyone else who is suffering (to the extent you are able), not try to figure out which sin (or who committed it) that contributed to which guy’s suffering.
--the Green Flash 10.27.05 - 12:18 am
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------------------------
OK, that’s it. Now please understand that we (myself, hoody and others) have been around the block on this sort of thing time and time again with Mr. Biscuits and the result is always the same. He doesn’t seem to hear what we are saying, but rather baits us with taunts and accusations without any apparent interest in what we are really trying to communicate. His typical behavior is that of a playground bully--attempting to intimidate and not concerned about anything but his own opinions, attitudes and desires which, to him, trump all else. He’s very predictable, too. (I can’t always predict when he’ll show up, of course; but when he does show, the point and thrust of his remarks are, well, unremarkable.)
I’m not here to convert him or anyone else who steadfastly refuses to acknowledge God or His revelation. I’m not attempting to prove anything. My purpose is merely to state what has been revealed by God (through the prophets before Christ & through the Church He established) and then to make a few observations & draw some inferences on my own from it (for whatever it’s worth). Faith in God & His revelation is my first premise. It is not a conclusion to an argument; it is a “given.” I cannot prove it (beyond pointing to how it all fits and hangs together), nor do I try to. (If it could be proven it wouldn’t be faith, but empirical knowledge.) And yet, Mr. Biscuits keeps showing up with his demand to “prove it [in scientific or mathematical terms].” Sorry.
Personal faith in God (and by extension, trust in the revelation He gave) falls into 4 basic categories: (a) you receive it & accept it as true; (b) you receive it and accept it provisionally (while you “check it out,” searching for the truth); (c) you are entirely ignorant of it (you never received it, through no fault of your own); or (d) you did receive it at one time, but subsequently chose to reject or ignore it (for whatever reason). People sometimes move between these categories (& there may be others, but these serve to illustrate my point) at various times in their lives. At present, I am in category (a), while Mr. Biscuits is (as near as anyone can tell) in category (d). (I know he doesn’t like categories; I guess they cramp his style. But that’s how I see it. Don’t ask me to prove it.)
Regarding the specific taunting reference he made to hospitals, I will not try to trace the pathology of a particular cancer (or any other disease or natural calamity as an immediate or proximate cause of suffering) step-by-step back to sin X, Y or Z committed by person A, B or C. It doesn’t work that way. Sorry if I gave the impression that I could, but I don’t think I did. I think (judging from Mr. Biscuits’ manifest M.O.) that he was just looking for some excuse to attack me and try to make me look foolish, and this time, this is the excuse he found. But I don’t mind. We’re called to be “fools” for Christ’s sake anyway (1 Cor 1:18-31; 3:18-19; 4:10). I hope I didn’t disappoint anyone.
It’s easy for nearly everyone to see how some sins cause some suffering. (Our criminal justice system routinely pursues this connection with rigor.) A single murder can send huge shock waves through an entire community (or even a whole nation). (And there’s no telling how many smaller sins by many individuals may have led eventually to the one murder.)
This requires a bit more effort, but most people can at least intuitively grasp a connection between the greed (avarice) and/or laziness (sloth) of a relative few and the suffering caused by (for example) the environmental effects produced by careless disposal of certain materials and irresponsible exploitation of some natural resources (e.g. by some directors, executives or managers, and even line workers in manufacturing & energy industries).
We don’t always see the short- or long-term effects of the sins we commit. The murderer may not see (or even think about) the manifold suffering of his victim’s children or grandchildren. But that does not obliterate the connection between his sin and the suffering it caused. A reasonable person can understand this with ease. Such a person may also recognize that some adverse environmental factors (resulting from the greed or laziness of some irresponsible businessmen) may have eventually facilitated the onset of some cancers in some people. (I am speaking here in general terms to illustrate a general principle. I am not trying to prove anything, but only pointing out that there is a real connection between evil choices/actions and suffering in general, even if we don’t happen to see it and can’t trace it directly—or even acknowledge that the choices/actions in question are evil.)
Now the propositions that all suffering is caused by sin and that all sin causes suffering isn’t readily apparent. They are derived from divine revelation. I recognize & accept divine revelation as true. Mr. Biscuits does not. I cannot force him to accept the gift of faith in divine revelation any more than he can “prove” to me that such faith is altogether unreasonable. We are at an impasse.
I came to this realization some time ago, so while I may occasionally respond to his accusations, allegations, attacks and distorted fits of logic (as in the present instance), I don’t attempt to engage him (i.e. instigate any discussions—pick fights—with him). The manifest differences & barriers between our respective worldviews make rational discourse logically impossible. They are mutually exclusive and utterly irreconcilable.
Well, as the old song goes, “Somethin’s gotta give.” I am unlikely to change my perspective regarding the Catholic faith (and by God’s grace, I never will). Biscuits should have realized this by now. So unless there is some potential for change on his side, I am mystified by his occasional but persistent forays to this and other [Catholic] sites on the Web. I don’t drop in on his blog & leave snide comments (at least not any more). I don’t pester him. He doesn’t have to come here if my material offends his sensibilities.
Is it that he feels some compulsion to attack me as a stand-in for the Church he hates—am I simply a symbolic focal point for his rage? Or is it possible—am I so obtuse—that I misunderstand him? Is his act of spiritual suicide actually a cry for help? Or does he just find it hilarious that he can so easily goad me into a complete waste of my time? I can’t tell. (Please note: I am not condemning him. I’m just trying to figure him out.)
Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind answering his questions, such as they are. In fact, I find it kind of fun (in a weird sort of way). There’s always an answer for them, although I confess I sometimes have to dig to find it. (There’s always an answer, but not always one he’ll accept.) I just wonder why he keeps trying.
“Somethin’s gotta give.”
I’m not going to change.
Will he?
Friday, October 14, 2005
"Tastes kinda like chicken ..."
… But it’s still no fun eating crow!
I used to think—and repeatedly claimed publicly—that “global warming” was a hoax. But that’s now changed—I have changed. I read a number of articles on the subject in the Seattle Times (Sunday Oct. 9, 2005) that gave convincing testimony that global warming is For Real, and not just part of the natural cycles of the earth as I had erroneously assumed. Real scientific data seems conclusive that it is caused not by any changes in solar activity, not by increased geothermal activity, but by man’s industrialization & continued reliance on hydrocarbon fuels (principle source of escalating levels of atmospheric carbon-dioxide, the biggest part of the problem). Its effects will be increasingly noticeable & dramatic (potentially catastrophic), very long term (centuries) and are now unavoidable and, at least as far as we (and the next few generations) are concerned, irreversible.
I don’t want to be alarmist, though. I believe God is “in charge” of His creation as He always was and always will be. He created the earth, and He created it for man. But all the same, He ordinarily permits the consequences of man’s actions (individually and collectively), however evil, to run their natural course, and I don’t expect any miracles on a global scale to set things back to how they were in the 18th Century before the Industrial Revolution started the ball rolling. Man adapted & survived the last great ice age, and I’m confident he has the God-given means to do the same as the earth gets warmer. I’m concerned (it’s not a good situation), but I’m not worried. Life on earth will certainly change in coming generations, but it will go on.
As I hinted above, the global warming trend apparently started in the 19th Century with the Industrial Revolution and is getting progressively worse year by year & decade by decade. The professional naysayers (who I used to listen to) were being financed, it turns out (surprise, surprise), by “Big Business” (oil, mining, transportation and manufacturing industries), those who stand to gain financially by the status quo that fuels the whole problem [pun intended]. One could say that the global warming trend started by accident (we didn’t know then what we know now), but it accelerates today as a result of deliberate decisions involving the grave sin of greed (avarice). (Granted, they don’t necessarily want global warming, they just don’t care about it nearly as much as they care about their personal fortunes.)
There is viable technology available today (has been for years) to drastically cut (or even eliminate) the use of hydrocarbon fuels: the fuel cell. If I understand the mechanism correctly, cars and other vehicles could fill up with what amounts to a non-toxic soap solution and, by means of a solid catalyst material in the fuel cell, convert it into electricity and the by-product of pure water (this is how the astronauts get their electrical power and drinking water on the International Space Station). There are ZERO harmful emissions (unlike the “reduced” emissions that come out of the hybrid cars being produced currently).
If the “leaders” in corporate-industrial America were serious about “The Environment,” they’d stop (for example) putting internal combustion engines in cars and trucks and start producing them with fuel cells and electric motors instead. Larger fuel cells could also be used to generate electricity locally (in individual homes and businesses), eliminating the need for huge coal-, gas- & oil-burning power plants—not to mention all those cross-country high-tension power lines, substations and all the rest!
So why isn’t this change being implemented today? My personal answer is: there is still a great deal of MONEY to be made (by certain people—who don’t actually need any more than they already have) by the continued use of hydrocarbon fuels. “Leaders” in industries and governments could make the decisions right now—today—to begin the change-over to this efficient (and cheap!) system of (electrical) power, but that would mean much less (economic and political) power for them! So those decisions are left un-made. They keep their heads in the sand (as mine was until a few days ago—mea culpa) and everyone will increasingly suffer as a result.
But, as I’ve said many times before, suffering and sin of all kinds—including greed—are part of life. Sin is the cause of all suffering, and every sin causes some suffering somewhere (even if we don’t readily see it). We can stand up to others and exhort them to greater acts of justice, charity, compassion, stewardship and all the other virtues, but when it comes to actually rooting out sin, the only place we can do that is in our own individual hearts, through personal repentance.
[ Please read the follow-up to this essay, I once thought I was wrong ... of June 17, 2006. ]
I used to think—and repeatedly claimed publicly—that “global warming” was a hoax. But that’s now changed—I have changed. I read a number of articles on the subject in the Seattle Times (Sunday Oct. 9, 2005) that gave convincing testimony that global warming is For Real, and not just part of the natural cycles of the earth as I had erroneously assumed. Real scientific data seems conclusive that it is caused not by any changes in solar activity, not by increased geothermal activity, but by man’s industrialization & continued reliance on hydrocarbon fuels (principle source of escalating levels of atmospheric carbon-dioxide, the biggest part of the problem). Its effects will be increasingly noticeable & dramatic (potentially catastrophic), very long term (centuries) and are now unavoidable and, at least as far as we (and the next few generations) are concerned, irreversible.
I don’t want to be alarmist, though. I believe God is “in charge” of His creation as He always was and always will be. He created the earth, and He created it for man. But all the same, He ordinarily permits the consequences of man’s actions (individually and collectively), however evil, to run their natural course, and I don’t expect any miracles on a global scale to set things back to how they were in the 18th Century before the Industrial Revolution started the ball rolling. Man adapted & survived the last great ice age, and I’m confident he has the God-given means to do the same as the earth gets warmer. I’m concerned (it’s not a good situation), but I’m not worried. Life on earth will certainly change in coming generations, but it will go on.
As I hinted above, the global warming trend apparently started in the 19th Century with the Industrial Revolution and is getting progressively worse year by year & decade by decade. The professional naysayers (who I used to listen to) were being financed, it turns out (surprise, surprise), by “Big Business” (oil, mining, transportation and manufacturing industries), those who stand to gain financially by the status quo that fuels the whole problem [pun intended]. One could say that the global warming trend started by accident (we didn’t know then what we know now), but it accelerates today as a result of deliberate decisions involving the grave sin of greed (avarice). (Granted, they don’t necessarily want global warming, they just don’t care about it nearly as much as they care about their personal fortunes.)
There is viable technology available today (has been for years) to drastically cut (or even eliminate) the use of hydrocarbon fuels: the fuel cell. If I understand the mechanism correctly, cars and other vehicles could fill up with what amounts to a non-toxic soap solution and, by means of a solid catalyst material in the fuel cell, convert it into electricity and the by-product of pure water (this is how the astronauts get their electrical power and drinking water on the International Space Station). There are ZERO harmful emissions (unlike the “reduced” emissions that come out of the hybrid cars being produced currently).
If the “leaders” in corporate-industrial America were serious about “The Environment,” they’d stop (for example) putting internal combustion engines in cars and trucks and start producing them with fuel cells and electric motors instead. Larger fuel cells could also be used to generate electricity locally (in individual homes and businesses), eliminating the need for huge coal-, gas- & oil-burning power plants—not to mention all those cross-country high-tension power lines, substations and all the rest!
So why isn’t this change being implemented today? My personal answer is: there is still a great deal of MONEY to be made (by certain people—who don’t actually need any more than they already have) by the continued use of hydrocarbon fuels. “Leaders” in industries and governments could make the decisions right now—today—to begin the change-over to this efficient (and cheap!) system of (electrical) power, but that would mean much less (economic and political) power for them! So those decisions are left un-made. They keep their heads in the sand (as mine was until a few days ago—mea culpa) and everyone will increasingly suffer as a result.
But, as I’ve said many times before, suffering and sin of all kinds—including greed—are part of life. Sin is the cause of all suffering, and every sin causes some suffering somewhere (even if we don’t readily see it). We can stand up to others and exhort them to greater acts of justice, charity, compassion, stewardship and all the other virtues, but when it comes to actually rooting out sin, the only place we can do that is in our own individual hearts, through personal repentance.
[ Please read the follow-up to this essay, I once thought I was wrong ... of June 17, 2006. ]
Thursday, October 06, 2005
The ongoing phenomenon of JohnnyK
Those who visit this blog & view the comments attached to each post are surely familiar with the, um… “extraordinary” views of a fellow who goes by the name JohnnyK. I tell myself from time to time that his remarks are in the main so outlandish that they’re really not worth responding to. My wife gets upset too, because she’s convinced I’m wasting my time even giving his comments a passing thought, much less bothering to craft reasoned responses to them. So why do I keep doing it?
Well, for several reasons:
My wife and I met him years ago in a class we all attended. (Years later we were even the Best Man and Matron of Honor at his wedding.) But then, rather suddenly (within a matter of months), a series of personal traumas in his life were apparently the occasion of a profound shift in his way of thinking about the world (both material and spiritual).
I wish now that I’d been aware of what he was going through at the time so I could have helped him sort it all out. (I was of course aware of the external circumstances of his situation, but I didn’t realize the nature or depth of his inner turmoil & transformation until it was “too late.”)
At present, he & I are what you might call “perfect strangers.” I respect his chosen on-line “anonymity” (I hope I haven’t violated it by explaining things as I have), and he respects mine. And I appreciate and thank him for that. However I think I have some information and insights (concerning certain personal matters both past and present) that I believe would be of interest to him, but he has thus far declined my invitation to “private conversation” via e-mail. (I choose not to initiate the exchange so he knows I’m not “spamming” him.)
Because he was once my friend, I now read his remarks with deep feelings of sadness & personal regret. I hope (apparently against hope) that something I say might spark some idea in his mind & cause him to rethink some aspect of his current world view so that we might return to some kind of “common ground.” (I also hope I don’t inadvertently end up pushing him further away than he already is.) I saw what he went through (well, parts of it) and I understand the profound depth of emotional and psychic pain he suffered, and, in a limited way, I can relate to it & sympathize with him! (His way of dealing with that pain, on the other hand, was in my judgment a bit, well, extreme.)
So I still respond to him occasionally. My teenager reads our exchanges and says, “Gee Dad, you ought to put that on your main blog & not just leave it in the comment box. You’d have a lot more room, more people would see it, … (etc.)” Up until now I’ve resisted that option for a number of reasons, but I have a lot to say about several comments he recently made on my last post (the one about Hurricane Katrina) and I decided to avail myself of it at this time. So, as they say, here goes nothing…
[You can read his remarks in full if you wish (although I had to edit out some indiscreet passages) by clicking on the link and wading through the “comments” at the bottom of that post.]
-------------------
“Fundamentally, then, it is about worshipping every cell, atom and molecule in one's body… you feel transformed into a God or Goddess… Temple style Lomi Lomi is about worshipping the body…”
Because it is intrinsic to human nature, everyone must worship someone or something. It’s only a question of who or what you choose to worship. JohnnyK admits here—unless I misunderstand him—that he worships his own body (and perhaps other people’s bodies as well) and, because of the pleasure he experiences through his senses (and the New Age sci-fi psychobabble he’s been ingesting over the last couple of years), he now suffers under the delusion that he must be (or at least might be) a god himself.
-------------------
“There is nothing to forgive, hence, no one is guilty of anything. The solution is to teach people how to create more pleasure for themselves…”
I’d like to hear him say this right after some joker decides to create more pleasure for himself by stealing his car, emptying his bank account or “massaging” his nose with his fist.
-------------------
“People who are punishing themselves with pain seek to punish others with just as much pain. To love is to be happy with. This is why I say that there aren't very many happy criminals.”
Um, excuse me, but…aren’t criminals precisely those people who place themselves and their own desires above and before those of others & their property? Isn’t it their blind pursuit of their own shallow view of “happiness” (and not pain) that sets them on the path of crime in the first place? Isn’t that pretty much the definition of crime?
The real reason criminals are almost universally unhappy is precisely for this reason. Blinded by their own narrow and self-serving notion of what constitutes “good” and focused exclusively on themselves, they reject the natural rights of others & are surprised when they are caught, frequently becoming bitter when their spree is over and they are brought to justice (although some do (sooner or later) repent of their crimes). Their misery is the inevitable & understandable (albeit unintended) natural consequence of their own disordered & distorted self-love.
-------------------
“Now, what is it about taking 100% responsibility that you object to?”
What I object to is his implied definition of “100% responsibility.” Here’s what I mean:
“In order to be 100% responsible, you must see that we are a much more powerful beings than you have ever realized.”
Thinking you are a “much more powerful being” than you actually are is called hubris, a failure of the virtue of humility or modesty. The trick is to recognize and accept your true place in the universe and not pretend you are something that you’re not.
-------------------
“...why can't we be forgiven after we die? This is also out of harmony with your opening statement that we are free to have our own opinions...but then you imply that we are not free to have our own opinions...if we want to avoid TORTURE after death.”
Actually, this is perfectly harmonious and consistent with everything I’ve said all along. Think about it: there are right choices, and wrong choices. You are always free to choose between the two (sometimes there are more than two choices, or morally neutral choices, but I’m not talking about those here).
The consequences of your free choices, however, are intrinsic to the things (behaviors or acts) you choose to do, and are independent of the free operation of your will in choosing to act in any given way.
For example, I am utterly free to either drop an egg or hold on to it. But since the law of gravity operates independently of my will, the egg will fall to the floor if I choose to drop it, whether I actually wish it to or not. The consequence (egg smashing on the floor) is in the nature of physical reality and we cannot change it. If I don’t want the egg to break on the floor, I’d better hold onto it (or take some other suitable precaution to prevent its falling to the floor). Dropping the egg (in this case) would be the “wrong” choice, but I’m still perfectly free to do it. I just have to live with the natural consequences of that choice, that’s all.
So it is in our everyday lives. We are continually faced with the choice between doing right & doing wrong, and we are always free to choose between them. The wrong choice (if sufficiently grave) puts us on the path to hell (eternal “TORTURE”) [if it is not grave, it at least orients us toward the path to hell], whereas choosing to do the right sets us on the path toward heaven (eternal happiness/reward). But it is still our FREE choice. Our problem (the reason we frequently choose the wrong, i.e. to sin) is that we are not always mindful of the consequences of our actions (long-term or short-term, either for ourselves or for others) and choose instead to do what feels good at the moment.
People who believe that pleasure is the highest good in life are called hedonists. People who consistently fail to consider the possible consequences of their actions we call reckless. (Just in case you weren’t sure.) People such as these are generally considered morally weak by normal society. (Frequently society judges it necessary to lock such people up so they can’t harm themselves or others by their habitually disordered behavior.) Conversely, people who freely choose to accept the risk or certainty of personal pain, hardship and privation in order to help others are generally admired—and rightly so—for their personal sacrifice!
Which one (hedonism/recklessness, or sacrificial service) is a more reasonable indicator of personal responsibility? Hmm, let me think about it…
Seen in this light, JohnnyK’s egocentric analysis of human behavior seems rather superficial to say the least, and I’d say, well, backward. I hope he reconsiders his “core philosophy/principles” and chooses in the future to turn outward toward others and to love & serve them for their own sakes as persons rather than for the sake of just their bodies and the pleasure they can give him. I guarantee that, while it might not be as much “fun,” he will definitely be truly happy. (If he doesn’t know how to begin, he can give me a call.) Maybe then he will begin to understand the true meaning of responsibility.
Well, for several reasons:
- Occasionally he says something that is coherent enough that it might possibly lead a reasonable person to misunderstand either the point I was making or some other aspect of reality that JK is criticizing. So I try to straighten out the kinks and twists employed in JK’s reasoning for the benefit of the unwary reader. (In such explanations, I usually refer to him in the 3rd person rather than addressing him in the 2nd.)
- It’s good practice in honing my rhetorical skills.
- Perhaps most importantly, I respond because he used to be my friend.
My wife and I met him years ago in a class we all attended. (Years later we were even the Best Man and Matron of Honor at his wedding.) But then, rather suddenly (within a matter of months), a series of personal traumas in his life were apparently the occasion of a profound shift in his way of thinking about the world (both material and spiritual).
I wish now that I’d been aware of what he was going through at the time so I could have helped him sort it all out. (I was of course aware of the external circumstances of his situation, but I didn’t realize the nature or depth of his inner turmoil & transformation until it was “too late.”)
At present, he & I are what you might call “perfect strangers.” I respect his chosen on-line “anonymity” (I hope I haven’t violated it by explaining things as I have), and he respects mine. And I appreciate and thank him for that. However I think I have some information and insights (concerning certain personal matters both past and present) that I believe would be of interest to him, but he has thus far declined my invitation to “private conversation” via e-mail. (I choose not to initiate the exchange so he knows I’m not “spamming” him.)
Because he was once my friend, I now read his remarks with deep feelings of sadness & personal regret. I hope (apparently against hope) that something I say might spark some idea in his mind & cause him to rethink some aspect of his current world view so that we might return to some kind of “common ground.” (I also hope I don’t inadvertently end up pushing him further away than he already is.) I saw what he went through (well, parts of it) and I understand the profound depth of emotional and psychic pain he suffered, and, in a limited way, I can relate to it & sympathize with him! (His way of dealing with that pain, on the other hand, was in my judgment a bit, well, extreme.)
So I still respond to him occasionally. My teenager reads our exchanges and says, “Gee Dad, you ought to put that on your main blog & not just leave it in the comment box. You’d have a lot more room, more people would see it, … (etc.)” Up until now I’ve resisted that option for a number of reasons, but I have a lot to say about several comments he recently made on my last post (the one about Hurricane Katrina) and I decided to avail myself of it at this time. So, as they say, here goes nothing…
[You can read his remarks in full if you wish (although I had to edit out some indiscreet passages) by clicking on the link and wading through the “comments” at the bottom of that post.]
-------------------
“Fundamentally, then, it is about worshipping every cell, atom and molecule in one's body… you feel transformed into a God or Goddess… Temple style Lomi Lomi is about worshipping the body…”
Because it is intrinsic to human nature, everyone must worship someone or something. It’s only a question of who or what you choose to worship. JohnnyK admits here—unless I misunderstand him—that he worships his own body (and perhaps other people’s bodies as well) and, because of the pleasure he experiences through his senses (and the New Age sci-fi psychobabble he’s been ingesting over the last couple of years), he now suffers under the delusion that he must be (or at least might be) a god himself.
-------------------
“There is nothing to forgive, hence, no one is guilty of anything. The solution is to teach people how to create more pleasure for themselves…”
I’d like to hear him say this right after some joker decides to create more pleasure for himself by stealing his car, emptying his bank account or “massaging” his nose with his fist.
-------------------
“People who are punishing themselves with pain seek to punish others with just as much pain. To love is to be happy with. This is why I say that there aren't very many happy criminals.”
Um, excuse me, but…aren’t criminals precisely those people who place themselves and their own desires above and before those of others & their property? Isn’t it their blind pursuit of their own shallow view of “happiness” (and not pain) that sets them on the path of crime in the first place? Isn’t that pretty much the definition of crime?
The real reason criminals are almost universally unhappy is precisely for this reason. Blinded by their own narrow and self-serving notion of what constitutes “good” and focused exclusively on themselves, they reject the natural rights of others & are surprised when they are caught, frequently becoming bitter when their spree is over and they are brought to justice (although some do (sooner or later) repent of their crimes). Their misery is the inevitable & understandable (albeit unintended) natural consequence of their own disordered & distorted self-love.
-------------------
“Now, what is it about taking 100% responsibility that you object to?”
What I object to is his implied definition of “100% responsibility.” Here’s what I mean:
“In order to be 100% responsible, you must see that we are a much more powerful beings than you have ever realized.”
Thinking you are a “much more powerful being” than you actually are is called hubris, a failure of the virtue of humility or modesty. The trick is to recognize and accept your true place in the universe and not pretend you are something that you’re not.
-------------------
“...why can't we be forgiven after we die? This is also out of harmony with your opening statement that we are free to have our own opinions...but then you imply that we are not free to have our own opinions...if we want to avoid TORTURE after death.”
Actually, this is perfectly harmonious and consistent with everything I’ve said all along. Think about it: there are right choices, and wrong choices. You are always free to choose between the two (sometimes there are more than two choices, or morally neutral choices, but I’m not talking about those here).
The consequences of your free choices, however, are intrinsic to the things (behaviors or acts) you choose to do, and are independent of the free operation of your will in choosing to act in any given way.
For example, I am utterly free to either drop an egg or hold on to it. But since the law of gravity operates independently of my will, the egg will fall to the floor if I choose to drop it, whether I actually wish it to or not. The consequence (egg smashing on the floor) is in the nature of physical reality and we cannot change it. If I don’t want the egg to break on the floor, I’d better hold onto it (or take some other suitable precaution to prevent its falling to the floor). Dropping the egg (in this case) would be the “wrong” choice, but I’m still perfectly free to do it. I just have to live with the natural consequences of that choice, that’s all.
So it is in our everyday lives. We are continually faced with the choice between doing right & doing wrong, and we are always free to choose between them. The wrong choice (if sufficiently grave) puts us on the path to hell (eternal “TORTURE”) [if it is not grave, it at least orients us toward the path to hell], whereas choosing to do the right sets us on the path toward heaven (eternal happiness/reward). But it is still our FREE choice. Our problem (the reason we frequently choose the wrong, i.e. to sin) is that we are not always mindful of the consequences of our actions (long-term or short-term, either for ourselves or for others) and choose instead to do what feels good at the moment.
People who believe that pleasure is the highest good in life are called hedonists. People who consistently fail to consider the possible consequences of their actions we call reckless. (Just in case you weren’t sure.) People such as these are generally considered morally weak by normal society. (Frequently society judges it necessary to lock such people up so they can’t harm themselves or others by their habitually disordered behavior.) Conversely, people who freely choose to accept the risk or certainty of personal pain, hardship and privation in order to help others are generally admired—and rightly so—for their personal sacrifice!
Which one (hedonism/recklessness, or sacrificial service) is a more reasonable indicator of personal responsibility? Hmm, let me think about it…
Seen in this light, JohnnyK’s egocentric analysis of human behavior seems rather superficial to say the least, and I’d say, well, backward. I hope he reconsiders his “core philosophy/principles” and chooses in the future to turn outward toward others and to love & serve them for their own sakes as persons rather than for the sake of just their bodies and the pleasure they can give him. I guarantee that, while it might not be as much “fun,” he will definitely be truly happy. (If he doesn’t know how to begin, he can give me a call.) Maybe then he will begin to understand the true meaning of responsibility.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
What “caused” Hurricane Katrina?
[Before anyone goes and blows a gasket, this is only my opinion. It is the personal view of one Catholic, and it is (to the best of my knowledge) in full conformity with ordinary Catholic teaching; but you, dear readers, are of course free to hold to other opinions.]
As Christians, we believe that all suffering and hardship in this world is the result of the original sin of our first parents, and all the sin that followed in its wake. Everything that's "bad" is (ultimately) the result of sin. Even natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. (Sin puts the whole earth--the whole universe, in fact--in a state of chaos, turmoil and upheaval (Gen. 3:16-19; Rom. 8:19-23). Frequently many good & innocent people suffer as a result, and many die.) God does not "create" or "decree" suffering on human beings (or even on animals), but He does permit suffering to fall on us as the natural consequence of our own acts and the acts of others (i.e., sin), and He always somehow draws greater good out of any evil that occurs. (I realize this is an extremely subtle and difficult distinction for some people, between causing suffering and permitting suffering, but it is essential to understanding Catholic teaching on this point). Fortunately for us, physical death is not the ultimate calamity, since death comes to everyone sooner or later (i.e., no one ever gets out of this world alive), and we believe it is only the “door” through which we enter into eternity. No, the ultimate calamity would be passing through that door and finding oneself in hell.
Hurricane Katrina is, by all reports, the absolute, hands-down WORST natural disaster to hit the United States, not just in memory, but in history. But, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Among the many possible good things that did happen (or bad things that didn’t happen) as a result of the storm and its aftermath:
- Meteorologists tell us that hurricanes and other tropical cyclones are part of the earth’s natural “air conditioning” system, helping to cool certain areas that apparently need it badly (from a meteorological standpoint)
- People (who might not have otherwise done so) were prodded into helping their neighbors (both near and far)
- Many people (who might not have otherwise done so) started to turn to God in their need (and many souls may have been saved as a result, even if some of them might also have died in the turmoil)
- The president of Red China, who was scheduled to visit the United States last week (to tour Boeing in the Seattle area, among other things I suppose), couldn’t because GWBush was all tied up dealing with the disaster and couldn’t be there to meet him (ah, the intricacies of diplomacy!)
- There was a huge casino (as I understand it) that was supposed to open in Baton Rouge that was severely damaged and might turn out to be a total loss (I’m not at all happy about the financial loss per se of the owners, but only point out that—as businesses go—casinos are arguably (either directly or indirectly) responsible for more broken people, broken families and general misery than perhaps any other)
- And last, but not least—the annual Labor Day weekend festival held in New Orleans known as Southern Decadence was cancelled. (No telling how many souls might have been steered from the path to perdition as a result.)
Now, I know there are many, especially among Evangelical Christians (and even some Catholics), who are tempted to say, “See? God is punishing the homosexuals for their perversion, just like Sodom & Gomorrah!” (Or at least that He was punishing Louisiana (& vicinity) for allowing the festival to go on for all these years.)
But the Church teaches that that’s not normally how God works. As I mentioned above, He’s not (at least since the time of Christ) in the habit of “throwing thunderbolts at the wayward" in order to punish them, but rather sits back (in sorrow) and permits them to create their own “punishment” (natural consequences again), hoping they will come to their senses and turn away from the sins that led to their own misery (& that of others) in the first place (cf. Lk. 15:11-32).
I'd heard that years ago, someone asked Pope John Paul II if AIDS was a punishment sent by God to punish the sin of homosexuality. He responded to the effect that God’s ways are absolutely inscrutable to us and that we can never know the answer to that question, but that regardless of whether it was or wasn’t, we still had the moral obligation to minister to everyone who had AIDS in every way possible.
Is AIDS a punishment sent by God? Was Katrina a punishment sent by God? No, neither one. But ALL suffering (from the Catholic perspective) is the result of sin, and since everyone is a sinner, EVERYONE has to help "pay" that price no matter what (at least by participating in death—Rom. 6:23). So everyone must suffer. And everyone must work to help their neighbors who are suffering, whoever they are and wherever they are found (cf. Lk. 10:29-37, James 2:14-18).
Did homosexuality cause Hurricane Katrina? Well, yes … and no. ALL sin, not just homosexuality, contributes to the sum total of human misery. If there were no sin, there would be no misery (not even from hurricanes). But in the real world in which we all live, sin abounds and we all share equally in the guilt for its effects. By itself, homosexuality did NOT create the storm and draw its fury to be spent over New Orleans. (Whew! That’s a relief!)
Homosexuality has gotten a lot of press coverage in the last 30 years or so (good or bad, depending on your perspective), but objectively speaking, it’s NOT the worst sin in the world! The absolute worst sin in the whole wide world is final impenitence because it is the one sin that cannot be forgiven.
Friday, September 02, 2005
I think I'll post about ... hmm ...
I know blogs are supposed to be updated every few days at least, but I've been rather busy and otherwise occupied lately.
I've thought about what I should write about here, and I have a number of candidates:
What is "love" and what's it really all about?
Insights about God gained from reading The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene (a physicist).
Prayer.
World views.
Heaven & our instinctive desire for it.
There may be other topics that I've considered but can't remember at the moment.
There's also the question of time. Computer time to compose an essay & computer+internet time to put it on the blog. This might not seem like much, but with my work and other responsibilities combined with competition within the family for use of the one internet-access computer we own and other related priorities, there just isn't much personal time available for blogging. I might have a little more time in the near future to deal with this situation, though, so I should be back soon with something interesting.
I've thought about what I should write about here, and I have a number of candidates:
What is "love" and what's it really all about?
Insights about God gained from reading The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene (a physicist).
Prayer.
World views.
Heaven & our instinctive desire for it.
There may be other topics that I've considered but can't remember at the moment.
There's also the question of time. Computer time to compose an essay & computer+internet time to put it on the blog. This might not seem like much, but with my work and other responsibilities combined with competition within the family for use of the one internet-access computer we own and other related priorities, there just isn't much personal time available for blogging. I might have a little more time in the near future to deal with this situation, though, so I should be back soon with something interesting.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
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