Tag Archives: Just Thinking Out Loud

No Proof – No God?

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Continuing the theme:  being “amazed how people can have core beliefs with no proof behind them?”

A response:

And amazed you should be! Seems you use that amazing brain of yours to go well beyond the five senses (you depend on for proof.) Proof, though, deals with measures. You can’t measure wonder, hope, compassion, mercy and forgiveness but you can experience them. (I forgot love.)

The response to my response:

What is it that makes you base your beliefs on the Catholic ideas rather than Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Scientologist, etc? I think they all have explanations for what’s immeasurable. Is that where the hope comes in? Just pick one and hope the others are wrong?

Amazed someone was actually asking, I got carried away:

Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, all reflect experience of this life and contain much that is true. God is not limited to speaking to Catholics. People of all faiths seek and listen for Him. However, the act of seeking and listening doesn’t make everything we image or conclude true. I think many people will  except only what doesn’t conflict with their wills and desires. Truth is not relative, however. It simply is. One belief is not as good as any other. Having an explanation doesn’t make the explanation true. For instance, Hindu pantheism saying that everything is one and everything is God; God being a force, impersonal and pervading everything throughout the universe. In fact, the universe is God. That makes God part of the material world, which obviously means He can not be spiritual in his entirety.He must share our material imperfections. He’s now subject to change. Now he possesses something. Now, he doesn’t. “Not very Godly,” I’m thinking. In fact, very limited in space and therefore not all-present. Makes it very difficult to call the Hindu idea of god, God. He’s part matter and therefore made up of parts. The Hindu God is described as impersonal making Him not a person. I am a person and possess person-hood which the Hindu God does not. I’m now one up on their idea of god. I am a person precisely because I have spiritual substance, soul. I have immaterial thoughts and like you deal with, manipulate and generate thoughts every moment of consciousness. Yet the Hindu god in not conscious, just pervasive nothingness. You can believe this if you like, but then you have to reject other ideas that contradict it. Can’t all be true, even with the best, most broadminded,  intentions. Disregarding logic makes it easier; enter pop-culture, pop-everything; not well thought out, just popular for a time. It works for awhile, but there’s still that elephant in the room-the Four Last Things.

Bringing up Death is an appeal of sorts for a need to survive, even if it only in memory or our work, our art, our writings, etc. Probably not the smartest argument to make for as Dinesh D’Souza writes, quoting Woody Allen, in D’Souza’s book, “Life After Death-the Evidence”:

“I don’t want to achieve immorality through my work. I want to achieve immorality by not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen. I want to live on on my apartment.”


Proof – Show Me God! And Then What?

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On Facebook: Someone “is amazed how people can have core beliefs with no proof behind them?”

Not to waste a quip that begs a spiritual work of mercy, I thought I’d take it up here, rather than beleaguering those on Facebook anymore:

It’s the old “show me” that had the Russian astronaut, Yuri  Gagarin, supposedly, saying during his famous space flight, “I don’t see any God up here.”

So what if you had proof?  Would you change? Actually, Gagarin’s words are nowhere in the verbal transcript of that flight. It suited Nikita Khrushchev to say that in a speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to fit an anti-religious agenda. So, I ask, “What’s your agenda?  What will a God with a plan and an agenda of His own mean to your life?

Here’s what I mean: when Jesus appeared in the synagogues of Galilee, it was at a time of great expectancy.  The rabbis knew the signs of Messiah.  The people had no trouble recognizing the actions of Jesus to be the actions of God: love, healing, deliverance, power over the elements, power over matter and the biggie, power over death.  Some acclaimed Him.  Many walked away. Finally the rabbis said in effect and to His mortal peril, “No way.  No Messiah! They had the Romans crucify Him on their behalf.  Jesus said, “Follow Me.” Now the people too saw where it could lead. To be fair the rabbis saw where He could lead them.  He was standing above Moses, above Sabbath and spoke not about God but as God.  He was changing everything.  Even though they prayed for Messiah to come, and this man worked the signs of Messiah, they saw change as an enemy.

So I ask again. If God shows Himself, or you are given the proof you, supposedly, seek, what will change?  Will you?  Pope Benedict in his book Jesus of Nazareth, says.:

“The people who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake are those who live by God’s righteousness – by faith.  Because man constantly strives for emancipation from God’s will in order to follow himself alone, faith will always appear as a contradiction to the “world” – to the ruling powers at any given time.”

“Show me proof.” you say.  “Show me God”…. and what?  Will you change?

Colossians 1:9b-11

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Colossians 1:9b-11

May you attain full knowledge of God’s will through perfect wisdom and spiritual insight. Then you will lead a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way. You will multiply good works of every sort and grow in the knowledge of God. By the might of his glory you will be endowed with the strength needed to stand fast, even to endure joyfully whatever may come.

Sent from my iPod

Manifesting the Bit by Bit and Hidden Evil

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Os Guinness in his discourse “Addressing the Question of Evil In An Age of Genocide and Terror” dialogues on the questions of evil: “Where on earth does evil come from? How are we to understand evil?” Guinness asks us to consider the possibility of magnifying evil in modern times:

“The dreadful evil of the Final Solution was not carried out by monsters. Hitler was a monster.  Goring was a monster. Goebbels… They were monstrous. They didn’t carry any of it out. It was carried out by millions, and millions and millions of “good ordinary people.”

“You could see how in a world of bureaucracy with division of labor and diffusion of responsibility and a distancing,.. people don’t actually see the effects of the decisions they make.   You can see how a modern world and its procedures and its way of doing things has made possible evil on a scale the world never imagined. (paraphrased)

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.- Edmund Burke

St. Juan Diego – Model of Humility

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“Listen and let it penetrate your heart … do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need?“
(Words of Our Lady to Juan Diego)

Happy Juan Diego, true and faithful man! We entrust to you our lay brothers and sisters so that, feeling the call to holiness, they may imbue every area of social life with the spirit of the Gospel. Bless families, strengthen spouses in their marriage, sustain the efforts of parents to give their children a Christian upbringing. Look with favour upon the pain of those who are suffering in body or in spirit, on those afflicted by poverty, loneliness, marginalization or ignorance. May all people, civic leaders and ordinary citizens, always act in accordance with the demands of justice and with respect for the dignity of each person, so that in this way peace may be reinforced.

Beloved Juan Diego, “the talking eagle”! Show us the way that leads to the “Dark Virgin” of Tepeyac, that she may receive us in the depths of her heart, for she is the loving, compassionate Mother who guides us to the true God. Amen.

(Words of Pope John Paul II from the homily at the canonization of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin)

“I thank you, Father … that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was your gracious will” (Mt 11:25-26).

Things Visible and Invisible

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I tend to see Christ and Our Lady all around me:

in trees,

on trees.

Once I saw his name “Jesus” spelled out in the shadows on the ground in front of me as the sun shown through the leaves of my shefflera.  My husband who doubted me, soon found himself tracing out the letters with his foot.

This past summer, I set up a tent behind my trailer. It had mesh, see-through, sides.  The next day, a man from the next campsite came over to tell me that his whole family saw Our Lady of Guadalupe but her image was only visible through the sides of my tent.  I checked it out that evening and sure enough, I could see her too.

All this to say I understand when the Anchoress declares  Advent Pictures of Christ amid the snowflakes.  In an absolutely stirring post, she says, “When I first saw these pictures, all I could think of was: Look! Pictures of Christ!  Pictures of perfection, they remind us of the joyful Antiphon for a Monday’s vespers: ‘yours is more than mortal beauty; every word you speak is full of grace.’ “