Tag Archives: materialism

Pervasive Darkness – Everlasting Light – Benedict XVI

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Sometimes the blindness of those who forgo God leaves me speechless.  There is simply too much to say about God, Life and Eternity that silence and prayer must suffice, especially when you know that no one is actually asking the questions that might turn on the lights and light up their life.

Here is an email I received that begs God’s grace and an answer:

“By the way, besides my atheist status I am a full out Liberal ready to take everyone’s extra money to feed hungry children so watch out! 😉 I get in as much trouble for my Liberal Democrat status as my non faith in mainstream religion. I am spiritual and giving but don’t recognize religion as something that works for me. That’s the difference.  So many people proclaim their loyalty and belief in a god but are not good people, I try to be good without the need of a god’s blessing or promise of eternal life. In other words, I try to be good for nothing…… joke here.”

I thought I would answer by bringing  in the Big Guns for the really Big Picture:

From Jesus of Nazareth by ‘Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI:

“At the heart of all temptations… is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive Him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives, constructing a world by our own lights without reference to God, building on our own foundation, refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion that is the temptation the threatens us in many varied forms.  Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil; no, that would be far to blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and threw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place.  It claims moreover to speak for true realism; what’s real is what’s right there in front of us, power and bread.  By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs.

God is the issue.  Is He real, reality Itself or isn’t He?  Is He good or do we have to invent the good ourselves?  The God question is the fundamental question, and it sets us down right at the crossroads of human existence. What must the Savior of the world do, or not do that is the question the temptations of Jesus are about.”

Alfred Delp, a German theologian, executed by the Nazi’s said:

“Bread is important.  Freedom is more important, but what is most important of all is unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration.”

Benedict XVI continues:

“When this ordering of goods is no longer respected, but turned on its head, the result is not justice or concern for human suffering the result is rather ruin and destruction even of material good themselves.  When God is regarded as a secondary matter that can be set aside temporarily, or permanently, on account of more important things, it is precisely these supposedly more important things, that come to nothing. It is not just the negative outcome of a Marxist experiment that proves this, the aid given by the West to developing countries has been purely technically and materially based.  It has not only left God out of the picture but has driven men away from God. and this aid proudly claiming to know better is itself what first turned the Third World into what we now mean today by that term.It has thrust aside indigenous religious , ethical and social structures and filled the resulting vacuum with its technocratic mindset.  The idea was that we can turn stones into bread; instead our aide has only given stones in place of bread.  The issue is the primacy of God.”

A Glorious Dawn and God

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H/T the Anchoress:

This is beautiful and celebrates a finite universe, giving us some idea of infinity by the awe it inspires and the Universe’s sheer vastness and complexity.

A Glorious Dawn includes these words:

“But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has it’s own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world.”

It is interesting to note that Carl Sagan, while positing, a purely material universe, was in awe of Possibility.  Yet, he won’t admit the possibility of God, and immaterial realities, such as soul.  Sagan trafficked in ideas, and ideas, themselves, simply sing and shout God.

While Carl’s science functions on ideas, his materialistic science must measure, weigh, observe and record.  This purely materialistic observing and recording is insufficient for describing all of Reality, all that is. Materialistic science can come to know just part of Reality, the material part.

F.J. Sheed says, “Ask yourself: ‘How much does this idea weigh?  How long is it?  What color is it? What shape is it? How much space does it take up?’ The answer of course is that your idea has no weight, no length, no color, no shape, and takes up no space.  It simply has no material attributes at all.  something with no material attributes is immaterial, another word for spiritual.

Carl Sagan glorified ideas, dreaming of future manifestations and possibilities. A solely materialistic view must find a way to account for the immaterial Intellect and for that matter, the Will and Conscience, as well. “Immaterial ideas imply an immaterial faculty capable of forming them.  It is impossible for something material to create something immaterial.  Therefore the faculty capable of forming spiritual ideas must itself be spiritual.” observes F.J. Sheed in “Theology for Beginners.”

Tell the Story!

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I’m beginning today with a question: How did the first Christians do it?

In a world of propaganda and hype, of relativism and materialism, I ask myself what do I have that can change darkness into Light?  In truth, I have what Christians have had from the beginning.  I have the Savior of the world. Jesus words after His Resurrection from the dead were:

“Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” Mark16: 15

In effect, go tell My story!

It is more than a story.  It is power.  It is the single most important act in all of human history with eternal consequences.  The world has run after other gods.  I have run after other gods.  That’s not the end of the story though.

Tomorrow begins Lent.  For myself, I’m resolved to tell the story everyday of Lent.  Lent will change me and then the world.  Like the first Christians,  we must begin by telling the story of  Jesus’ death on the Cross and His Resurrection from the dead.  Proclaim it!

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of  God.” John3:16–18

Paul told us we don’t need to be polished and eloquent.  To the Corinthian Greeks, Paul writes, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” 1 Corinthians 2:2

That is my story.  I’m resolved to tell it today.

Who Has Bewitched You?

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Early this morning,  I read these words in the Office of  Readings:

“But the time came when He who had set me apart before I was born and called me by His favor chose to reveal His Son to me, that I might spread among the Gentiles the good tidings concerning Him.”  Galatians 1:15-16

My thoughts flew to the issue of Life; God creating each one of us purposefully; knowing us as we are, with all our faults and failings and even our misguided “good” intentions.   Paul had just finished describing to the Galatians his background,  including what had been his well meaning ambitions previous to his conversion:

“You know that I went to extremes in persecuting the Church of God and tried to destroy it; I made progress in Jewish observance far beyond most of my contemporaries, in my excess of zeal to live out all the traditions of my ancestors.” Galatians 1:13-15

As I thought about this, it wasn’t much of a leap from there to recalling the arguments and dismissals of those in the pro-abortion camp,  declaring an unborn child as:  no child, no purpose, a blob of tissue, an inconvenience, a mistake (recall President Obama’s words), an economical burden (Nancy Pelosi’s words.)  In addressing the Galatians for their having strayed from the Truth,  Paul says, “O stupid Galatians!  Who has bewitched you?” Galations 3:1.  How much more can these words be spoken to our generation so steeped in secular relativism and materialism.

If God not only had Paul’s personhood in mind before he was conceived,  but also had a plan for Paul, which included His Church, and had a moment in Time set,  in which He would enable Paul to see clearly and become the man He called him to be, then how can we continue to throw away precious life as though God isn’t watching, isn’t caring, and isn’t remembering?  Is Paul’s term, “Stupid,” strong enough to characterize so many so zealous in their war against life in our  present culture of Death?