Faith vs Reason: What can we expect from God?

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ethereality

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I’m tired of receiving the Eucharist and seeming to have only a physical encounter with a bread wafer.

It seems to me that “from the eyes of faith”, i.e. speaking from the perspective of a Christian, I’m being a petulant child demanding to have my way. (“Give me something more than the Bible and more than my daily life and sufferings.”) However, from the perspective of critical thinking, trying to apply logic and reason to make sense of personal experience and reality, I think my prayers and expectations have been entirely justified, especially in light of the Gospel (see for example Matthew 7 below): What does it mean for God to be our Father if He does not interact with us in the way a father interacts with his children? “Father” is a relational term: It has meaning only in consideration of interaction with one’s children.

It seems to me that if I am God’s adopted son, then He has made me blind and deaf to Him, and I do not see how this is benevolent. If it is a trial for me to accept silence and lack of understanding, then I still do not see how it is benevolent to bring me to the brink of the abyss of apostasy, or how it is not self-contradictory to ask me to reject my reason for blind faith, or what other way there is to pass this test and remain Christian without abandoning my reason.

What is a prayer that God will answer? What can I expect from God? When am I justified in giving up on a silent, physically absent being?

I do not know how to reconcile my experience with Matthew 7; I have waited and I have tried to ‘seek first the kingdom of God’:

http://www.newadvent.org/bible/mat007.htm said:
7 Ask, and the gift will come; seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you. 8 Everyone that asks, will receive; that seeks, will find; that knocks, will have the door opened to him. 9 If any one of yourselves is asked by his son for bread, will he give him a stone? 10 If he is asked for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead? 11 Why then, if you, evil as you are, know well enough how to give your children what is good for them, is not your Father in heaven much more ready to give wholesome gifts to those who ask him?
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May I stop receiving the Eucharist? May I stop attending Mass on Sundays? Is it possible that I have not been receiving a validly consecrated Host for years? (e.g. some Japanese bishop not validly ordained, the bread wafer not being of valid form for the liturgy when I visited American churches? The Father being displeased with aspects of the congregation or liturgy and refusing to send down His Holy Spirit?)

My current answers to these questions are not satisfactory ones from the perspective of the Church:
  1. It means God created us with rationality and expects us to do the rest ourselves, i.e. deism.
  2. We cannot know what prayers God will answer.
  3. You cannot expect anything from God.
  4. You should not try to have a personal relationship with God; just accept that He exists and live a good life on your own. (deism)
  5. You must receive the Eucharist once during Easter, but you are obligated to attend Mass every Sunday unless ill health prevents it.*
  6. It is possible, because it’s not clear that God cares for His creation in a micromanaging sort of way. Rather, God gives men free reign to do good or evil.
  • This seems a literal hell on Earth, to be forced to attend a place where God is supposed to be present yet not be able to encounter Him, to be forced to participate in a bad liturgy (e.g. music written for guitar being played on the keyboard of an electric organ, with lyrics like “Well, we’re all friends, yeah? but we work at different places, yeah?”) …
 
After posting the OP, I went before the Tabernacle and read the Bible & Catechism for a while. Sitting down to supper, the thought occurred to me that a relationship with God isn’t like nearly everything else in my life, where if you do the right things, you’ll get the right result. God is personal, three persons, so I must wait for God to decide to do something. Even if we do all the right things, God is still mysterious, ‘not like a man’, and a free agent.

So it’s foolish to turn to atheism after not having an encounter with God. I’ve seen some do this, e.g. William Lane Craig debated a scientist on YouTube who declared, “My loss of faith was purely pragmatic: I prayed, I didn’t get what I wanted, I gave it up.” Thankfully I haven’t done this, but to turn to deism still seems something like an apostasy relative to Christianity, given Jesus’ divine revelation of God as Father.

Do you have any insight on what it means for God to be Father, especially when silent and absent?
 
ethereality said:
After posting the OP, I went before the Tabernacle and read the Bible & Catechism for a while. Sitting down to supper, the thought occurred to me that a relationship with God isn’t like nearly everything else in my life, where if you do the right things, you’ll get the right result. God is personal, three persons, so I must wait for God to decide to do something. Even if we do all the right things, God is still mysterious, ‘not like a man’, and a free agent.

So it’s foolish to turn to atheism after not having an encounter with God. I’ve seen some do this, e.g. William Lane Craig debated a scientist on YouTube who declared, “My loss of faith was purely pragmatic: I prayed, I didn’t get what I wanted, I gave it up.” Thankfully I haven’t done this, but to turn to deism still seems something like an apostasy relative to Christianity, given Jesus’ divine revelation of God as Father.

Do you have any insight on what it means for God to be Father, especially when silent and absent?
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I answer you humbly because you seem to be a deep thinker and I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I would just like to give an insight I might have from reading your posts. I believe you did the right thing by being quiet and going to God in the form of the Tabernacle, Bible and Catechism. This is how we spend time with God and seeking His will. You seem to be carrying on a relationship without knowing it. We proceed by asking for trust, faith and all the things we need for relationship. It takes time. He has already come through for you in your realization of certain ways that He works, and it gave you more peace–also from Him.

In my experience, as I try to be pleasing to Him, He has come through for me in certain tough times, and also in sharing good times with me. Don’t give up. You are seeking to understand and experience important things.
 
I was referring to him, and you summarize what he tried to do, but not so much what he succeeded in doing. Trent Horn was right in a sense to find the debate comical in a cringeworthy sort of way (he commented on it on “Catholic Answers Live” months ago), for how thoroughly he failed to engage Craig’s philosophical arguments, instead insisting vaguely on “evidence”, although it isn’t clear what sort of material manifestation would qualify.

All of Wolpert’s objections have answers; none of his arguments do anything to refute God’s existence or Christianity in particular, and as I recall he wasn’t even able to rebut anything Craig said, which is what made the debate so awkward: They effectively talked past each other the whole time.

As I recall, ultimately, the crux of the matter is his loss of faith as I quoted:
  • His misunderstanding of the Bible (the objections he raised) comes from not seeking to understand it better because of the loss of faith in it. “Anything claiming God exists can’t be true because of my disappointment, so I can rest easy pointing out apparent contradictions without studying them more deeply.”
  • Likewise regarding his juvenile philosophical objections like the “Who made God?” question – no deeper interest in studying philosophy to even learn the right questions to ask, again because of this loss of faith. (loss of faith causing lack of interest to spend time learning about it; same as above)
  • His preference to talk in generalizations about religion rather than look seriously at their specific claims again is the consequence of a loss of faith.
He’s not an atheist for any good reason. He’s an atheist because, as he said, he prayed and didn’t get what he wanted.
 
What is a prayer that God will answer?
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God answers all prayers.

If the prayer request is within his will, the answer is yes.
If the prayer request is NOT within his will, the answer is no.
 
God can be silent, but He can never be and will never be, absent.
 
+JMJ+

What can we expect from God consistently? Happiness.

Problem is, we don’t often want to pay happiness’ price.

And is God ever silent? From my experience, never. It’s just oftentimes we don’t like what He’s saying, and then complain that He’s silent.
 
Faith is founded on reason. Reason augments the reality of faith.
 
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BobCatholic:
God answers all prayers.If the prayer request is within his will, the answer is yes. If the prayer request is NOT within his will, the answer is no.
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From the point of view of the person praying, how is this discernibly different to God not answering all prayers?
 
kdbueno said:
Faith is founded on reason. Reason augments the reality of faith.
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What a frivolous, empty thing to say! You might as well say “Buildings are built on ground; the ground augments the reality of buildings.”

I am keeping faith in spite of reason, not because of it. I can only give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant ‘additional study’ in your second sentence.
 
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