No group of people has “dibs” on being kind, loving, trustworthy.
True, but I’ll say this. A difference with Catholics and atheists, for example - Catholics have standards of behavior (agree with those standards or not) that they’re expected to live up to. In other words, you can reference Catholic morality and then see – does this person live up to the dictates of his religion? We have an example to follow also - the life of Jesus. “Is this person reflecting Jesus’ way of life?” Now you can at least measure against something.
For atheism there is no such thing. Yes, we can say loving, kind, trustworthy – but the standards for that come from somewhere else. For example, an atheist living in a non-Christian country may have different values than an atheist living where there are mostly Muslims, for example.
What we would call “the Natural Law”, we (Catholics) believe is the same for everyone. Thou shalt not murder – is not going to be a highly unique moral norm. But there are other areas where this is different.
And logically-speaking, an atheist could say … “I have my own moral norms”. This may be very good (as it probably is for most) but also very bad.
Just curious: “how would you know that all those signs actually came from God?” Is it possible that you conditioned yourself to see everything that is “good” must have come from God, and everything that is “not good” came from some other source? You need to do some serious soul-searching for this…
Certainly a good question and good insight. How would I know some of this?
The answer is simple, but explaining and illustrating is far beyond what I can do.
The answer? Like any exploration, experiment, discovery, area of learning – it’s a matter of observation, testing, validating, questioning and recognizing repeated, distinct patterns.
The key element is prayer. We could start there. Are prayers really answered? How would you know?
The reason I can’t explain illustrations and stories is, first - I don’t like getting into it at that level.
“How do you know your wife really loves you?”
Can you answer that? Can you give me all the ways you’ve discovered this to be true? How do you really know those things indicated her love for you?
Obviously, nobody is going to do that. The spousal relationship is intimate and over a lifetime, one learns about the love between both. You can’t even think about talking about it. “Oh, she gave me a nice anniversary gift once. I’m 100% sure that means she loves me.” No – it’s a daily thing.
So, for me. It’s a daily thing. Why? Because I pray every day and I have been doing so for many years (decades). I attend Mass frequently.
Prayer, not just for me, but for millions of people - is a two-way conversation.
We experience and “hear” God, teaching us, guiding us, giving us wisdom we could never have on our own.
How do you hear God? Are you saying you hear voices out of heaven?
No, although things similar to that have happened (I’ve had many inexplicable mystical experiences over a long number of years … but I"m not talking about that).
By “hearing” I mean …
- The timing of things
- What is called “signal graces” in the awareness of external signs
- Words that “hit home” or have an unusual impact from other people, or reading (especially the Bible)
- Unusual, unpredictable, unplanned - sometimes impossible - situations
This we call “discerning the spirit”. There are very good books on this subject, dealing with the details on how this works at a practical level. Is this God calling me? Or is it my own imagination?
Over the course of years, testing, praying, questioning and watching – a very high level of certainty can be had.
This is why Jesus calls us to faith. Eventually, we will see God speaking and making Himself known to us personally. Once we see that, we then have to Trust Him in the dark hours, when it’s hard, when there’s temptation. Otherwise, Jesus would just be saying “have blind faith, you’ll never have any validation that what you’re doing is meaningful, but just do it anyway”. No – very few people would go for something like that. What happens instead, is that people do find validation for their trust in God.
Trust is the test of our love. That’s what helps us overcome our own self-love, and go out of ourselves, finding God, knowing Him better - actually having a friendship with Him. He is real - truly communicating. For the individual who finds this - it’s irrefutably certain.
That’s how a saint, like St. Francis, for example - sold everything he owned and just lived with nothing but prayer to God. Total trust. He took a huge risk - huge leap of faith. What if God just let him die of starvation? But he took Jesus’ words seriously “Ask and you shall receive”.
So, the very same idea you presented, Vera, regarding trust of a person. We can (and must) do that with God. It’s experimental. “Ok, I will pray to the Blessed Virgin, a novena, and see what happens”. Then we just take a look.
For me, there’s the negative proof which I’ve had too many times. Of course, answered prayer is not instantaneous. It’s not magic. You have to work, build virtue, be patient, grow little by little. There are times when it just takes endurance. But faith tells us “Something great is going to happen - I just have to keep praying and watch”. And it does happen. Something very great that we never could have imagined.
But I’ve lacked the patience - that’s for sure.
“I’m just tired of this. I don’t want to pray any more. I’m just going to live like everyone else - not sins, but just forget about God.” Then what? I’ll just say for me, I will never do that again. Lesson learned - the hard way.
) …