Yes, I did believe that it would work, but in retrospect, I would have believed that other ways would have worked as well.
Ok, so your knowledge and understanding was deficient at that point. In the other thread, we already covered the fact that salvation doesn’t come to a person based on the accuracy or breadth of their understanding of the faith.
Self preservation/improvement was my motivation, not following God’s work.
I’m not seeing why this is a problem. Are you saying that, throughout history (heck, let’s forget history – let’s just think about the people who experienced Jesus Himself during His earthly ministry!), people accepted Jesus’ message out of deep abiding love in Him? Or, wasn’t it rather the case that they accepted Jesus’ message because they wanted to experience this “Kingdom of Heaven” that He kept talking about?!?
When Eve took the fruit to improve her situation, she had FAITH in SATAN that it would work. She was willing to try ANYTHING to better her condition and that’s what I was doing too without regards to the person offering it.
But we’re not talking about faith in something that isn’t God. We’re talking about faith in God. You had it. God responded. Period.
Oh I have no doubt that faith saves. It does bother me that (according to your statement above) love doesn’t necessarily have to come, yet it seems as if good rule following/checking things off of Roman Catholic rules DOES have to come.
What you call “good rule following”, I call “living your life in the way that the Church asks of you.” You’re saying that this is a bad thing?
Or, perhaps you’re saying that it simply appears
to you as if people are doing this without any interior disposition to please God? We’ve covered this one, too – you can’t know that without knowing the state of their souls. You
can, of course, project your own experience onto them, but that’s never valid.
I’m trying to figure out why it seem as if following RC rules seems to be more important than love and the implications of this.
Have you ever learned a musical instrument, or learned a new skill, or started playing a sport? In the beginning, there’s no ‘love’; there’s no ‘mastery’ of the skill; there’s no proficiency at all. What there
is, though, is the attempt to learn by doing. (This is what Pascal was saying with his ‘Wager’, after all. People always misinterpret him to mean “if you want faith but don’t feel it, just fake it,” but that’s not what he meant at all. Rather, he meant that, if you desire faith but aren’t quite there yet, then start by
doing the things that people with faith do. Through your actions, then, faith (and love!) will grow in you.)
You see, it’s by
doing that we come to knowledge and our faith turns into love. I’m not saying, at all, that “following rules is more important than love” – that’s something that you’re projecting onto what we’re saying here. What I saying is that, in your case, in which there was that kernel of faith (which is a kernel of love of God), you can’t just ‘force’ yourself to love God. But, the hope is that, by having an active faith life – that is, by doing what the Church asks Catholics to do – you will activate the graces God’s given you and jumpstart your love for Christ.
In a way, it’s a kind of “Karate Kid” approach to spirituality. Daniel didn’t realize that all the chores he was doing were preparing him to be a karate master. Yet, at a certain point in his development, that awareness arose in him. At that point – when he realized that “checking off the boxes” was really training – do you think he continued to look down in scorn at those hours he’d spent being a “good rule follower”? Of course not. Then… why do you?
