No doubt about it. , was not aware of these embracing details… big money, big problems with rip offs…its always the comfortable ones ripping off the less fortunate. The only answer is to
cause the comfortable ones who are stealing to become the less fortuanate…experience is the best teacher in the world
Yeah. I always thought I cared about the poor, but until I lost my 20 year engineering career to disability ten years ago while raising six children, I really didn’t appreciate them, nor the political strategy of those who claim to be looking out for them. I now know why Bill Clinton said things like, “I feel your pain.” That is something a “disadvantaged” person wants to hear from a leader they think they need on their side for their very survival.
But is hasn’t been All Bad. We didn’t have the nice things my wife and I had growing up, and my wife and I have no idea what it is like for our children to have grown up mentally ill parents who were seldom both “normal” at the same time. But through all that we have actually been very blessed in several ways. The kids got not only a stay-at-home mom, but a stay-at-home dad as well, both who never stopped loving them and doing for them even in our darkest moments. They got to see a truly committed marriage with parents who stuck together when so-called “friends” and in some cases certain family members and shockingly even professionals who share the prevailing cultural anti-marriage mentality, told her that she needs to ditch me asap and start divorce proceedings, for her own mental and emotional survival. And I paid Good Money for some of them to tell that to my wife. With recent events bringing some relief, it has given St. Julie and me a whole new level of appreciation for “do not worry about tomorrow.”
Nothing wrong with riches per se, but living in a wide range of circumstances has given us some empathy for others from varying backgrounds.
One person says an alleged God doesn’t answer my prayer, while another says God did answer but told me “no.” What real difference does it make what we profess to believe if we don’t have faith anyway, and live in fear rather than peace? Neither position lines up with Scripture about the mechanics or prayer of the “faithful” as I understand it. If God randomly chooses to hear us regardless of what we ask for, then frankly, why even ask? If it’s just self-talk, than it doesn’t take a godly psychologist to recommend doing it.
Jesus didn’t say that our prayers would be answered unless His Father had Better Plans for us; He said in John 16:23, “In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” He didn’t say “whatever you ask that my Father wants you to have whether or not you had asked.”
Now Jesus did say that our prayers would be ineffective or worse if we harbor grudges against our brothers, and to me that includes our Catholic and non-Catholic brothers both, who are trying to have a meaningful discussion in good faith but have been so helplessly indoctrinated as they grew up in a dualistic-only mindset of “I’m right and you’re wrong” that it goes around in circles and makes everybody going around in the circles or watching them reach for a sick-bag.
Most of the time even when I may come across as flippant or worse, there is a message intended in my madness: there is more to life than being intellectually right about something that has no tangible consequences and can never be physically proven or philosophically derived. I can’t know if I’m happy with my surroundings how much I think it was from God and how much from my own doing; but I am happy and at peace in a way that if I were in control never could have made it this way, and I do things in an attempt to invite, trigger, catalyze, or cajole, others into a world where they can taste a little of what I am grateful to have, that God and life (whatever you believe about Him) has brought to me and my loved ones.
So yeah, thank you so much FurtherSuntime for acknowledging and replying to my post. Maybe this will help people understand that I am not trying to ruin everybody’s fun, but I am inviting them to taste and see the goodness of the Lord, or of circumstances or whatever, that is making me ecstatic once again, to be alive.
After being delivered from severe mental illness, I truly understand how subjective “reality” is, and I think some of us need to a) get over themselves, and b) realize we wouldn’t know “absolute” if it hit us upside the head.
1 Cor 8:1b-3:
We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. 2 Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. 3 But whoever loves God is known by God.
Sorry I’m using NIV and not Catholic bible, and just might keep doing so from now on. I prefer one search engine over another, and after years of running from one bible to another to search and quote, respectively, I see it’s largely an unneeded exercise. If you don’t think it’s the same message than please do your own research and if it is materially different let’s have it. For myself, it’s much less tedious and distracting to just find the verse, copy it and move on.
Finally I leave one request in my own self-defense, as worded so beautifully by our Savior Himself:
John 18:23
“If I said something wrong,” Jesus replied, “testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?”
I pray (or wish for, if you prefer) Peace and Joy to all posters and lurkers in this thread.
Sincerely,
Alan
