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Elf01
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I haven’t read it, but Trent Horns Hard Sayings sounds like what you’re looking for.
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Mmarco
Guest
Let me give you my answer.
I believe that God loves us infinitely, and He desires to lead each of us to the true life and true happiness, a condition existing only in communion with God. But God cannot tolerate evil and sin, because they are incompatible with His good and holy nature. A deep interior change is then necessary for all of us to reach the eternal happiness; we must be sanctified and purified from all our evil and sinful desires. God has the power to change us but He wants to do that with our consent. In fact God has chosen to create man with a free will, He wants to respect our free will. Man cannot really accept to be changed by God and he cannot be in comunion with God as long as even a shadow of doubt and distrust remains in his heart ( it must be stressed that such a distrust may exist even without the man is aware of it, at the unconscious level).
In order to destroy every shadow of doubt and distrust in our heart, God has chosen to give us the greatest proof of love that may exist: Christ’s Passion. Christ’s Passion has redeemed us and reconciled us to God because it has uprooted from our heart our distrust and doubts about God’s love; it has satisfied our (conscious or unconscious) desire and need of a proof of love, so that it has given us the strength to trust God and feel loved by Him.
I believe that each of us needed to know that God was willing to accept such a terrible suffering for us, in order to really trust God. Every man needed that proof of love, and God, who knew this, has accepted to give man what he consciously or unconsciously asked to Him. Jesus had to suffer and die that way to convince us about God’s goodness and God’s love towards us. It is man’s obstinate distrust against God that has forced God to give man that proof of love, the proof he needed to trust God. By His death on the cross, Jesus destroys our distrust and our doubts, and He gives us the strength to believe in Him and trust Him. This means that each of us is personally responsible of Jesus’ sufferings and death.
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RobertAdams
Guest
I think you’re assuming that joking was not endemic in ancient society. The passage reads best as humor, and generally when you come across something in Ancient writing that seems very awkward in every other reading, but “fits” perfectly as as joke, you should consider that it may have been a joke. Humor is not evil or out of place in a serious work. Priests often use a good joke in a sermon to emphasize a point.
(Talking about the she bear eating kids for saying baldy, not about the passage in the thread title)
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1Lord1Faith
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The verse in question is using a literary figure of speech called hyperbole. It is especially fitting to find it being used in the context in which it is in.
I’ll check it out, thanks. I really don’t want to be out, chasing down evangelical sources, when I can find Catholic ones.HomeschoolDad:
I haven’t read it, but Trent Horns Hard Sayings sounds like what you’re looking for.
Nope, not Calvinist, traditionalist orthodox Catholic Christian.
I always thought that the passage above in bold, was just Catholic doctrine. Can’t speak to the “God wills evil in order for one to believe it” — never heard that before.
This might be a case of the old adage “we’d all be material heretics, if we talked long enough”. (I’m referring to me, not you.)
You make some very interesting observations. Now, mark my words, everyone, I am not trying to cast doubt upon the core of the Christian message, I’m just offering some observations of my own:
But if God is omnipotent, couldn’t He “just get past that” and go over and beyond, forgiving unconditionally while requiring nothing else? I forgive people unconditionally (or try to) and require nothing in return from them, nor do I require any “justice” or “satisfaction”. I just let it go. (Or again, I try to.)
He didn’t, and that’s the bottom line, but still, I don’t have much to counter that objection.
God gave me two great gifts — free will and conscience. I turned around and gave both back to Him, trusting in His Church’s magisterium to guide me on the latter.
I will go one step further and say, as Luther did about reason, that either one of these things can be Frau Jezebel (especially “conscience”) when we use them badly. If your “free will” or your “conscience” leads you into hell for all eternity, about five seconds after you get there, you’re going to wish you had something done to them, that cannot be repeated here.
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Gorgias
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When you direct them against the person himself, rather than against the misinformation? Yes, it is wrong.
In other words, “go off and die, old man”. It’s not mockery – it’s a death threat!
And… they weren’t “little children”. Think more like “Crips and Bloods”.
He didn’t require it. He allowed His Son to choose it, and accepted it as the expression of the love of God toward humanity.
If your son gave his life willingly for another, wouldn’t you be awed by his sacrifice? Wouldn’t you accept those for whom he made his sacrifice? That’s what’s going on here, and not “that mean God forced His Son to die.”
Are you saying that God the Father (Yahweh) would have forgiven mankind unconditionally, but His Son chose to be a propitiatory sacrifice, and His Father honored and accepted this?HomeschoolDad:
He didn’t require it. He allowed His Son to choose it, and accepted it as the expression of the love of God toward humanity.
If so, I’ve never heard that before. I have always assumed (and you know what happens when you “assume”) that there was no other way for the right relationship between God and man to be restored, no other way to forgive, no other way to open heaven to the just.
Yes, but I would be thinking “I would have accepted these people without my son having to make that sacrifice”.
Just because I am a theological hardnose (especially where traditional Catholic morality is concerned), does not mean that I don’t have questions that some could find troubling. I don’t entertain doubt, don’t “egg it on” within myself, but I do ask questions. My son comes up with some hum-dingers in our homeschool religion class. I told him the other day, “I’d much prefer to see you asking these questions, than merely to be memorizing it all, with no way to defend it — some of these questions, if asked in the Catholic school up the road, would ensure that I’d be getting a call from the principal pronto, but in our school, hey, those questions are okay!”. It is more important for you to learn how to think, than merely to amass information — you can always look up facts and information, but thinking, no one can do that for you." We study doctrine and dogma, but not mindlessly. Again, given my history here on CAF, that might surprise some readers.
“I don’t know why I believe that, I don’t know why the Church teaches that, I don’t understand it, it’s just what I was always taught” is about the most impotent defense of the Faith imaginable. I’ve seen people crater when challenged in that fashion, and yes, sometimes they’ll fight you. There’s nothing else they can do.
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Julius_Caesar
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Evidently you haven’t read the thread concerning this.
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Julius_Caesar
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“This command I have received from My Father.”
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Gorgias
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Address the issue in error, not the person.
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Julius_Caesar
Guest
We have addressed the issue. The person is putting a false image, and you seem to be defending this.
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Mmarco
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I think you have missed my point; the problem is not forgiveness, but that we cannot be in communion with God as long as we have sinful desires in us. We must be sanctified and purified from all our evil and sinful desires. If God simply forgave us without changing our heart, we could not be in communion with Him.Mmarco:
But if God is omnipotent, couldn’t He “just get past that” and go over and beyond, forgiving unconditionally while requiring nothing else?
These are some interesting thoughts, but I’m not sure I’d go to the cross for them. Each and every one of us has “sinful desires”. I’d be interested in defining more closely “communion with God”.HomeschoolDad:
I think you have missed my point; the problem is not forgiveness, but that we cannot be in communion with God as long as we have sinful desires in us. We must be sanctified and purified from all our evil and sinful desires. If God simply forgave us without changing our heart, we could not be in communion with Him.
By me? I’ve been on these forums for a couple of years now, and I have never faltered in defending orthodox Catholic doctrine. I don’t do “sealioning”.
If you’re referring to the OP or anyone else here, I don’t see any “sealioning” there either. I see a good discussion that I would just take at face value, with several different points of view being exchanged in an overall civil fashion. In any discussion, things may start to go south, and that’s fine — it’s part of discussion, part of learning — as long as it gets brought back on track, which seems to have happened here. I’m perfectly willing to assume everybody’s sincerity and good will.
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Mike_from_NJ
Guest
Sometimes the quickest way to verify there is substance in your argument is when people question your motives instead of your points.
Not following you here at all. People can question my motives, or my points, to their hearts’ delight, but my yes remains yes, and my no remains no. Can’t be any plainer than that.HomeschoolDad:
Sometimes the quickest way to verify there is substance in your argument is when people question your motives instead of your points.
The only “agenda”, if it can be called that, that I have ever brought to these forums, is my deeply felt, and deeply thought, contention that abortion is at the root of all the political problems (and many other kinds of problems) we have in this country, and that contraception (i.e., dissent from the Church’s teaching and refusal to obey it) is at the root of all the problems in the Church. Imagine an America where everyone is pro-life, and imagine a Catholic Church where everybody embraces and follows the Church’s teaching on birth control, and my point should be clear. Aside from that, I have no agenda.
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Mike_from_NJ
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I’m sorry. Let me clarify. My post was in response to the claim that you were sealioning, a claim I strongly disagree with. My intent was to support you by saying that if a response to points you’ve made are accusations of trolling or being purposely disruptive and not attempting to counter your points, then there is some meat to what you are saying.
I’ve gotten that a few times where I’ll discuss at length a particular part of scripture and someone will ignore what I’ve written, look at my ID and bio, then simply question why I’m talking about the matter at hand.
I’ve gotten that a few times where I’ll discuss at length a particular part of scripture and someone will ignore what I’ve written, look at my ID and bio, then simply question why I’m talking about the matter at hand.
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No problem. I’m not even totally clear that the sealioning accusations were being made to me, or to someone else. To tell the truth, I really don’t care. CAF is riding off into the sunset, and anything we discuss here will be gone in a few days. (Not maintaining a perpetual archive of these forums on Catholic Answers is a decision I could not more strongly disagree with.)
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Mmarco
Guest
Through His Passion, Christ reach the depths of our heart and comunicates to us the strength to trust God.Mmarco:
These are some interesting thoughts, but I’m not sure I’d go to the cross for them.
In fact, God has the power to change us but He wants to do that with our consent. In fact God has chosen to create man with a free will, He wants to respect our free will. Man cannot really accept to be changed by God and he cannot be in comunion with God as long as even a shadow of doubt and distrust remains in his heart ( it must be stressed that such a distrust may exist even without the man is aware of it, at the unconscious level).
In order to destroy every shadow of doubt and distrust in our heart, God has chosen to give us the greatest proof of love that may exist: Christ’s Passion. Christ’s Passion has redeemed us and reconciled us to God because it has uprooted from our heart our distrust and doubts about God’s love; it has satisfied our (conscious or unconscious) desire and need of a proof of love, so that it has given us the strength to trust God and feel loved by Him.
To have communion with God means to have a share in His Divine Life; God lives in us and we in Him. Let me quote some biblical verses:
John 15:4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
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goout
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Gentle persuasion is a good thing.
We also pass laws to codify protection of human beings because unfortunately, gentle persuasion does not guarantee respect for human life. If gentle persuasion worked all the time, laws would be completely unnecessary. In the garden someday, we can hope…
I’m trying to think of any other circumstances where justice comes at the cost of innocent human life. For example: we are not allowed to kill a comatose accident victim for the purpose of harvesting his liver to save your life. Can you think of any other situation where a claim to justice comes at the cost of innocent human life?
Justice means giving a person what is rightfully due to that person, in the context of the rights of all persons. You and I don’t have an absolute right to anything in an individualist vacuum.
You have to evaluate justice in light of the rights of others. And helpless children fall into the category of “others” just like you and I.
You seem to have respect for God’s anger. Do you think God is angry when children are killed? How do envision the application of God’s anger in a way that is just? Does God’s anger benefit all people, or only some people?
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