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Thorns
Guest
Knowingly rejecting God is knowingly rejecting your conscience, whatever religion or lack of religion you are. People reject their conscience out of self interest.
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calmthesea
Guest
Counterpoint,
People don’t reject God. They ALWAYS invent one to their liking. It may be science. It may be mother earth. Secularism is a good example of people creating ‘humanity’ as it’s god. Even if people believe in Christ or the God of the bible, many still create a god who accepts their “idiosyncrasies”( others call sin).
A god to our own liking…we reason it out… many believe that’s their best interest.
Best, Patrick
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Counterpoint
Guest
If you believe there is some form of free will that neither entails determinism nor indeterminism, then please share it with the rest of us.Counterpoint:
Actually I believe in neither of those points. They are viewpoints that I found are held by some who reject God, which I do not. All this portion of my argument was intended to do was to list some of the attitudes and opinions I have heard expressed.
Also, please explain how a good God would allow eternal suffering.
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Counterpoint
Guest
That would include you too. Right?
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simpleas
Guest
Maybe for some its not about rejecting God but religion. I know lots of people who say they are fine believing there is a God, good people I might add, but they just don’t need to follow a set of rules or beliefs to feel safe.
I’m sure there are people who practise magick (not sure if this rejects God?) But its about finding out who what and why a person is…
We do the same, only through Christ.
I kind of agree about blindness etc, but I’m yet to settle my mind on subjects like priest abuse, I mean were priests willingly and knowingly rejecting God when the were sinning in this way? They taught others about purity, protection of life etc and behind closed doors did the opposite.
I’m sure there are people who practise magick (not sure if this rejects God?) But its about finding out who what and why a person is…
We do the same, only through Christ.
I kind of agree about blindness etc, but I’m yet to settle my mind on subjects like priest abuse, I mean were priests willingly and knowingly rejecting God when the were sinning in this way? They taught others about purity, protection of life etc and behind closed doors did the opposite.
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chefmomster2
Guest
Free will is the gift of God which makes the fullness of love possible.
God allows suffering because His gift of free will is given fully and this gift is often exercised for evil purposes.
God is Good. Just as 1=1.
Now, back to the previously scheduled thread…
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calmthesea
Guest
I think it’s a tendency of man… to create… to create something to worship…you worship something.
When someone realizes God is a being, with characteristics, who seeks relationship, it’s a beginning. It’s an opportunity to get to know Him.
Best, Patrick
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Counterpoint
Guest
I will take this as your way of conceding the point, namely, that free will must be either compatible with determinism or indeterminism.
Eternal damnation is not justice. It’s a mockery of justice.
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chefmomster2
Guest
No, it is compatible with a loving God.Eternal damnation is avoided through the grace of God.Those who reject God’s mercy need not complain when they don’t receive it. All it takes is faith!
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chefmomster2
Guest
You raise a false choice here. The choice is between good and evil.
Actually those are the same thing. Mortal sin is always a rejection of God.
The error here is in believing that an ethical choice could be made by judging between two evils. He did not consider any good alternative.
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It is not less than human, but it is not the whole story. Animals are creatures who operate on instinct and responses that are hardwired into them. Hungry they seek prey. Threatened they attack. They are not performing in either a good way or an evil way. They just act.
Your thesis throughout our debate has NOT been that emotions CAN override our judgment and blind us to the knowledge of sin, but that it is UNIVERSAL. Your idea is that NO ONE can commit a mortal sin/reject God. I can easily concede that there are cases where one could be blinded. What I do NOT concede is the belief that it is IMPOSSIBLE for ANYONE to sin. Our nature is that of a RATIONAL BEING.
YOU: Man IS ALWAYS BLIND by the nature of his being, therefore he CANNOT reject God.
ME: Man CAN BE BLINDED by various forces, but by his nature as a RATIONAL BEING he is NOT ALWAYS BLIND. In those cases where he is not blinded, he would be rejecting God.
Ok, for the sake of argument, let me accept your premise here as true. You were blinded and did not sin in your resentment. Later, you reflected and increased your understanding.
STIMULUS---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> RESPONSE
Injured doctor…Resentment/Evil Thought
And this is, according to you AUTOMATIC AND NON-CULPABLE.
Let us assume that tomorrow you hear a similar story
STIMULUS--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->RESPONSE
Injured doctor…?
If this is truly an AUTOMATIC BLINDNESS, it MUST be…Resentment/Evil Thought
There could be no change to a preset automatic system- no learning.
If you say
Injured doctor…Forgiveness
Then the response CANNOT BE AUTOMATIC!
Perhaps you say that your reflection in the first case altered forever that response. Then, since this has now occurred, any instance of a similar case should no longer cause AUTOMATIC resentment. This resentment would be a choice!
Thus,
STIMULUS----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->RESPONSE
Injury of Doctor…Forgiveness>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Moral Good
Injury to Doctor…Resentment>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Moral Evil
In other words, your conscience was informed on this point. From now on, you are RESPONSIBLE, NOT IGNORANT.
YOU ARE NOW CULPABLE FOR YOUR SIN. (Had this been a serious sin, you would be responsible for REJECTING GOD.)
When your son was little, I am sure there were times he was naughty. I assume you pointed out his mistake. Eventually you held him responsible for his behavior and there were consequences. He could no longer claim ignorance.
That is called developing morals and self-discipline. Practiced enough he became responsible for his actions, no blindness allowed!
Continued… (Maybe tomorrow. I have bronchitis so I’m going to bed!)
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stevmar
Guest
Forgive me for not reading all previous comments and if this sounds very simple minded or has been written previously in the thread. I assume when you say reject God that you mean to choose not to love Him.
I look at it this way… for God to be ‘God’ to someone, that person has to literally place Him at the very center of their life and being. This means to completely surrender to God in love.
This love isn’t meant to be a touchy feely love (although at many points it will include feelings), but rather a hard core sacrificial love. This is what it means to truly love God.
The ultimate question should be then, why not have myself be at the center of my life and my being? Why should I have this separate being be the object of my every desire? Well… He’s infinitely good so who wouldn’t want Him as their sole desire if we want what is good for ourselves? (just like many have been asking)
Maybe a deeper question then would be why should I will that He receive every good even at the cost of myself losing every good? This is the sacrificial love that is demanded of us (after all) and enables us to actually say that God truly is our God, our love, and our every desire.
If you replace why would I not want the greatest good as my sole desire with the question that was last stated pertaining to sacrifice… the question is no longer so trivial… at least in my opinion.
Wouldn’t everyone say the same? I surely haven’t willed to love God so intensely yet because I’m still a great sinner… and I’m assuming most others on this blog haven’t either. This is a tough question that we struggle with throughout the entirety of our lives.
I also think that in order to ever truly consider a valid “solution” to the original question that “cooperates” with the existence of God, one must be willing to accept that the human will can freely choose the object of its desire… that we are not equivalent to complex computers. One would have to consider that a person has a spiritual or mystical part of them self.
As a further note… Catholics don’t think that all individuals who believe in a different faith are condemned to Hell. This seems to always be a huge misconception. God never sends individuals to Hell who truly have a will to know, serve, and love Him. If someone is invincibly ignorant… meaning that they basically don’t believe in the Catholic faith through no fault of their own (which God could only judge), then they aren’t condemned because of their disbelief. Please correct me if I’m wrong here though… as I’m not a theologian!
I look at it this way… for God to be ‘God’ to someone, that person has to literally place Him at the very center of their life and being. This means to completely surrender to God in love.
This love isn’t meant to be a touchy feely love (although at many points it will include feelings), but rather a hard core sacrificial love. This is what it means to truly love God.
The ultimate question should be then, why not have myself be at the center of my life and my being? Why should I have this separate being be the object of my every desire? Well… He’s infinitely good so who wouldn’t want Him as their sole desire if we want what is good for ourselves? (just like many have been asking)
Maybe a deeper question then would be why should I will that He receive every good even at the cost of myself losing every good? This is the sacrificial love that is demanded of us (after all) and enables us to actually say that God truly is our God, our love, and our every desire.
If you replace why would I not want the greatest good as my sole desire with the question that was last stated pertaining to sacrifice… the question is no longer so trivial… at least in my opinion.
Wouldn’t everyone say the same? I surely haven’t willed to love God so intensely yet because I’m still a great sinner… and I’m assuming most others on this blog haven’t either. This is a tough question that we struggle with throughout the entirety of our lives.
I also think that in order to ever truly consider a valid “solution” to the original question that “cooperates” with the existence of God, one must be willing to accept that the human will can freely choose the object of its desire… that we are not equivalent to complex computers. One would have to consider that a person has a spiritual or mystical part of them self.
As a further note… Catholics don’t think that all individuals who believe in a different faith are condemned to Hell. This seems to always be a huge misconception. God never sends individuals to Hell who truly have a will to know, serve, and love Him. If someone is invincibly ignorant… meaning that they basically don’t believe in the Catholic faith through no fault of their own (which God could only judge), then they aren’t condemned because of their disbelief. Please correct me if I’m wrong here though… as I’m not a theologian!
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Thorns
Guest
Eternal damnation is a consequence, just as eternal happiness is.
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OneSheep
Guest
Did you see my thread on “how to forgive child molesters”, simpleas? It is my understanding that child molesters commonly have a malformed conscience. They are convinced that what they are doing is something that the child wants. This is one of the dangers of equating the conscience with God. God gives us a conscience, but it is “educated” by our experiences and authorities around us. Sometimes, we find a conflict between authorities and/or between authority and experience. Sometimes the appetites themselves affect the conscience, especially moral decision-making.
Also involved, of course, is the blindness caused by desire. Child molesters want to “possess” the child, to have the child, to have the intimacy with beauty. They are blind to the harm. This does not, in any way whatsoever, lessen the need for an applied consequence. What this does do is give us the understanding that can help us forgive in a mature way.
I gleaned this today from Cardinal Ratzinger’s book, in reference to Matt 5:21-48:
“… as Jesus illuminates the depth of these demands, it becomes evident that man shares in these sins through anger, hatred, failure to forgive, envy, and covetousness (I would add desire and capacity for blindness!). It becomes clear how very much man in his apparent righteousness is besmirched with what goes to make the unrighteousness of the world. If one takes the words of the Sermon on the Mount seriously, one realizes what happens to a man who moves over from party politics to reality. The beautiful black and white into which one is accustomed to divide men changes into the gray of a universal twilight. It becomes clear that with men there is no such thing as black and white and that , in spite of all the possible gradations, which in fact do span a wide range, nevertheless all men stand somewhere in the twilight. To change the metaphor, one could say that if the moral differences between men can be found to be total in the “macroscopic” realm, a microscopic, “micromoral” inspection discloses a different picture, in which the distinctions begin to look questionable.”
(Introduction to Christianity, pp 258-259 bold type mine)
With a bit of introspection, one can find within ourselves the motives and the capacity for all the sins exhibited by mankind. It takes a lot of painful humility to accept the premise that Jesus, and the Cardinal, put forth, to take a hard, and accepting look at the “micromoral”. But in this humility is the prize of holiness. When we humble ourselves in this way, in my experience, we find ourselves at-one with everyone. It is a mature forgiveness, simpleas. All of us could molest children given the experience and the blindness that they have/had. Again, this is not a plea for aquittal, it is a means to understand, and forgive, from the heart, which is our calling.
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OneSheep
Guest
Oh dear, will you please forgive me. I just realized that I have been writing “chefmonster” instead of “chefmomster”. I’m not sure what either is, but “chefmomster” sounds a lot nicer. Woops!
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Yes, the decision to forgive was not automatic. It took a discipline, and a realization that I needed to forgive. So we definitely agree on that observation.
And yes, if I were to see the complete value of the doctors, but still rationalize their harm, I would be violating my own conscience, unless my conscience, in a new moment, said “this person deserves to be punished” or something like that. Our consciences are not very steady when it comes to these matters. It bodes well that we do not rely on individual consciences to have a safe society. Through law we add consequences, which appeal to fear, and those fears hopefully override the malformed, or blinded, conscience.
I have been in many, many, discussions with people who think that forgiving some others (i.e. Hitler, Stalin, even Obama!) is unconscionable. These are Catholics. Do you see that Jesus defies a “natural” conscience? Jesus said “you have heard it said to love your friend and hate your enemy…” and then he calls us to love our enemies. Where did that original saying come from? To me, it comes from the automatic conscience, the natural conscience, that served us in tribal times. Jesus calls us to a higher conscience, a new conscience.
So, chefmom, just present a hypothetical, and we can kick it around a bit. Help me find a hypothetical case of “knowing” rejection.
In the mean time, I will say a prayer for your bronchitis. Please, get well.
Thus the pertinence of this discussion to this thread. My observation is that such “mortal sin” never happens, defined as it is. People sin out of blindness and ignorance. Perhaps it would be fruitful if you were to give an example of such a sin occurring; feel free to provide another hypothetical, or show me my error in the theft example I responded to. You don’t have to take my word for it, find an example from your life, and follow it through. When you think of a sin, try to determine why the sinful choice was made. The priest I referred to earlier said, “It is not to condemn or condone, but understand.” If you come to a point where your answer is “he sinned because he is evil” or something like that, then that is a condemnation, not an answer. Go back to the question, and keep working on it, praying on it. St Augustine did this exercise.
Well, that is a reasonable conclusion, but it does not get to the root of the issue. This is all speculative, because we are not in Col. North’s mind, but the next question is, (if what you say is true), “Why did he not consider any good alternatives?”.
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Well, the capacity for blindness is universal, that is my observation. We are not always blind, but since none of us are omniscient, we all have our share of ignorance. I apologize for not communicating this clearly enough.
Well, I did not say that man is always blind, so I agree with the “can be”. Remember, ignorance is also a huge factor. People can be blinded as a result of resentment and desire, but these are not (hopefully) permanent conditions. Some people, however, refuse to forgive, and these will remain blind.
I do like, a lot, the “stimulus/response” section of your post! However, one has to take a few steps back in order to get the original stimulus. The original stimulus was the observation that some doctors kill children. The response from my conscience was one of resentment, which has the attached devaluation of the person(s) resented. This is part of the machinations of the conscience. My response included “such doctors should be punished”. Its a rather subconscious thing.
Yes, the decision to forgive was not automatic. It took a discipline, and a realization that I needed to forgive. So we definitely agree on that observation.
And yes, if I were to see the complete value of the doctors, but still rationalize their harm, I would be violating my own conscience, unless my conscience, in a new moment, said “this person deserves to be punished” or something like that. Our consciences are not very steady when it comes to these matters. It bodes well that we do not rely on individual consciences to have a safe society. Through law we add consequences, which appeal to fear, and those fears hopefully override the malformed, or blinded, conscience.
I have been in many, many, discussions with people who think that forgiving some others (i.e. Hitler, Stalin, even Obama!) is unconscionable. These are Catholics. Do you see that Jesus defies a “natural” conscience? Jesus said “you have heard it said to love your friend and hate your enemy…” and then he calls us to love our enemies. Where did that original saying come from? To me, it comes from the automatic conscience, the natural conscience, that served us in tribal times. Jesus calls us to a higher conscience, a new conscience.
It did not matter whether or not he was blind, or ignorant, see? We rely on consequences to instill a bit of fear so that the behaviors that are harmful occur less often. Blindness and ignorance explain why people behave badly, but blindness and ignorance are not reasons to withhold punishment. Do you see the distinction? This thread is not about whether or not people should be held accountable, all people should be held accountable for their choices. This thread is about whether people who make those bad choices are *knowingly, (thus willingly)*rejecting God, and I observe that this is not the case.
So, chefmom, just present a hypothetical, and we can kick it around a bit. Help me find a hypothetical case of “knowing” rejection.
In the mean time, I will say a prayer for your bronchitis. Please, get well.
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RCCB
Guest
Speaking for myself as one who has rejected the church, I simply came to the conclusion that the all too human theological construct called the church, has nothing to do with God or any ‘supreme good’. When that ultimate reality decides to make His purpose more clear, I’ll have no problem seeking out that wisdom.
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chefmomster2
Guest
Don’t give it another thought! (It happens all the time!) My sons, 7(?) and 12(?) at the time, came up with my username more than a decade ago. They love my cooking, so that part is obvious. If it had been up to them, they would have added “monster”, but they figured "mom"ster would be mistaken for monster enough to give them their giggles, but since they weren’t actually asking to call me monster, I wouldn’t “kill them”!Would you mind spending a couple of posts clarifying our definitions, then? Let me know if you agree with:
CCC1871 Sin is an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law (St. Augustine, Faust 22
L 42, 418). It is an offense against God. It rises up against God in a disobedience contrary to the obedience of Christ.- Man sins.
- These sins are defined as venial or mortal.
- Mortal sins require three things
- The sin must be serious.
- There must be full knowledge. (as opposed to “ignorance”)
- There must be full consent. (as opposed to “blindness”)
PS Thanks for your prayers. I have about 5 things ending in “itis”, but I am starting to feel a bit better. Forgive me if I am a bit slow for the next several days.
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simpleas
Guest
Thanks.
I’m not thinking on forgiveness, I’m thinking on the question the OP asked. I don’t want to keep using priests as an example, it could be anyone in “Authority” that knows and teaches what they (or maybe they don’t) believe is a mortal sin. So when they chose to sin, and they did, were they knowingly and willingly rejecting God?
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truetofaith
Guest
If you read people’s comments on religious topics on yahoo for example, many call God and religion a fairy tale & knowingly reject it all.
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chefmomster2
Guest
I was thinking of this example the other day. I certainly feel that with all their years of theological study they must certainly have the necessary knowledge to make it culpable, but then it gets “squishy”.
CCC1735 Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factor.
I don’t claim to have a very clear understanding of the Church’s understanding of these terms. I think that perhaps it is possible that there could be issues surrounding fear, habit, inordinate attachments and/or psychological factors. Maybe someone else can explain these.
I would like to say that they are absolutely culpable because their sins were HEINOUS! That doesn’t mean God would agree. His ways are not our ways.
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simpleas
Guest
Thanks.
So that to me would say that many of us are never in mortal sin. I don’t want to say what God would think, but the church teaches certain sins separate us from God, yet we know psychological issue’s play a massive part to all sins against each other…
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