03.30.08
To Fear and Not to Fear
How are we to regard fear, in the context of Christian faith? Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, as is proclaimed in many parts of the Bible (Psalms 111:10, Proverbs 1:7, 9:1, 15;33, Job 28:28), yet God’s encouragement is also there: “be not afraid” (Luke 5:8-10).
Some groups of Christians, notably the Irish Catholics and American Fundamentalists, have promoted a dreadfully fearful picture of God, of being Vengeance rather than Love. God is both a God of Justice and Mercy, and in this regard we must strike a balance of both of these aspects; not by diminishing either, but realizing that he is both 100% just, and 100% merciful. We must be able to confidently turn to Him, our heavenly Father, by honestly admitting and repenting from our sinfulness, as a child does.
As I wrote on a Being Frank post, The best approach I’ve come across so far – the transcendent middle – is in Peter Kreeft’s Between Heaven and Hell: to fear God in volition, not in emotion. We are to not only be in awe of God, but (as Aquinas taught, I believe) also fear the possibility of eternal separation from Him – but only in the gift of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2-3).
03.29.08
Three Degrees of Loving God
Christ most perfectly fulfilled charity through humiliating death of a criminal; love not only toward us, but for God the Father. He experienced in his human nature the suffering and death as acutely as any human being, yet accepted his fate in resignation: “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).
St. Francis de Sales’ Treatise on the Love of God mentions three degrees of loving God, which are quoted below. Often we may fail to attain even the lowest, by loving the consolation more than the consoler. Nevertheless, as we are commanded to be perfect (Matthew 5:48), we are to model the supreme degree of love for God as demonstrated by Christ:
To love God’s will in consolation is a good love when it is truly God’s will we love and not the consolation wherein it lies. Still, it is a love without opposition, repugnance, or effort. Who would not love so worthy a will in so agreeable a form?
To love God’s will in His commandments, counsels, and inspirations is the second degree of love and it is much more perfect. It carries us forward to renounce and give up our own will, and enables us to abstain from and forbear many pleasures, but not all of them.
To love suffering and affliction out of love for God is the summit of most holy charity. In it nothing is pleasant but the divine will alone; there is great opposition on the part of our nature; and not only do we forsake all pleasures, but we embrace torments and labors.
[excerpted from Finding God's Will for You]
As Thomas Kempis proclaimed in The Imitation of Christ:
“Oh what power hath the pure love of Jesus, unmixed with any gain or love of self! Should not all they be called mercenary who are always seeking consolations? Do they not prove themselves lovers of self more than of Christ who are always seeking their own gain and advantage? Where shall be found one who is willing to serve God altogether for nought [without reward]?”
A high and holy calling indeed – and the aim and purpose of this life for all of us.
03.23.08
Easter Sunday
| Resurrexi, et adhuc tecum sum, alleluia. Posuisti super me manum tuam, alleluia. Mirabilis facta est scientia tua, alleluia. Domine probasti me et cognivisti me. Tu cognovisti sessionem meam et resurrexionem meam. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. |
I rose up and am still with thee, alleluia. Thou hast laid thy hand upon me, alleluia. Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me, alleluia. Lord, thou hast proved me, and known me: Thou hast known my sitting down, and my rising up. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. |
[Text from William Byrd's Resurrexi]
03.21.08
Good Friday
On this day is celebrated Love crucified, for the sake of you and I.
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
03.20.08
The Modern Holocaust
Unborn child at 5 months after conception
Imagine a white-robed doctor, taking the incision scissors and moving toward the operating table. Next, he takes a stab and proceeds to suck out the brain of the unborn child.
Cold. Bloody. Evil.
Yet, aborting the baby this way even a day before delivery is judged worthy of a standing ovation – it is a frightful fruit of the Culture of Death; the legalized child-killing, the so-called “woman’s choice”, the modern holocaust. A precious life – defenseless – is snuffed out in order to preserve the perverted self-serving desires of the ’sexual revolution’. This is proclaimed as a ‘right’, a right to massacre, and promoted by the radical Feminists and organizations such as Planned Parenthood.
A society which carries out this holocaust will not go on without repercussions. Unless we repent and turn back from this evil with contrite hearts, we will suffer what we fully deserve. As Mother Theresa said, abortion is the greatest destroyer of peace – we must end this holocaust if we are to again restore sanctity of life and save our souls and civilizations:
…I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.
And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.
By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.
And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.
Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.
03.16.08
The Non-sense of Abortion
History has shown that the persecuters must dehumanize the victims before ill-treatment is made permissible. Hitler called the Jews “pigs”. Slave owners called blacks “animals”. They’re all labels which reduce the inherent dignity present in a human person, which free the perpetrator to act out their ill motives without public outcry or the deserved consequences (at least in the short term or in this life).
Here in the case of abortion, they dehumanize the unborn child, the fetus (Latin for “offspring”). The motive seems obvious: sex. “For abortion is backup birth control, and birth control is the demand to have sex without having babies.” (Peter Kreeft. A Refutation of Moral Relativism). The recent resignation of a virulently pro-abortion Governor is a case in point – he was involved in high-level prostitution. The gross irony is that it is the the very same people who hold themselves up to be the self-less champions for “women’s rights”. Thus, they manage to dehumanize the mother and the child – making the former into a sexual object to be toyed with, and killing the latter – all the while making themselves appear as the angels of light (II Corinthians 11:14). It’s no wonder that Kreeft would write: “Plainly put, abortion comes from Hell and it can lead us to Hell if not repented” (Peter Kreeft. Human Personhood Begins at Conception).
I posted the following for a Being Frank thread discussing the recent anti-pro-life article on NZ Herald (not only is it pro-abortion, it specifically attacks Voice for Life), and in support of Brendan Malone of Family Life International:
Thanks for being pro-active, Brendan (as well as pro-life). It’s good – nay, a God-send – to have a voice like yours for those powerless to speak.
I agree 110% about “the most important question of all – is a human embryo a living human person?”. Really, all the issues on abortion comes down to this one question. As Peter Kreeft points out in Human Personhood Begins at Conception, there are only four possibilities:
1. that it is not a person and we know that,
2. that it is a person and we know that,
3. that it is a person but we do not know that, and
4. that it is not a person and we do not know that.As he writes in The Apple Argument Against Abortion, abortion was legalized in the US by appealing to uncertainty, which would be 3 or 4.
This is ridiculous, because the only permissible case is #1. For the other possibilities, abortion would be in each case:
2. Murder.
3. Man slaughter.
4. Criminal negligence.There is no justifiable position in the absence of evidence proving non-personhood of the fetus. In fact, the medical texts prior to the abortion controversy accepted that life began at conception.
Given the above, I have to agree with Brendan that Mr. McCarten’s article on the NZ Herald is “astounding on account of its lack of reason and logic, and in the end it reads as shallow pro-abortion propaganda and fear-mongering.”
03.15.08
The Popular and Hidden Dogma
It’s interesting to observe that, as Peter Kreeft pointed out in Between Heaven and Hell, there is a hidden dogma that operates in the followers of the religion of egalitarianism (and also of relativism and pantheism). Namely, the dogma of the “unity of all religions”. It seems to follow the true premise of the equality of people, to the false conclusion of the equality of truths. Out of their admirable desire to respect all people comes the erroneous assertion that all truths are subjective, and therefore equal.
This is unfortunate but perhaps understandable, since it seems the most difficult and unnatural thing to have to separate the belief from the believer, as also the sin from the sinner. Yet this separation is a very necessary one, since we are not the authors of truth, but the readers. If the difficulty of it leads people to a misinterpretation, it would not serve them to “accept them as they are” (“read into it whatever you want”), as pop psychologists would say, especially if the topic is the ultimate meaning of life, and a matter of life and death – both here, and the hereafter. The kindest thing one could do in such a situation is to point them to a remedial teacher, or better still, to the author who wrote it.
And that’s the job of a Christian: to affirm the dignity of persons while denying the subjectivity of truth, and following the only charitable course available by pointing people to the author: Christ.
