by Susan Fox
A friend of mine posted these questions online. I wrote my answers in red. I enjoyed our dialogue.
Anonymous:
It's not that I don't think that I need a god, it's that there is no god that I
am convinced exists. I used to. But my research shed a lot of light on the fallacy
that is the Christian god.
Are you
aware that the Christian religion is the only one in the world that teaches:
love your enemies, do good to those who harm you, the first shall be last and
the last shall be first? It’s the only religion where God expects you to
forgive others before receiving His forgiveness.
Anonymous:
I will never believe in him (the Christian god), though I will always be open
to another. I have spoken to people who have claimed to have "felt"
their own god, to have "seen" him, to have "spoken" to him
and he spoke to them. The thing is, all of their gods were different.
Brother, yes,
it can be very confusing when you have conflicting views of truth. However,
there is only one God. God is the Father of ALL mankind. And regardless of what
each person believes when they do experience God they are experiencing the same
God that I do. However, their understanding may be different then mine.
For
instance, I have a friend who is a Shinto. She believes in 886 gods. She gets
upset if I kill a bug. She loved my
mother, and she came to my mother’s Catholic funeral. During the Mass, she
badly wanted to receive Holy Communion (the Real Presence of Jesus in the
Eucharist) during the Mass. Our custom is to instruct a non-Catholic to fold
their arms over their chest and then go to Communion. The priest will bless them, but not give them
Communion. However, when Yuriko got the blessing she still stood there because
she wanted Communion. The priest didn’t know what to do, so he gave her Communion.
Yuriko came back with tears streaming down her face. After Mass, I said,
“Yuriko, what happened?” She said, “Susan, when I go to the Shinto Shrines in
Japan, God comes down to meet me. That was what it was like to receive Holy Communion.
God came down to meet me.” So you see, we had dramatically different
understandings of God, but the God she met at the Shinto Shrine was the same as
the One she received in the Catholic Church.
Muslims see
their relationship with this god as Master and Slave. They understand God to be
completely irrational, and the only guaranteed way to get their heaven (72
virgins) is to complete an act of martyr suicide, usually kill somebody else.
Ideas have consequence so you got to be careful which view of God you adopt.
If you go to
Bombay, you see lots of fat sleek well-fed cows, but the people are lying in
the street literally starving to death. If you accidently hit a cow with your
car, you might be killed by a mob. But you can run over a human being – no big
deal, because Hindus believe that the cow is sacred. The human will have
another chance to live through reincarnation, although I don’t know why anyone
would want to come back to a life like that. The cow is a reincarnated human
one step down from Nirvana, which means you become one with the universe, i.e.
nothing. You are gone. Now my cousin Eric was very impressed with the Hindus he
met in India because they were so well behaved. I said, “Eric, they are so
impressive because they want to become a cow.” He was very surprised. Our
family raised and ate cows.
Christians
see their relationship with God as Father and child. Heaven is a relationship
with Our Father. There is no laying around on a fluffy cloud and eating cheesecake.
There are no 72 virgins. There is no owning your own planet with 50 wives. No,
heaven is not a place, but a state of being in relationship with Our Loving
Father. And on top of that we don’t lie around lazily after death. Jesus said,
“My Father goes on working and so do I.”
If the
Father is working, so will we. So unless you love, really love Our Father and
want to work with Him, there is no reason to try and go there. There is no
material reward in the next life. It doesn’t sound like a very big motive for
living like we do now.
So what is
my motive for being a Christian?
I fell totally in love
with the Person of Jesus Christ when I was only four years old. Like Yuriko, I
found myself in a terrible situation, and God mercifully came to meet me. He
came to comfort me. My beloved father was killed in a car
accident. I was in the back seat. When they pulled me out, “I screamed Daddy,
Daddy, Daddy!” and promptly vomited. I never saw my father again.
Three days later, my
mother and my grandmother took me to the Catholic chapel in the hospital and
told me to pray for my father. I was angry. If I knew how to swear, I would
have. “You can’t make me pray to a God
that took my Daddy!” I thought. The
chapel contained the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Remember God
so loved the world He sent His Son? Well, Jesus ensured that He never left us.
He established the sacrament of His Love, the Holy Eucharist, so He would be
with us until the end of time.
At the age of four, I
didn’t know that. But when I went into the chapel I met a Presence. He met an
angry hurting child. He was patient. He was kind. And I have belonged to Him
ever since. I know what you will say, “What a cruel God that he would take that
little girl’s Daddy from her.” But Brother, as I have prayed deeply over that
event I realized I received so much more in exchange. I really wouldn’t change anything
at all. God didn’t cause the accident. God
didn’t make the choice to drive recklessly that day. Two teenagers did. God
didn’t put a middle lane in that road that could be driven either way (It was 1957).
God didn’t tell my father to look at my mother lovingly just before the
accident. My father just did it. And I even looked up from the back seat and
saw the car coming straight for us. But I was only four years old, and I didn’t
know what that meant. So God had to accept our free will.
But when I screamed,
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” God my Father responded. God so loved the world He gave
His Only Son. And at that moment in time, I was the world. I was the one who
received Jesus Christ. He was my Gift.
And I have never been alone since. Literally I have never been alone for
56 years. I suffered the same as everyone else, but I always had Someone to
bear it with me.
The same thing happened to
people in the Scripture. They met the Person of Jesus. They dramatically turned
their lives around. I feel especially close to St. Photina, who went on to
evangelize and convert Domnina, the daughter of the Roman Emperor Nero, and her
servants.
Photina or Photini was the Samaritan woman at the well who met
Jesus in the Gospel of John. Jesus begged water from her knowing He was going
to give her something better, Living Water – the Person of the Holy Spirit. But
while He was talking to her, knowing she had lived with several men, He asked
her to go get her husband. She said, “I have no husband.” Jesus responded,
"You have correctly said, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five
husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said
truly." (John 4:17-18)
Was she embarrassed? Did
she run home crying? Did Jesus order her stoned? He knew her sins! No, she met
her Maker. She met the Person of God! “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.”
That was her response. Then she became an evangelist like me. She went and told
everyone in her village about Jesus, and they came out to see Him. We both
became evangelists because what we received was so wonderful that we wanted to
share it with others. “So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city
and said to the men, "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I
have done; this is not the Christ, is it?" They went out of the city, and
were coming to Him.” (John 4:29-30)
I walked out of that
hospital chapel in 1957 into a hot New Orleans afternoon, and I have never been
the same. It was a special gift. A lot of other people didn’t know Him until
much later in life. St. Augustine was into multiple women and heresy, but when
he finally came to Christ, he said, “Late have I loved thee, Lord.” And then,
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” He was a fourth century
bishop of the Catholic Church.
Anonymous:
You talk about morals being non-existent without guidance from what is told to
us by God. I have always been so incredibly irritated by this argument.
Actually,
YOU SHOULD BE IRRITATED by that argument. It isn’t true. Our morals do exist
without God’s guidance. He wrote His law
on our hearts. We have the natural law.
Anonymous:
There are rules in the Bible that we now ignore as they are simply far too
brutal and insane for modern society. Well, how do we know which rules to
ignore if we are incapable of morality outside of the Bible? Where do THOSE
moral judgments come from? We are told to stone a woman to death if she wears
two types of fabric at the same time. Then why aren't we stoning women to
death?
Some Muslims
do still stone people to death. Christians do not. We don’t even think we
should. We would regard such actions as a terrible crime. The Old Testament is nonsense outside the
prism of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
However,
which rules do we follow if any?
The Ten Commandments
are identical to the natural law written in our hearts, so they are kind of
wired into our being. However, the Ten Commandments are ten negatives. The same
law is contained in the Eight Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are written in the positive.
The Beatitudes summarize and contain the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Here they
are:
•
Blessed are the meek: for
they shall possess the land.
•
Blessed are they who
mourn: for they shall be comforted.
•
Blessed are the merciful:
for they shall obtain mercy.
Do they
sound too hard? If someone becomes Christian, do they have to obey these laws
instantly? NO. It is a lifetime struggle. We may struggle with them until we
die. But we will be happier as we work on them. If you master one, the rest are
yours.
Anonymous:
Then why aren't we stoning woman to death? Because we have empathy, Susan.
Empathy and altruism. These two traits are not exclusive to humans. No, we see
them in all types of animals. We are animals, Susan. Good, evil, and the
purpose of life are a philosophy created by us. It does not exist in the
universe outside of our own minds. It was born with us and it will die with us.
And the universe will keep on spinning and not even know we were there.
I agree that
we are animals with empathy, but we have the empathy from our Maker, Who is
Love. We are made in the Image of God, and that’s why we see so much beauty in
nature, science and other human beings, and in animals, who are not made that
way because they cannot reason, cannot make a moral decision, and usually can’t
speak intelligently although some dogs are pretty nifty. "Heaven and earth
will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” (Matt.24:35) To last for
eternity, cast your anchor onto God. He will not pass away.
Anonymous:
Maybe evolution is the creation of God. Why not? Would you ever accept that
theory - that God created the wonder that is evolution? I love that idea. It's
harmonious.
I don’t
really have a problem with the idea of evolution taking place in big steps, but
always as part of God’s plan. God is a mathematician. He creates that way,
logically. Actually when you admire science and nature you are admiring His
work. I think you’d like Him, if you tried to know Him.
Anonymous:
I do not like Mother Teresa in the slightest. She was an incredibly cruel
woman. The many accounts I have read about her infuriate me. She was a
horrible, greedy, hypocritical, and deluded woman who was knowingly responsible
for the suffering of countless people.
Regarding
Mother Teresa of Calcutta: We can’t judge other people. We can’t see what is
inside their hearts. We can’t see what’s inside their heads. What is inside is
a mystery unless they write something.
Then we can catch a glimpse. A great book for knowing Mother Teresa is
“Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. The Private Writings of the Saint of
Calcutta.” It’s available at Amazon.com.
Reading it would give you an opportunity to judge her words yourself, instead
of relying on what someone else has said about her, which may or may not be
true.
Anonymous:
Also, I find that whenever presented with a question about God's actions,
Christians rely heavily on the "god works in mysterious ways"
reasoning. I've always found that to be a cop-out, and an easy way out of
explaining anything. Whenever a Christian is cornered, they use this argument
and the discussion ends. Easy.
I never have
used that argument. Sounds like something someone’s
mother said. Mothers don’t like to answer questions, when the kids ask them
endlessly.
The Dialogue Continues at Are We Meat Puppets?
The Dialogue Continues at Are We Meat Puppets?
