Month: July 2018

No Middle Ground/No Sidelines

by leekierdorf
We make many decisions in our life. Often, children are asked in America, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I can’t believe adults are serious about this. Maybe they are just making conversation with a child. It does show the underlying belief Americans have in freedom, so that’s good. But to have your whole life planned out as a child? I don’t think so.

Green-Swatc

But there are big decisions to be made. And some prefer a middle position on things. They would rather remain on the sidelines waiting to see what happens. But in one decision, these sidelines do not exist. And there are passionate voices to be heard. “God does not exist!” “God is so wonderful.” Waiting on the sidelines seems to be a safer place. But try and find those sidelines.

Green-Swatc

One approach is to be agnostic. “I don’t know if God exists.” It sounds safe, a neutrality, perhaps. But, you must go further. You must say, “It is impossible to know if God exists.” This could be your exemption. But, others are so sure of his existence. Your stronger statement is unlikely to be true.

To be neutral is above all to be a sceptic. It is not just indifference, not an unwilling suspense because you must believe something. Do you doubt everything? Do you doubt your consciousness? Are you just dreaming it all? Or do you doubt your own existence?

You can’t go that far, so no one is a complete sceptic. You do believe something but how do you know it is true? What assures you?

Green-Swatc

If no God exists, what then is man? A novelty of the universe? Man is a contradiction. He is a prodigy and a judge of all things. But, no, his hold on truth turns to uncertainty in a moment. He is proud and strong. Yet, his weakness becomes apparent so easily.

Who will unravel this riddle that is man? What do you become, when you try to find out by your natural reason what is your true condition? You cannot avoid claiming knowledge or remaining in doubt. Yet, you remain a paradox to yourself.

Humble yourself, put off weak reason; silence foolish nature; and learn that man infinitely transcends man. You have a Master who reveals your true condition, of which you are ignorant. Hear God.

If there was no corruption of the original, men would enjoy in their innocence both truth and happiness with assurance; and if man had always been corrupt, he would have no idea of truth or bliss.

And if there were no greatness in our condition, we would have no concept of the ideal. We would not reach for it and discover we cannot attain it. We are incapable of absolute ignorance and of certain knowledge. Why? Because we had a degree of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen.

Green-Swatc

There are no observers among men who stand on the sidelines of the human race. All ground is included. The state of man without God is misery that turns despondent and finally becomes despair.

The man who thinks himself God, for without God he must become his own god, has nagging doubts that echo through his soul. He makes himself like iron but then becomes brittle and cracks under the pressure of life. In making his own life, he finds no life at all within that will maintain it.

Green-Swatc

Man is made and he must find his Maker. He must discover what went wrong with mankind. Not for curiosity, but because it affects him deeply.

When he looks inside himself, he finds so much, yet not enough. What is missing? How can it be restored? Only God can answer this. Only he can put inside what will stop the wrongness and begin making all things new.

no-middle-ground

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God Obscured/Revealed – Pascal

by leekierdorf
The world exists for the exercise of mercy and judgment, not as if men were placed in it, out of the hands of God, but as hostile to God; and to them He grants, by grace, sufficient light, that they may return to Him, if they desire to seek and follow Him; and also that they may not, if they refuse to seek or follow Him.

If there were only one religion, God would indeed be manifest. The same would be the case, if there were no martyrs but in our religion. God being thus hidden, every religion which does not affirm that God is hidden, is not true; and every religion which does not give the reason of it, is not instructive. Our religion does all this.

If there were no obscurity, man would not be sensible of his corruption; if there were no light, man would not hope for a remedy. Thus, it is not only fair, but advantageous to us, that God be partly hidden and partly revealed; since it is equally dangerous to man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness, and to know his own wretchedness without knowing God.

This religion, so great in miracles, saints, learned and great witnesses, martyrs, established kings like David, and Isaiah, a prince of the blood, and so great in science, after having displayed all her miracles and all her wisdom, rejects all this, and declares that she has neither wisdom nor signs, but only the cross and foolishness.

For those, who, by these signs and that wisdom, have deserved your belief, and who have proved to you their character, declare to you that nothing of all this can change you, and render you capable of knowing and loving God, but the power of the foolishness of the cross without wisdom and signs, and not the signs without this power. Thus our religion is foolish in respect to the effective cause, and wise in respect to the wisdom which prepares it.

Our religion is wise and foolish. Wise, because it is the most learned, and the most founded on miracles, prophecies, &c. Foolish, because it is not all this which makes us belong to it. This makes us indeed condemn those who do not belong to it; but it does not cause belief in those who do belong to it. It is the cross that makes them believe. And so Saint Paul, who came with wisdom and signs, says that he has come neither with wisdom nor with signs; for he came to convert. But those who come only to convince, can say that they come with wisdom and with signs.

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