Bus Ads

This morning I was on the bus.

And I looked up at one of the ads, and it read: "Wildfires...Are You Prepared? Reduce your risk by preparing now--Focus on Fire Safety".

I thought to myself, What if that ad was about Judgement Day? It would probably read something like this: "Judgement Day...Are You Prepared? Reduce your risk of eternal damnation--Focus on your salvation".

Or in keeping with the original ad, but a slight tweeking, what are the "wildfires" in today's society and culture? I know those are very general and broad terms, so rather, what are the wildfires in YOUR society and culture, or in your own personal life? The wildfires that are spreading, infecting things, burning down life, the good around you? What do you need to evacuate from?

Here is where I would readily shout, "SCHOOL!", but somehow, I don't think that would go over well.

But really, as Christian/Catholics, Judgement is not something that is to be feared, per se, despite my tongue-in-cheek parody ad. It's what we are waiting for. We are waiting for Christ to return. Afterall, that's why we spread the Gospel. But there is too much focus on fear. I don't think God wants us to love and follow Him because we are terrified of going to hell. Otherwise, we don't really mean it. Then it becomes "Ok, I'll follow your rules, but only because I'm scared of damnation, not because I love you and want to spend eternity with you". I obey my parents because I love them, not because I am scared of punishment.

But are we really prepared for Judgement Day? Do we even take time to think about what it really means? Now I say that it shouldn't all be about fear, and I mean that, but I also don't want to distract from the reality of hell and evil, too. Our God is a very loving and merciful God, but there ARE souls in hell. Does God send them there out of anger? No, I very much doubt that. I don't think God sends people to hell, people send themselves there. It sounds ridiculous, but some people really are so stubborn and thick that even when they die and realise hell and heaven are real, they still choose hell. Why, I don't know. I've never died and experienced these things, so I don't know what exactly goes on. But I do know that there are souls in hell, based on the Church approved Marian apparitions (Lourdes, Fatima, Kibeho, Guadeloupe, etc). Sometimes, in this age of "everything goes" and accepting almost everything, people don't want to think of punishment anymore, or the possibly of sin, doing something wrong and ending up in hell for it. And why should they? It's convenient, isn't it? I can live however I want with no worry of consequences, "As long as I am a good person and live a good life". Here's what is wrong with that statement: What you think is "living a good life and being a good person" may not be how God thinks you should be living your life. It's almost as if people can no longer fathom bad behaviour.

We live in a very dangerous time where everything is acceptable. Even murder is acceptable (abortion), and people trying to protect babies are deemed as closed minded monsters trying to corrupt the world. How does that even make sense? Someone cannot possibly believe that EVERYTHING is acceptable. That is impossible. And yet, I see many people on my own campus who are so scared of stepping on someone's toes, that they "accept" everyone. Newsflash: You can be against something in a non-agressive way". Just because you disapprove of someone's behaviour, does not mean you are not loving them. I have a lot of friends who do things and live certain ways that I don't approve of, that I even think COULD lead to their damnation someday. COULD. I'm not saying it will, but it COULD, because the things they are doing are bad for their soul, and not of God. But I still act lovingly toward them. I don't shout at them or make them feel like bad people. I am, however, honest about how I feel about certain issues, and why I think the way I do. Do I condemn them? Of course not, I'm not God. But I do recognise spiritually unhealthy behaviour.

Anyway. That's an awfully big thought stemming from a simple bus ad on fire safety. Keep safe from the fires of Hell. Be loving and understanding toward your neighbour, but it doesn't mean fundamental conservatism, or fundamental relativism.
Basically, just open your Bible, open your heart, and follow the example of Christ.

Aren't Philosophers Supposed to be Logical?

I read this article today by a professor of philosophy at my university.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/fetus+person/2979302/story.html

I struggled through reading the whole thing. The first attempt, I had to close the window because I was getting upset. I made it through on the second go, and I am even more upset. I am furious, and not just with Mark Mercer, a professor I am embarrassed to say I have taken a course by, but I am furious because he represents more than just himself.

This mentality angers me to the core. He makes absolutely no sense. His logic is absent, and his statements are hyprocritical.

"Abortion, then, involves the killing of a human being. But that abortion involves the deliberate killing of a human being is no reason for abortion to be illegal. Nor should one be morally troubled by it."

Can he write a more ludicrious statement?
He admits that abortion is murdering human beings, and yet he feels this is perfectly fine, because he claims a fetus is not a person; a self-aware person.

First of all, he has NO grounds in saying that. How does he know a fetus is not self-aware? A sleeping person is not self-aware either.
Also, I have seen video footage of an abortion in which the fetus is avoiding the vacuum, trying to get away from it. And yet, Mercer dares to say the fetus "has no interest in living".

I also want to state that once upon a time, only a mere 70 years ago, a man named Adolf Hitler convinced people that Jews were not "persons" either. To go ahead and beat them, kill them, rape them, do whatever you want to them, because they are not persons, and you should in no way feel "morally troubled by it". Yes, it is killing a human being, but they are not persons, so don't worry.

Oh, but here I suppose Dr. Mercer would say this is absurd, obviously that was a horrific event, the Jewish people were self-aware. Well how do you know a fetus is not self-aware!

It is absurd to even argue about this. Abortion is sick, and anyone who supports abortion clearly has never even thought about the issue for what it really is. I mean really think about it, and what it is, or watched a video of one.

Oh and by the way, NO I am not comparing women who have an abortion to Hitler. I am comparing abortionists to Hitler. Any doctor who performs an abortion is guilty of a crime equal to the Holocaust. Any doctor who performs an abortion is a monster and a hypocrite, and doesn't care about life. Women who have an abortion are victims of being lied to in their most vulnerable state. Lied to by a society that tells them it is ok to have their child murdered.

Abortion is the most evil sin there is, and it baffles me that so many people do not understand this.
Don't you realise abortion murders human beings!? How can anyone with a conscience support this? How can people not see how wrong this is?

I am terrified of this society. We are living in very dark times. We live in a society whose conscience has been so dulled, life is no longer a matter worth fighting for. Where the absolute most innocent beings there could possibly be, children, babies, infants, are being murdered everyday. Perfect beings, with no sin, are the ones being killed.

The pro-life movement is not out to hurt women, it is out to save women. Abortion hurts women. The after effects are traumatic. The scars of an abortion never go away.
We are fighting for the innocent, because they can't speak for themselves yet.

My heart aches.

It aches for the babies being aborted.
It aches for the vulnerable women being convinced this is a harmless act.
It aches for the state of our society.

May God have Mercy...

Put Yourself in the Mysteries

I just had a cool experience whilst praying the rosary.

I was praying the sorrowful mysteries, and when I got to the second mystery of the scourging, my mind drifted, as it usually does. Then out of nowhere came the question:

When have you scourged Christ?

My head whipped back, and I whispered out loud, "Whoooooa!"
I love those moments in prayer. This is God snapping His fingers, telling you to focus.

The sorrowful mysteries are probably my favourite to pray on. Any time I experience any type of prayful emotion, it is almost always when praying on those mysteries. I have felt intense and overwhelming sadness during those mysteries, usually God's sadness for the state of whomever or whatever I am praying for; and I have felt joy as well, which I interpret as God giving me hope in the midst of despair, for whomever or whatever I am praying for.

But of all the times I have prayed on the sorrowful mysteries, never have I placed myself in them as the one doing these horrible things to my Lord!
Obviously I have reflected on the image of putting a nail in Christ's hands every time we sin, etc., but usually when I pray on these mysteries, I think of the excruciating pain Christ went through for me. I have never put myself into the mystery as the one doing those things to Him.

That question really hit me: When have you scourged Christ?
If God lives in everyone, and the face of every person you encounter is the face of God, then everytime I am unloving toward another person, I am scourging Christ.

This isn't news. It isn't rocketscience, and it most certainly is not ground-breaking theology. We hear this message virtually every Sunday, and it has been stated for roughly 2000 years. Yet, we never really "get it" until we have these small epiphanies of our own, epiphanies of the same messages we constantly hear, but heard in the language of our own heart and soul.
It's strange when you experience this in prayer, because you write it out in english, and you "hear" it in english, yet the language itself is not felt in english. It is a language of your own. The whispers of your soul. The whispers of the Holy Spirit dwelling within you, being spoken to YOU. This is what is being felt, and your brain immediately interprets this divine, interior feeling into tangible words.

Put yourself into the mysteries, and experience a new reality.

Entitlement and Fundamental Apologetics

There is a reality of evil that is being denied in our world today, and I even see it denied among the Christian community. For some strange reason, no one wants to talk about evil spirits, evil entities that exist in a world parallel to ours, permeating our reality every day. These are the spirits surrounding us, leading us away from God in subtle ways.
The devil is very crafty and creative. There is no one he will not attack and when he is trying to attack a good person, his attacks are subtle and masked as good. From my own experience, lived and observational, this attack can happen in two ways, among several others: entitlement and fundamental apologetics.
“Entitlement is a bastard” my spiritual director told me when I mentioned the word. It struck a nerve with him and he feels the same way about it as I do, but has felt it longer. Entitlement is a concept preached by the secular aspect of the world to those living in the world and of the world. To the Christian, it is the voice in your head whispering: “Come on, you deserve this. You are entitled to this. You’ve waited so long. God is always asking you to give of yourself, now it’s time you give yourself something”. It is what makes us unnecessarily hold onto anger, because we are entitled to that anger. A terrible injustice was committed against us, and it is our right, our entitlement to be angry, and hold onto it as long as possible, and hold things against people for as long as possible, to make them realise and regret their sins. The most practical example I can give is weddings. This concept of entitlement is weaved together with materialism, and what better way for Satan to attack our beautiful young Christian couples than to attack and poison their public expression of their love. Weddings used to be very simple because they were for God and the couple, and anyone who cared to share in the joy of the union. However, now, God seems to be forgotten, and weddings have become for other people, or solely about the couple getting married, not about the couple being united under God. God is being pushed away because a “religious wedding” is seen as lame, and the guests won’t understand it and so they won’t like it and will speak ill of your wedding. What was once a sacred ritual and sacrament has now been poisoned by materialism and entitlement. If a couple decides to have a very simple wedding, they are seen as weird, immature, and clearly not ready to be married. The more you spend on your “big day” is equated with how ready you are to be married. This line of thinking seems to ignore the fact that the more you spend on your wedding, the higher the chance of divorce. Now the couple is getting wrapped up in materialism, preparing for a party and not a marriage. They are getting caught up in material, inanimate things with no value, and if they ever want to have a more simple wedding, people jump all over them saying it isn’t “tasteful”, or it is “cheap”. Would it really be terrible for a couple to actually have a proper wedding, one that is about God and takes the focus off of the couple and the guests as much as possible? No, because I can guarantee you that these are the couples who will outlast all of the others, because they value that which is life-giving and not life-taking.
The other subtle attack I mentioned is fundamentalism and apologetics. Apologetics means to explain things (yes, I am aware of the irony in this statement), so for explain, one who is well versed in Church apologetics is good at explaining Church doctrine, what the Church believes. Apologetics in itself is not a bad thing, however, it is for a particular audience, mainly an academic one. It is certainly not meant for the emotional and defensive. From my experience, I notice that those who eat up apologetics the most are fundamentalists, because it lacks a sense of compassion and empathy. Lawyers are trained in apologetics, and that isn’t a stab at lawyers, it is saying that in apologetics, there is a lack of emotion because “these are the facts, it’s just business, and if you don’t like what you hear, well that’s too bad. Truth hurts”. Truth, however, doesn’t hurt. Truth is life-giving and sustaining. The delivery of truth, on the other hand, is what can and often does, hurt people. For fundamentalists, this is where I see evil spirits at play. I have a theory for why fundamentalists seem to be a big fan of apologetics, and it is this: I am doing my job in telling you the truth, and if you don’t like it, it’s your fault for being hard of heart and not listening to me. I am right, and you are wrong, and until you adhere to my view, the right view, you are at risk for going to hell. I have told you the truth, and you will not listen. That is not my fault if you ignore truth, therefore, I can now walk away guilt free. This is where I tend to disagree with pro-life fundamentalists, and those who deliver pro-life apologetics as their way of evangelising. Apologetics is not a legitimate form of evangelisation because it is not concerned with changing one’s heart or mind, it is concerned with making your opponent look stupid and ridiculous, and making them realise how much they don’t know about the issue at hand. For this reason, apologetics is not loving, and it is not evangelisation. Apologetics is emotionless. It certainly isn’t going to convert anyone, and will only result in getting people’s backs up. There is a popular phrase that states one must “know their audience”. If one is dealing with a crowd of upset and emotional people, how will apologetics help them? It is not a language they are able to understand given their state of mind, and rather than attempt to drag them up to your mindset, perhaps you should jump down to theirs and meet them on a personal level. And this is where the evil spirits attack us. They want to keep us away from meeting people on a personal level because that is the level to which one will encounter God.
Evil spirits are all around us, and we must be diligent in discerning them from good spirits, and recognise their movements within us. We cannot deny their existence, for in doing so, we are only giving them more power over our thoughts and actions.
My spiritual director told me an aboriginal story about a grandfather going out to the woods with his grandson. The grandson is excited by all the nature he sees around him, and is in awe when they come across a wolf. “Look Grandfather! It’s a wolf!” he cries with excitement. The Grandfather smiles and says “Yes, it is. Do you know that there are two wolves living inside your heart?” Puzzled, the grandson says, “Two wolves in my heart? Is that true?” The grandfather replies, “Yes, it is true. One is a good wolf, and one is a bad wolf. The good wolf brings peace, love, life and joy. The bad wolf is mean and deceptive and makes you do bad things. The two wolves are constantly fighting with one another.” The grandson pauses and thinks about this for a moment, and says to his grandfather, “But grandfather, if they are always fighting with one another inside my heart, how do I know which one is going to win?” The grandfather replies, “Whichever wolf you feed will be the wolf that wins.”