2cornucopias

Posts Tagged ‘False philosophies’

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What Did You Expect?

In 08 Musings by Jack Reagan on 2015/09/25 at 12:00 AM

A man is fined $37,500 a DAY because he built a pond on his own land, but some Federal bureaucrat didn’t think he  should have done so.

Illegal aliens are pouring into the country while the government does nothing about it because the Democrats see them a huge voting block for them.

Hillary Clinton wants to be president with no record of success in any of her government positions.

Senate Democrats refused to defund Planned Parenthood after the revelation of gross scandal. Planned Parenthood gets 500 million taxpayers dollars a year.

Republicans who have the majority in Congress seem paralyzed by indecision and ineptitude.

The news media is totally corrupt and biased as it hardly reported on the Planned Parenthood scandal. Had it been a “conservative” scandal, we still be hearing about it.

The Obama administration has had a singular lack of success in anything but piling on more and more regulations.

The President has spent millions on taxpayer funded vacations because he takes a huge staff with him.

Forty percent of babies are born to unmarried women.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided the history and practice of thousands of years was wrong and declared that people of the same gender could marry legally. The majority opinion was a written a  Catholic who should have known better.

The latest street slogan is: “Black lives matter.” and they do, but where is the clamor about almost 24,000,000 black babies killed in the womb?

Liberals preach tolerance…except for those who disagree with their ideas.

The sexual revolution has spawned an epidemic of sexually-related diseases never mentioned by the media.

The Democratic Party has been called the party of sin because it approves of abortion, partial-birth abortion euthanasia, fetal stem cell research, ssme-sex “marriage” and other immoralities. (I am registered as an Independent voter because I have no respect for either party.)

Congregations come to church on Sunday looking like they are dressed for anything but the serious business  of divine worship.

Political correctness rums amok through the country denying reality and forcing people to pretend the false is true.

Muslims are now invading Europe. Islam has wanted to control Europe for centuries. Now it may the chance because the Europeans had no interest in curbing Muslims extremists in the past 20 years.

Iraq, after thousand of American and Iraqi deaths and tons of American money is worse off now than it was. In Afghanistan, we are no nearer to a solution than we were on the first day there.

And the list could go on and on…

If these facts were incorporated in a novel written about 60-70 years ago, it would have widely panned as too absurd to read. Yet, the it is reality of the present day.

The world was not made by humans.  We don’t even understand most of it.  It was a made by a Creator we call “God”.   As the Creator, He s entitled to make the rules.  He has done so, and He has revealed those rules to us.  Because He also envisioned reward for tie faithful followers, He had to give us  a free will to make decisions, good or bad because rewards have to be earned.  Modern man is making wrong decisions, and when you make wrong decisions and judgments, the negative effects follow until death or the wrong decision is corrected.  Our past and present wrong decisions have caught up to us.  The problem is that God does not change his rules because the Supreme Court says He is wrong.  Abortion and same-sex “marriage” are still wrong in His mind.

So modern man decided to adopt a philosophy that there is no objective truth, that truth arises within the individual’s mind, and  he                                                                             determines what is personally true or false for him.  But that is not reality.  Truth is outside of our mind and we take it into the mind.  It’s called reality, and without a realistic view of life,chaos will follow proportionately.

The other error that  modern man indulges in is to say that God has no business in public life.  Thus, our media,education , government all levels and business are essentially atheistic in practice.  This is not without is baneful effects.

Our ethical standards are now given to us by fellow humans whose have neither the wisdom or the purity of intention to prescribe well.  Look how they have changed the U.S. in the past 50 years.  Humans have been designed to need God and anything else  will not succeed.

Another effector  of this is the loss of ability to think and act rationally.  God is the source of wisdom and rationality.  Since we do not offer Him a  place et the public table, there can be no certain standards by which to measure actions.  We go from failure to failure, stupid idea to stupid idea. How can same-sex “marriage” be anything but a stupid idea; the  anatomical arrangement of two of the same gender are certainly not conductive to what the Creator has in mind when He designed marriage in the beginning of time.

We also lose the ability to chose and implement true values suitable to the human race.  Values are now imposed by the loudest and the boldest.  The why we value pets over people (You can go to jail over animal abuse, but not abortion), blacks over whites, illegals over legals, affirmative action over merit. etc. etc. The  only sins today are racism, sexism and environmentalism (cf. the first item in this essay).

Is there a solution to all this?   Of course..go back to God in huge numbers.  Will we?   I doubt it.   History tells us that no society on the slippery slope has EVER recovered because societies die by suicide.  It as happened 21 time over the be centuries.  The last 40 years of American education has produced people who do not and cannot think about anything worthwhile.  They have no sense of history.  Younger people have a sense of entitlement to be deemed the wisest among us while in reality,they know almost nothing of value to themselves or the country.

We have rejected God, but have set other gods in His place.  Humans are wired to worship something or someone.  We worship drugs, sex, electronic devices galore, sports to excess, political-correctness, one-sided “toleration”, physical fitness and on and on.  We have changed the country so it is not same USA I grew up in.

I hate to pessimistic, but it’s  better to be be realistic.

If you have a true relationship with the Creator, improve it; if you do not, think again.

 

 

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Good Intentions May Not Be Good

In 08 Musings by Jack Reagan on 2013/11/06 at 1:00 AM

I have attended many Catholic funerals in which the deceased is declared by the priest to be in Heaven. In one of these funerals, the deceased was an avowed atheist who had a Catholic funeral because his family of lapsed Catholics “had to do something.” The priest declared the atheist to be in Heaven at least 4-5 times.  I have heard Mother Angelica of EWTN declare twice in one program that a deceased was in Heaven. A nun who works with the elderly reminds them constantly that God is just waiting for them to die in order to sweep them into Heaven. And we have heard for decades about the “unconditional love” God has for people. Unfortunately, these efforts to make the living feel good is not  good theology.

There is a false teaching going around that God is so good that He could not possibly condemn anyone to Hell, and everyone eventually gets to Heaven. How many people have fallen for this idea, and decided that, no matter what they did, they couldn’t lose in the end?

It is very true that God condemns no one to Hell; we condemn ourselves by the type of life we have led on earth. In fact, our entire eternal destiny is in our hands and no one else’s.

One would not have to read very far in the divinely-inspired Psalms to learn what God thinks of sinners. He not only does not like them, but he warns of their ultimate destruction. Christ Himself referred to Hell more than to Heaven because He knew anyone can end up there if he/she so chooses, and it will not be pleasant at all. So much for the wishful thinking of universal salvation.

God’s love is unconditional and infinite in capacity.  What does that mean?  Simply put, it means that God will give every person the grace needed to do His will, but if a person decides to go his own way, then God will say to him: “Depart from me, I know you not.” It is true that God’s love for humans is unconditional but not in its application which respects human will. The love of God is always available, but it is not a matter of, “I will love you no matter what you do, no matter how sinful your life.” It is your choice.  As the sinner goes, he has a claim on infinite mercy, but he must ask for and seek it.

The Catholic who stopped attending Sunday Mass or is harboring other habitual mortal sins has severed his relationship with God (again, by his own choice). His only real hope is to receive the grace of repentance and to reform. At this point, God owes him nothing because such a person has rejected his status as a creature and refused to worship his Creator, or he insists on doing things his way regardless of the will of God. These are the real daredevils in life because there is no guarantee that they will even live to repent. Then what?

( Of course, I can speak only objectively here because no living person knows the status of another person in God’s eyes; we don’t really know our own status, for that matter.  (We are not judging; we are describing a condition of soul.)

The problem with sin, especially mortal sin, is that it always has negative consequences. First of all, sin is attractive; some sins are quite enjoyable (at the time). It is easy  to develop habits of sin, thereby compounding our predicament. I am always a bit amused at the Christmas and Easter attendees who skip the rest of the year. Who are they kidding?  Habits of mortal sin turn us away from God and things of God. They turn us away from the very purpose of human life, union with God for eternity. The habitual sinner will get to eternity, but he will spend it regretting his stupidity for falling for the Devil’s games.

There IS another false idea in circulation, namely, that at the moment after death we will get a chance to repent. There is not one bit of Biblical or theological or even rational evidence to support this. In fact, our last chance is the moment of death. After death, our fate is sealed.

Why are these perhaps well-intentioned “canonizations” at a funeral so wrong?

For a person to go immediately on death to heaven requires two conditions. One is that he be free of any sin, and that he not owe any temporal punishment due to his past sins.

Sins may be forgiven, but they still have a penalty due which is usually dealt with in Purgatory. I would think very few could qualify on both counts. (Martyrs are in a different category.)

In summary then, the mortal sinner, especially the habitual mortal sinner has in effect:

Rejected God

Added to the sufferings of Christ,

Defied the Divine Will,

Declared himself superior to God,

Decided that he is exempt from the moral law,

Possibly deprived himself of necessary graces  and blessings,

Become, in effect, a follower of Satan who hopes to lead him into his kingdom (Hell).

We live in a time when Christianity and religion in general are not only not respected, but are barely tolerated. The movers and shakers of the world are atheists in practice at least. Too many Catholics have jumped right into the culture propagated by these anti-God “leaders.”  Only about 20% of Catholics attend Sunday Mass regularly; 63% do not believe the Holy Eucharist is what Christ and the Church says It is. And on it goes!

The problem for Catholics who embrace the contemporary culture is that this culture cannot give anyone eternal salvation…just the opposite.

In the last analysis, we must choose eternal life or eternal death, God or Satan, Heaven or Hell. Whether you believe it or not, that’s all there is according to both Revelation and Reason.

Try to imagine what you will say immediately after you die, and you realize  “I blew it.” Worth it?

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The Mythical God by Jack Reagan

In 08 Musings by Jack Reagan on 2012/03/23 at 2:11 AM

Wishful thinking really does not have much to do with thinking; it is an unsupported hope that something negative will turn out to be positive in the end.  Prior to WWII, it was thought that if Hitler were treated as a normal person, he would act accordingly.  He didn’t.  Some women marry men with serious flaws hoping that marriage will change them for the better.  It seldom does.  We vote in elections at all levels hoping that perhaps this time the politicians will act like statesmen … or at least act rationally.  Maybe in the next election!

There is a deadlier form of wishful thinking that is becoming more widespread and snares many people who do not have a basic grasp of Christianity.  It is the illusion that God is so loving that He could not possibly condemn people to hell forever and that eventually everyone gets to heaven.

In the Catholic version of this, I suggest that the Catholic people have been told for the last 30-40 years that “God is love”.  (This is true, but incomplete.)  God loves us unconditionally, and He simply cannot bear to lose anyone in hell, so the illusion goes.  At the same time, when did you last hear a sermon on sin as the topic?  In the Pope’s talk to American Bishops recently, he referred to the decades of inferior  instruction in the US.

“Love” is a tricky word. In English it is used to denote not only true love, but also hopes (I’d love to visit Paris), preferences (I love pie more than cake) likes (I love that song).  English is basically an Anglo-Saxon tribal language, but more refined languages such as Greek use different words for love, depending on what is being loved.  There are different words for religious, physical, and parental love.  The Greek word for religious love is “agape” (ah-ga-pay), and it connotes nothing of sentiment, romance, or irrationality.  What it does suggest is that divine love means that God is committed to us.  (The basic meaning of the idea of love is commitment to someone.)  But, like any commitment, it demands reciprocal commitment.  Commitment in marriage cannot be one-sided.  Neither can our relationship to God.

It is certainly true that God has a commitment to mankind, and it is also true that God is good, but He is not stupid. He is certainly not the silly old doting grandfather figure so enamored by sinners.  There is even a denomination known as Universalism whose chief belief is that nobody stays in hell.

It is a deadly (spiritually) idea that God does not really care that much about sin, and that He ignores sin. It has no Scriptural foundation.

1. In the Gospels, Christ warns about hell far more that He mentions heaven.  Recall the story of Lazarus and Dives. “Many are called, but few are chosen.”  The reference to the lake of fire. Nowhere is it suggested that hell is a temporary situation.  If you read the Gospels and conclude that hell is not permanent, then read them again.  Christ was also God; therefore, His words reveal Truth … whether we like it or not.

2. Since God has set down Commandments and rules, He simply cannot ignore disobedience to them.  If He were to do so, he would be deficient and defective as God, and, therefore, imperfect … and, therefore, not really God.  God’s divine nature demands that he not ignore serious sin because such sin involves a broken relationship with Him … and He cannot ignore broken relationships.  To fail to punish at some point would not be consonant with His divine nature, and He cannot reject His own nature.  Thus, one who dies in the state of a broken relationship with God must expect the eternal consequences.  Remember that once you die, you cannot repair any spiritual problems.

3. It would not be fair, even in human terms, for someone who leads a dissolute, sinful life to share the rewards of the saints. What kind of a God would reward Mother Theresa and Adolph Hitler in the same way?

4. If everyone eventually ends up in heaven, what would be he point of living a moral life?  Might as well “live it up” with the sinners.  It’s probably more fun and will not cost you anything ultimately.  More than that … if everyone is going to heaven and will be saved, what was the point of the Incarnation and Redemption?  Humans would not need to be redeemed. Therefore, everything about Christianity is a waste of time and, worse, a fraud.

5. Last, but not least … it is true that God condemns no one to hell.  Nor does He assign anyone to heaven.  It is our choice which He merely ratifies.  We are free agents in the matter of salvation: we can choose it or not.  (The work of divine grace is involved, but that is for another essay.)  If we end up in hell, it is because we chose to, and God never voids man’s free choices.

False philosophies, bad ideas, and poor judgments lead to negative effects.  To believe that you can go through life making decisions on matters that are the province of God (moral law) and presume that, even if you are sincerely wrong, God will nevertheless still welcome you to Paradise is the ultimate in wishful thinking.  God will never declare our errors to be truth.

The Gospels tell us there is only one narrow road to heaven and a wide freeway to hell. If you find yourself breezing along a freeway, you may think it’s worth it for a temporary sojourn in hell … but that is wishful thinking.