Sola Scriptura

“14 But you, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it,  15 and that from infancy you have known [the] sacred scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”
(2 Tim 3:14-17)

 The most damaging criticism of sola scriptura is the reality that the Bible doesn’t teach it.  This leads to an absurdity.  Those who believe in sola scriptura claim that everything that is essential for a Christian to know is clearly taught in the Bible.  However, the Bible does not teach that everything that is essential for a Christian to know is clearly taught in the Bible.

The passage that is most often cited as a proof text by those who support sola scriptura is 2 Tim 3:15-17.  Let’s examine that passage beginning with its immediate context.  Paul is clearly instructing Timothy and the church in Ephesus to be a faithful witness during difficult times.  There is no indication anywhere in this Epistle that he is contrasting Sacred Scripture with other sources of revelation, or even discussing the subject.

In addition, the “Scriptures” with which Timothy has been acquainted “from childhood” (verse 15) refers to the Old Testament.  Are we to believe that St. Paul is teaching that the Old Testament constitutes the only source needed to know what Jesus taught?

Secondly, Paul has many important things to say about the scriptures.  They “are able to instruct you for salvation in Christ Jesus” (v.15).  However, he doesn’t claim that only the scriptures can instruct one for salvation in Christ Jesus.  “All scripture is inspired by God” (v.16), but Paul does not claim that only scriptures are inspired by God.  Paul also affirms that scripture is “useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (v.17), but he never asserts that only scripture is so useful.

Thirdly, This passage doesn’t teach formal sufficiency, which excludes a binding, authoritative role for Tradition and Church. Protestants extrapolate onto the text what isn’t there. If we look at the overall context of this passage, in 2 Timothy alone, Paul makes reference to oral Tradition three times (1:13-14, 2:2, and 3:14). And to use an analogy, let’s examine a very similar passage:

Ephesians 4:11-15 (RSV) - And His gifts were that some should be Apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are able to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ.

If 2 Timothy 3:16-17 proves the sole sufficiency of Scripture, then by analogy, Ephesians 4:11-15 would likewise prove the sufficiency of prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth for the attainment of Christian perfection. In Ephesians 4:11-15 the Christian believer is equipped, built up, brought into unity and mature manhood, knowledge of Jesus, the fullness of Christ, and even preserved from doctrinal confusion by means of the teaching function of the Church. This is a far stronger statement of the perfecting of the saints than 2 Timothy 3:16-17, yet it doesn’t even mention Scripture!!

So if all Tradition and Church elements are excluded in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, then, by analogy, Scripture itself would logically have to be excluded in Ephesians 4:11-15! It is far more reasonable to recognize that the absence of one or more elements in one passage does not mean they are nonexistent. Hence, the Church, Tradition, and Scripture together are equally necessary and important for teaching. And of course this is the Catholic view.

As you can see, advocates of the Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura (the “Bible only” theory) have a problem on their hands here.

If the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is true then we must be able to prove all doctrines from Scripture alone. If that is true, then we must be able to prove Sola Scriptura from Scripture alone. If we cannot do that then Sola Scriptura turns out to be self-refuting, an idea that cuts its own basis out from under itself, like the proposition “No generalizations are true.”

GodBless
Nathan

Copy/pasted from:
http://www.reesnet.com/theology/solascriptura/lvl09000.htm

And

http://www.totustuus.com/Sola%20Scriptura.pdf

Freedom of Conscience

Two recent court cases illustrate the incoherence and remarkable intolerance of “liberal” views regarding conscience.

One involves the bottomless pockets of the atheist Michael Newdow, who most recently joined several plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department demanding the words “In God We Trust” be scrubbed from U.S. currency. Newdow advocates what Richard John Neuhaus called the “naked public square,” a public life stripped of all references to God or to the duties we owe to Him. The “Constitution” is invoked, that document granting jurists ultimate authority over the local customs of citizens a thousand miles away. The courts have been as wary of religion approaching the minds of impressionable children as an epidemiologist is wary of meningitis. A child in a public school must never have to endure even the vicinity of any common, publicly acknowledged prayer, lest it wound him in his feelings, and lest it undermine a parent’s conscientious objection to giving homage to the Guarantor of conscience.

That supersensitive concern must puzzle a young Christian couple in New Mexico, the Hugenins. They run a small photography business, and they were sued, not for doing anything, but for begging to decline from doing something. They cannot in good conscience take pictures for a celebration of sodomitical relations. They are not saying, like Melville’s Bartleby, that they should prefer not to. They are saying that they must not. They have no choice in the matter—unless they wish to betray all that they hold most dearly. And, with stunning insouciance and callousness, the New Mexico Supreme Court has ruled that such betrayal is the price you must pay to live in a civil society.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s like saying that one must cease to be fully human in order to attain to the human flourishing which civil society is for. That is a contradiction in terms. That the court does not see it as such suggests that it has not considered the nature of religious faith, the claims that the worship of God makes, and the centrality of conscience to the human person.

Think of the violence the state wishes to wreak upon that young couple. Their involvement in the celebration would not be incidental. Unlike people attending a graduation ceremony, they would not be merely present while others did something ordinary, something that even the atheist would not call indecent. If you’re going to take successful photos of the groom and groom, you have to enter into the spirit of the occasion. You have to ask them to kiss one another. You have to photograph their embraces. You have to be a participant.

Alter the terms of the situation. Suppose the Hugenins were asked to shoot photographs at a party thrown to celebrate a friend’s divorce. Would they be required by law to participate in that? Suppose it was a celebration of a porn magazine’s jubilee. Must they assist in that, if the editor comes a-calling? Why should they be compelled to stifle their consciences and be less than human, just to run a business? Aren’t business and politics meant to serve the flourishing of human persons, and not the other way around? Why should running a business expose you to what Jefferson called tyranny upon the mind of man?

Conscience-forcers will argue that the Hugenins are like a racist restaurateur who turns away a black customer. I wonder whether Americans have lost the capacity for rational thought, so feeble are their powers of analogy. First, the restaurateur is in the position of Bartleby, not in the position of Daniel, who refused to do homage to the statue of the emperor. He would prefer not to serve the black customer; but his objections are not moral. It is not his conscience speaking, but his self-will. He does not say that it is wrong for a person to eat. If he believed that, he’d not have gone into the business in the first place. He’d be six feet underground. He simply does not want to serve the man his dinner. But that won’t do, not for someone whose business is to serve the bodily needs we all share in common. It is wrong not to feed the hungry, and people do not digest food through the skin! But the Hugenins most certainly believe that two men or two women celebrating a mimic-marriage are engaging in behavior that is gravely wrong. It’s the behavior and not the persons that they cannot in conscience serve. If one of them were to ask them to photograph her brother’s graduation, there would be no problem.

Second, the restaurateur is not being asked to cooperate in a deed. What the man at the lunch counter does when he leaves the diner is not his business. A bad man may show up at your stationery shop to buy paper. What he does with that paper is not your business. But it’s another matter entirely if the chef or the stationer is asked to take action to support something he believes to be evil. Suppose a Kleagle from the Ku Klux Klan shows up at your bakery and wishes to order a cake with a flagrantly racist decoration—are you required to make that cake? Why? Keep the law out of it for the moment. Consider only the demands of conscience. What would we call the chef who gives in, who knows that what the Kleagle is ordering is wrong, and whose conscience tells him that to comply is evil? We call him a coward, that’s what.

The real question is not whether the Hugenins have a duty to obey their consciences, but why any lover not merely of freedom but of humanity would want to compel them to disobey. Here it’s not just that a Hugh Hefner claims a supposed right to produce pornography. He is claiming the right to make you look at it, to be a part of it, knowing full well that you believe it is evil. He wants you to be either a coward or a hypocrite. What is going on? What kinds of people want to leave the souls of their fellow human beings a twisted mess, by forcing them to violate their consciences? Who would want to make Quakers shoot to kill, not because they need the Quakers to do that, but just because they revile their pacifism and want to rub it out?

One way to blunt your own consciousness of wrongdoing is to bully as many people as possible into it, to compromise them, to wear down their defenses, to entice them if possible, to badger or threaten them if necessary. The homosexuals in question cannot tolerate dissent. If even one person is allowed to decline to manifest a tacit approval of sodomy, that is a punishable offense. You must be suborned or silenced. A child may not be made to endure the proximity of prayer, but he may be required, in some of our schools, to say “I am gay,” or to imagine it, regardless of his conscience or his parents’ moral directives; and if he doesn’t, he will be castigated for his intolerance.

What we see here is the imposition of a religion—the religion of the sexual revolution, as bizarre and incoherent and dehumanizing as it proves to be. The state has become the church, and hearkens to no commandments but those of its own devising.

Article from Crisis Magazine located at:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/conscience-freedoms-denied-by-liberal-courts

God Bless
Nathan

White Martyrdom

You are now living in a country which is rapidly becoming secularized. Now we have a White House that begins to make distinctions between freedom of religion and freedom of worship. Freedom of religion is a right. It’s guaranteed in the First Amendment. And yet, by euphemism and turn-of-phrase, the present administration talks about freedom of worship. The Red Chinese speak about freedom of worship; the old communists and the Soviet Union spoke about freedom of worship. There is a big difference between freedom of religion and freedom of worship.

Freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by the Constitution, tells us that we have a place in the public square, that we have a right and an obligation in conscience, not given to us by a state, but given to us by Almighty God. That is our fundamental right, a right to go out and to speak the truth to power.

But instead, we hear now about a freedom of religion now called freedom of worship. What does that mean? It means you go to your little church, or synagogue, or mosque on Sunday, or Saturday, or Friday night, and you make your prayers over there quietly and don’t bother anybody. And we’ll all get along just fine in this godless, secular world that we are creating; a world in which there is no truth except the truth that man manufactures. And without a truth that comes from Almighty God, all of our rights are in jeopardy.

Will you have the courage to exercise your First Amendment right, freedom of religion? Or are you going to be satisfied with freedom of worship?—I’ll say my prayers quietly; I won’t bother anybody; I won’t disturb the society in which I live.

Right now our Church is being threatened. You don’t often think of it that way; this couldn’t happen in America. And so you hear about an administration that is forcing an HHS Mandate on us, telling us that we must provide in our Catholic institutions abortifacients, sterilizations. For us, that is a moral aberration. It is something that we cannot do. And why is it being pushed on us? Because if we do not obey, then our Catholic colleges, and our hospitals, and our Catholic outreach institutions will be fined and eventually closed down. That will remove the presence of the truth of the Church, remove the mission that Christ gave us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to give drink to the thirsty, to heal the sick. That will remove us from the public square.

This is no accident, my sons and daughters in Christ. This is well-planned. Don’t be fooled. Don’t be fooled.

You’ve heard, the Catholic Church has had one of the most successful adoption services in the country for years. And all of a sudden, in some states, and now in the District of Columbia, there’s a new human invention called same-sex “marriage.” And we are told that our adoption agencies have to supply babies for same-sex couples. This is abhorrent to Almighty God. And we cannot put children in jeopardy of losing their souls and their identity in homes that are now led by same-sex couples. And so our adoption agencies have had to close in those states because the states say that we are not practicing “equality.”

We have had one of the most successful operations to save women who are involved in sex trafficking, sex slavery. The federal government then tells us, “If you want to receive funding for your programs, you’re going to have to supply them [the women] with information for abortion, for birth control pills.” And when we refuse, they tell us, “We can’t help you anymore.” And once again, they try to remove us from the public square.

That’s the secularism that is now engulfing our country. That’s the secularism that you are going to be called to fight. Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage?

Let me tell you what will happen to you. As soon as you take a stand—if you take a stand, because some of you will not, some of you will—if you take a stand, you may not be hired by a firm; they find out that you’re pro-life. We’ve had someone in our class that has had that experience already. If you do become a part of a firm, if you are hired, you may never get promoted, you may never become a partner because you stood up for life or you spoke out against same-sex “marriage.” You may be fired from a position with a corporation because you’re telling them things that they don’t want to hear. You’re speaking about justice. And you’re speaking about the dignity of the human person before profit. And you just might not fit their profile. You may not get a raise. You may not have friends in the office. And some of you might decide you want to run for political office. Will you have the courage to say, “I’m pro-life.”? We have a congressman here now who’s had that courage and he’s been re-elected year after year. Do what’s right. Do what’s right.

But you will be tempted. You’ll be tempted to remain silent. You will be tempted to skirt around the issues. You will be tempted by fame. I want to be a famous lawyer. I want to be a judge. Power! I want to be a powerful person! I want money. But didn’t the devil tempt Jesus in exactly the same way? He’ll tempt you: “Change these stones into bread. Jump off the parapet! Kneel down and worship me!” You’ll be tempted. Like Jesus, though, you must have the courage to say, “Be gone, Satan! I will worship the Lord, my God, and Him alone!” That’s what we call “white martyrdom.”

But then there is “red martyrdom.” Red martyrdom means that you might be called to shed your blood for your faith. You say, “Oh Father, that couldn’t happen in America, could it? Now Oh Father Oh, is really going too far.” Let me tell you something:

Not even a hundred years ago, our closest neighbor to the south, Mexico, had a revolution. And godless secularists took over Mexico, a Catholic country. Churches were closed. Schools were closed. Priests, nuns couldn’t wear their habits in the street. Religion couldn’t be taught. But a movement began, the Cristeros movement, because you cannot suppress the truth; you cannot suppress the Word of God. One of the members of this movement was Father, now Blessed, Miguel Pro. (I gave you small cards with Blessed Miguel’s picture on those cards.) People were being rounded up because they didn’t obey the government. They taught religion. They worshiped. They prayed. And many of them were put before kangaroo courts —This is in Mexico, 1927! — and they were executed. Father Pro — he’s been one of my heroes for years — Father Pro knew that these people needed the ministrations of a priest before they died. And he came up with an ingenious plan. He got dressed up like a prison guard and snuck into prison numerous times. And he heard confessions and he gave the Eucharist before people met their fate at the firing squad. Eventually, Father Pro himself was captured, brought to prison, another kangaroo trial, and the next day, he was brought before a firing squad. Father Pro asked the guards a favor: could he pray before he died? Father Pro knelt down and prayed. Then he stretched out his arms, and he shouted the motto of the Cristeros movement, “Viva Cristo Rey! Viva Cristo Rey!” “Long live Christ the King!”

I gave you, attached to that card of Miguel Pro, a small crucifix. Put it in your pocket. And when the world challenges you, when the devil comes after you with all of his enticements, reach into your pocket, take out that crucifix, hold it in your hand, and recite those words, “Viva Cristo Rey! Viva Cristo Rey.” And remember what Jesus said your reward would be: The world will hate you; the world will persecute you; the world will speak every calumny against you; rejoice and be glad, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Good bye. Good luck. God love you all.

Rev. Michael Orsi is a chaplain and research fellow in law and religion at the Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Florida.

Watch the video of his homily at
http://www.catholicwitnesses.org/2013-baccalaureate-mass-homily/

God Bless
Nathan

Purgatory

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, do you think the rich man was in Hell?  Well, I personally don’t think so and I’ll tell you why a little further down.

Until Jesus paid the ultimate price giving all of us access to heaven no one went to heaven but they didn’t necessarily deserve to go straight to hell either.  We can know this quite easily by looking at Peter’s declaration that after His death Jesus descended to preach to those in ‘prison’.  The word translated as ‘prison’ in the Revised Standard Version (RSV) is translated as… ‘He descended into hell’ in our Apostles Creed.

What would be the purpose of descending into Hell to preach the good news if the good news can’t benefit anyone (since there is no escaping hell)?  The translation of our Apostles Creed is actually a rather bad translation.  Most translations of the Bible describe Jesus’ descent as a descent to prison, not hell.  This makes more sense since we can understand now why Jesus would preach the Good News to those awaiting entrance into heaven.  They are given the choice to accept Him or to reject Him.

And so we see that before His perfect sacrifice all went to ‘prison’ to wait for the choice of accepting or rejecting Jesus and determine where there final destination would be.  That is, Heaven or Hell.

We can also know that there were many levels of comfort in the afterlife prior to the perfect sacrifice of Jesus.  In the story of Lazarus and the poor man (Luke 16:19-31) we see that the poor man was more faithful to God and had already suffered his share.  And so after his death he rested in Abraham’s bosom while the rich man, after he died, suffered torment.  The rich man suffered but still had love for his still living brothers because he tried to have Abraham warn them of the consequences of their lifestyles.   The fact that he had love for others as opposed to love for self tells us that this man wasn’t in Hell either because Hell is, by definition, a complete separation of self from God and since we know that God is Love means that the rich does indeed have God in his heart.  So, where is he then?  Well, we know with certainty that the rich man is certainly not in Hell since he has love of others but he certainly is not in heaven either since he is suffering torment (Luke 16:24) and there is no suffering in heaven.  Which means that the rich man, as well as Lazarus, are in a ‘holding pattern’ awaiting the Good News.  They’re waiting for the day when their savior, the Christ, comes to preach to them the Good News allowing them to choose or reject Him (1 Pet 3:19).

The same principal occurs after Jesus’ sacrifice, once the gates of heaven have been opened.  Paul describes to us on that Day, our day of judgment.  Paul says: “¹² Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— ¹³ the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. ¹⁴ If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.”

And so, after we die we are judged and our final destination is known but, even though we are saved, we can suffer loss and yet are saved as Paul describes.  But there is no suffering in heaven and no one is saved in hell.  Therefore, this burning, this suffering is occurring outside of heaven or hell.  This temporary suffering is the state of being that the Church calls Purgatory.

God Bless
Nathan

Atheists Can Reach Heaven?

Did Pope Francis say atheists don’t need to believe in God to be saved? (9 things to know)
by Jimmy Akin Sunday, September 15, 2013 9:14 PM Comments (97)

The press is full of accounts that, once again, claim that Pope Francis has said you don’t need to believe in God to go to heaven.

Even atheists can go there, according to these reports.  What’s the real story here? What’s going on? And why can’t the press get this kind of thing right?

Here are 9 things to know and share . . .

1) What is the basis of this story?

In July and August, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica ran a pair of open letters to the pope by Dr. Eugenio Scalfari, an atheist commentator.

In his open letters, Dr. Scalfari asked the pope a number of questions.  Much to everyone’s surprise, though thoroughly in keeping with his way of doing things, Pope Francis wrote a response, which the paper also published.

2) What did Pope Francis say in the letter?

Basically, he attempts to enter into a cordial and constructive dialogue, which is exactly what you’d expect.  He doesn’t go through Scalfari’s previous open letters point by point (presumably, that would make his own reply overly long), but he makes some general points and then attempts to answer some questions Scalfari posed.  One of these concerns the salvation of atheists.

3) How did the press and blogosphere react to what he said?

La Repubblica itself gave the story a quite accurate headline: “Pope Francisco writes to La Repubblica: ‘An open dialogue with non-believers.’”That’s a good summary of what the pope wrote.

In England, however, The Independent headlined it “Pope Francis assures atheists: You don’t have to believe in God to go to heaven.”  This was inaccurate, as we will see.

The matter got further twisted in the blogosphere, when Evangelical blogger Jay Younts did a piece on it headlined “The Pope declares Man can save himself.”  This piece was then quoted by Kirk Cameron, who gave it the same headline and helped it go viral.

4) What did Pope Francis actually say about atheists and salvation?

Here is the passage:

First of all, you ask if the God of the Christians forgives those who do not believe and do not seek faith.   Given that—and this is fundamental—God's mercy has no limits if he who asks for mercy does so in contrition and with a sincere heart, the issue for those who do not believe in God is in obeying their own conscience.

In fact, listening and obeying it, means deciding about what is perceived to be good or to be evil.   The goodness or the wickedness of our behavior depends on this decision.

In this passage, you’ll note that after introducing the topic of salvation, Pope Francis begins by saying God’s mercy has no limits “if he who asks for mercy does so in contrition and with a sincere heart.”  This statement appears to apply to believers—the ones you would expect to ask God for mercy with contrition, etc.

Pope Francis then pivots to discuss “the issue for those who do not believe in God.”  He says that for them “the issue” is following their conscience, which will result in good behavior.  This is what the press, etc., have been interpreting as him saying that they can be saved.

But he doesn’t actually say that.  Believers also need to follow their conscience, and doing so will result in them having right behavior. But if they don’t follow their consciences then they sin and need to ask for mercy with contrition and a sincere heart.

[…]

6) What has the Magisterium already said on the subject of atheists and salvation?

In Lumen Gentium 16, the Second Vatican Council addressed the subject of “those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life.”

This passage, like Pope Francis, stops short of saying that people in this condition can be saved. Instead, it says:  “Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel.”  She knows that it is given by Him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life.

This passage speaks of the elements of “good and truth” found among those who have “not yet” arrived at a knowledge of God as “a preparation for the Gospel” so that “they may finally have life.”

Thus when the text says that divine providence does not “deny the helps necessary for salvation” to these people, it may not mean that they can be saved without faith but that God is giving them the helps that they need to come to the point of faith and thus be saved.

The fact that the text is open to both of these interpretations was noted by Cardinal Aloys Grillmeier, who was one of the authors of Lumen Gentium, in his commentary on this part of the document (see Herbert Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 1, p. 184).

[…]

8) Why wouldn’t Pope Francis just settle the matter?

One reason might be that he doesn’t think adequate study has been given to the question yet, and so he didn’t want to go beyond what the Council said.  Then there is the fact that letters to newspapers aren’t the place for doctrinal development to take place.

Another possibility is that he didn’t want to appear to tell Dr. Scalfari and other atheists that they’re fine where they are, and so he spoke in a very measured way that would invite them to consider what they really need to do when they have sinned: ask for mercy “in contrition and with a sincere heart”—in other words, to come to faith.

His intent may have been to engage in a cordial, public dialogue that sidestepped the question of whether atheists can be saved without coming to explicit faith and that implicitly encouraged them to come to faith and ask for mercy.

This also may have been a reason that Vatican II phrased itself the way that it did.

9) So the media and Evangelical blogosphere reaction was wrong?

Yes.
Contrary to claims otherwise, Pope Francis did not say that atheists can go to heaven without coming to faith, and he most certainly did not say that man can save himself by his own efforts.

Indeed, he speaks of the need for God’s mercy.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-pope-francis-say-atheists-dont-need-to-believe-in-god-to-be-saved-9-thi/#ixzz2fFTnI9ox

 

God Bless 

Prepared by Nathan, a St.Denis parishioner

Repentance and Mercy

In this week’s readings we find the themes of repentance and mercy.  In his letter to Timothy, Paul tells us that he was once a blasphemer, persecutor and arrogant but because he acted out of ignorance the grace of the Lord was abundant, along with faith and love that is in Jesus Christ.

I challenge you all to bring joy in heaven by repenting of your sins and praying for others to repent as well.  In today’s Gospel reading we find out that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.  So repent and bring joy in heaven.

We also know that the prayers of the righteous man avails much (James 5:16) therefore once you’ve repented of your sins please pray for others to do the same.  We have a beautiful example of this intercession in today’s first reading.

While Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai God became displeased even angry at the multitudes at the base of the mountain.  You see, they had made a golden calf and were worshipping it but Moses interceded for them.  He asked God to have mercy on them and our Lord “relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people.” 

But are there sins just too heinous, or awful, that God simply cannot forgive no matter how repentant we may be?  No, there aren’t any.  We can know this with certainty by looking at the parable of the lost son.  We see that the worst possible sin one can make is to reject God and we see in this parable (Luke 15:11-31) that God is not only prepared to forgive the wayward son but that he is also waiting for his return.  We know this because we read in the parable that “while he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.” 

And so bring joy in heaven by repenting of your sins and praying for others to repent as well to bring even more joy in heaven.

God  Bless
Nathan

Hate your Mother and Father

I don’t know about you but when I first read next Sunday's reading (Luke 14:25-33) and came to the part where if we do not hate our father and mother and even our wife and kids we cannot be His disciple I was somewhat confused.  How is ‘hating’ my wife and kids following His command to love one another?  I just didn’t get it.  Then I did some research.

I found out that what Jesus was saying here is for one to be His disciple he must be prepared to leave behind anyone who prevents him from serving Jesus.  You see, to ‘hate’ you father and mother is an idiomatic expression of that time and culture.  It simply meant ‘to love less’. 

For example, let’s have a look at the Book of Malachi, Chapter 1 verses 2 and 3.  God says: “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland…” (NIV)  If we look at the Amplified translation we see this text as “But [in comparison with the degree of love I have for Jacob] I have hated Esau and have laid waste his mountains…” (AMP)

It’s like saying in our time that someone has ‘kicked the bucket’ doesn’t really mean that one literally kicked a bucket but that he has died.  Or the expression that it’s raining cats and dogs doesn’t mean that cats and dogs are literally falling from the sky but that there’s a downpour outside.  The same kind of thing applies here.  Jesus wasn’t telling those who wanted to follow Him that they had to literally hate their spouses and even children.  He was simply saying that even the sacredness of family loyalty shouldn’t outweigh our commitment to Christ since we must be willing to abandon even close relationships to follow Him.

This way of reading this particular passage also explains what Jesus meant by bringing a sword and not peace in Mat 10 where He says: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’

To follow Jesus, that is to be His disciple, one must be willing to abandon even close relationships because many who are close to you will be unable to understand your path and reject you because of it, hence the turning away of the father and daughter and so on.

Just because they turn away from you or that your love toward Jesus Christ is greater than your love for your family doesn’t mean you leave or ignore them either.  We are to love one another and that means to be there to explain the hope that is in you with respect and gentleness (1 Pet 3:15), and of course to pray for their entrance into the faith.

God Bless
Nathan