As St. Thomas Aquinas would say, "Sed Contra" in response to three common popular opinions to demonstrate what was true. So, I have been challenged times three by atheists on my earlier blog about the self-defeating nature of Atheism.
I agree with the Curt Jester, we need a series of Dominican priest murder-mysteries.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
Bible Bible+christian+society atheism proof+for+God God antiatheism anti-atheism against+atheism
Alright, first I would like to give a hat tip to the two people that inspired the title of this blog post, Mac and Katherine from The Catholic in a Small Town podcast. They have a very funny and real podcast and a very unique way of saying scandalous. I would reccoment you checking them out, failing to do so would be SCANDALOUS. Now, on to the blog.
Okay, one of the things my wife and I struggle with is not presenting scandal to our fellow man. This is not to say that we are doing anything scandalous but more a question of putting the best foot forward or being realistic when dealing with our embracing of Church teaching in our life.
For example, we have discovered that using NFP to avoid pregnancy, extended ecological breastfeeding, homeschooling and having a large family can all be a challenge. We both realize that the Christian walk isn't something that is supposed to be a cakewalk, we are told in the Bible to take up our cross and carry it, but we also live in a society of ease and pleasure.
We have not experienced dirctly any of the following but when we are int the company of a newly married DINC and my wife is in her normal state of breastfeeding should we be worried about someone thinking or saying, "I am never going to do that ecological breastfeeding, she spent over 1/2 the evening with that kid attatched to her breast." Another related thought we be if my wife is talking to young engaged or expectant married womwn about breastfeeding ecologically and she mentions the positives of delayed return of fertility and the health benefits but also mentions the negative effect of decreased libido and someone thinkd, "Well, thats not worthwhile if I can have sex all I want after the baby is born but I won't want to."
The list of possibilities goes on and on with homeschooling and having a bad day, should you appear anything less than having the perfectly ordered life when at times you would rather sit and spend twenty minutes venting about how you feel like today was more challenging than it would be to land a 747 with one wing, no landing gear and one engine.
Natural Family Planning can be another challenge if their is a need to avoid pregnancy. It can be a significant challenge to avoid pregnancy when the time to avoid relations and the time of greatest desire happen to typically coincide.
Do we present the best foot forward always for those who don't understand them or do we work to be really honest about the struggles? My wife and I talked about this for awhile the other night and something a friend of mine always says about struggles comes to the top of my mind. He always tells anyone that is struggling to 'play the tape to the end.' Push fast forward and look at what you are trying to achieve, what is the goal (eternally speaking, that is) you are seeking?
I think that when we share the struggles it needs to be in the context of rembering what we are doing. "Today was a hard day getting half of what I needed to get done and I am just frazzled but it will be worthwhile in the long run as the kids are getting the best I can provide them."
I think that it is important that we are realistic and don't sell a false bill of goods that dissillusion people, like with NFP, if we tell people that NFP builds stronger marriages and will help prevent divorce it would be easy for someone to become disillusioned if they have any struggles in their marriage.
However, I do think that we should reach out to couples in modern ways but should be real about who and what we are. If they reject, let us say, ecological breastfeeding because it keeps the mother from doing whatever she wants because the baby is so dependent on her that is their prerogative. We don’t get to decide which value systems people use to make decisions, we just have to be confident in our decisions when people who don’t understand them are around. We have to be real but trusting in God. This is something that is counter-cultural and the rest of society will think we are crazy but they aren’t thinking about the eternal perspectives or the health benefits and how 2 years is really a short period of time in the grand scheme of things.
We have to remember that we live in a society that is built around self-gratification and pride. We are more worried about our career, what kind of car we drive, where we live, and how fast our motorboat can go than where we will spend eternity. We live in a society of practical atheists, people who may profess God but act as if he doesn’t exist. I don’t know about you but I prefer an air conditioned and joyful eternity for me and my family with some suffering now than being self-indulgent for a few years and spending eternity in a constant state of feeling my flesh being melted off my skin.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S.
catholic catholic+dad fatherhood parenting breastfeed breastfeeding NFP natural+family+planning scandal atheism practical+atheist
My wife and I talked last night afterwork and we got to talking about higher things, atheism and life not on this earth. Of course, I being a smart aleck, when my wife asked me if I thought life existed somewhere other than earth enthusiastically said, "YES!" Retort the obvious she said, "Well other than God and the Saints!" I again replied,, "YES!" This tottally took her aback until I told her she forget about the damned, the souls in purgatory and demons.
I said that while I think it is possible for life to exist on other planets I think it is highly improbable due to how closely everything has to line up for us to exist. This of course brought up the idea of intelligent design and somewhere atheism came in. I noted that atheism is a self-defeating purpose. So here I go, attempting to share that.....
First, let us assume that everything that is here just happened, no logical design and we just crawled up out of the muck. Human beings would be a series of basically organic computers. The limitation of these computers is that they are completely based on stimulus and response. What goes in gets processed and defines a return, now the software gets refined with every response but nothing comes out that doesn't come in. Now, let us proceed to imagination....
I am going to make the claim that we can only dream up things that are something that exists. We have to have stimulus to regurgitate it. Well, obviously this is not true because I just thought of a Pink Elephant in my head. Actually, I am taking the idea of Elephant and the idea of Pink and putting them together, I am Re-membering the parts together, imagination just puts thinks together that don't exist together.
Ok, so now if God doesn't exist how does the idea of God exist? The idea, infinite and omnipotent, are beyond the human experiencing and thus cannot be remembered or dreamed up. Sooooooooo, they must have been placed in the mind by something that can fathom being infinite and omnipotent, hmmmm, sounds like God to me.
Ok, so someone will object and say, "That is just a short circuit in the software, like the blue screen of death on your Window's PC." Well, then why don't people think of God and then fall over dead, why do people never connected to each other become able to understand at a finite level these concepts beyond them and why do people come up with comparable ideas in seperate places at seperate times uninfluenced by each other?
Lastly, that is the place where the gift of faith comes in. I hope this philosophic rambling has been helpful or enlightening or stirred your mind to think. I love you dearling (my wife that is) for being a great source of inspiriation to me. Oh, and if you want to hear a great talk abou atheism check out John Martignoni's Website, The Bible Christian Society, he has a great talk Called "Was Hitler Right?" that is available as MP3 here and tape/Cd here. He has tremendous resources available and keeps fees low so that Truth is accessible to all.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
Bible Bible+christian+society atheism proof+for+God God antiatheism anti-atheism against+atheism
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