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The space beween belief and unbelief
Topic Started: Saturday, 11. February 2012, 01:01 (139 Views)
Marts

Here is the most heartfelt, thoughtful and beautiful comment I think I have ever read. It is by an old priest, William Taylor, referring to an article by Paul Lakeland on the space between belief and unbelief:

I can get into that “in-between place” just by reflecting on life and Scripture and I am a Catholic priest. I walk through the street carrying a little girl who died of dysentery and a thousand people follow me and I go to the house but can’t put the burden down. Then I stumble out of the house and above the city is a great statue of Cristo Rey touched by a dazzling white streak of sun against a black sky. A miracle? A sign of hope. No, I just got mad and got on the wrong bus and took a tour of the slums with little kids with death on their faces and a barrio where guys in black Mercedes and Cadillacs are buying little girls.

Who is this God? In his weakness? In his decision not to intervene with lightning bolts. In his choice to leave the little ones to pray, suffer, and die?

I have to say it is the cross that does it for me…it leads me to a mystery where God does not give the answer but simply becomes one of the least and most loss as if to say I went down there with you and I won’t let you go. But I still rage for revenge and justice.

Well, I am an old man now and I am looking forward to seeing what it was all about. Sometimes God seems as close to me as the other side of a piece of paper or closer, but I still don’t understand. Came to see that faith also means loyalty and so I am loyal and will be. But I wish it was the God Wiesell longed for and how all this really looks in the eyes of the maker of galaxies and black holes.

http://commonwealmagazine.org/verdicts/?p=864

Jesus told us, his disciples, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13)
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Emee
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I have often thought how can God bear: child prostitution; families split up by the adultery of selfish self indulgent parents; people being denied the basics in life in one part of the world while other people wallow in wealth in another etc...

And then I remember in the Bible we are told that God cannot bear to look upon sin with one degree of tolerance and a man who sows destruction will reap destruction upon himself.

However, that doesn't make it any easier when I think about the little ones who suffer in the process...

This broken world in which we live in can be truly heart breaking at times.
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Ned

Marts
Saturday, 11. February 2012, 01:01
... I just got mad and got on the wrong bus and took a tour of the slums with little kids with death on their faces and a barrio where guys in black Mercedes and Cadillacs are buying little girls. ...

Who is this God? In his weakness? In his decision not to intervene with lightning bolts. In his choice to leave the little ones to pray, suffer, and die? ...

I still rage for revenge and justice. ...
Yes, it's one of those themes that runs all through the Bible.

"Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."(Romans 12:19 ESV)

Psalms 37 and 73 are very helpful, and particularly there's the warning in Psalm 73 - "But, as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped, Because I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." (USCCB Bible - http://www.usccb.org/bible/psalms/73)

We all know the feeling, 'my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped'; that's the very real danger that these situations always pose for us.
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Rose of York
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I find it hard to accept that God knows there are so many people who suffer from childhood and young adulthood onwards, for many years, and we are taught that is due to our first parents rebelling against God. That rebellion was not caused by my friend who has been paralysed for about 40 years, since she was a young mother, yet she seems to be suffering for it. She is a lovely person, never grumbles or talks about her illness, so why oh why do she and her family go through this? The only silver lining I see in that cloud is the example of her husband's care, and their cheerful acceptance of the situation puts many who appear to be better off.

If I did not believe in an afterlife, where all will be fair and just, I would most likely be very angry about the sort of thing I describe above.
Keep the Faith!

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Rose of York
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We all have a tendency to agonise over suffering that is visible, such as starvation, war, sickness. It amazes me that many assume that a person with serious disabilities, must be desperately unhappy, when some of them are far more content with life than many who have the outward appearance of having everything a person could want. Some are very envious of the person with the high powered job, status, luxury house and expensive car, then we learn that person is desperately unhappy about something in his/her private life. There are people who seek large amounts of money because they see it as the source of status, respect and power. They set targets of what they want, and when they have it they want more, so it is like being on a never ending ladder, and if they need to trample on others to reach the target, that is what they do, so they can be happy one day, but does that day ever come?

Love is what makes people happy. Lack of love makes people very unhappy.

It is lack of love for others that leads to greed and power seeking. If only the whole human race including me followed the example of Christ, 24/7, every day, we would all care about everybody, starvation and disease could be effectively dealt with, wars would be a thing of the past, all families would be happy.

All I can say is Jesus set the example, much human misery is caused by his love being ignored, not appreciated. If only we could all better people than we are!
Keep the Faith!

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Rose of York
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Today, reading a book about the author and playwrite J B Priestley, I read the words quoted below. I do not know what Priestley's religious beliefs are, but the passage seems to fit in this discussion. It is about a dream Priestley had that helped him come to terms with the suffering in the world.

Quote:
 
THE VISION IN THE TOWER

Just before I went to America, during the exhausting weeks when I was busy with my Time plays, I had such a dream, and I think it left a deeper impression upon my mind than any experience I had ever known before, awake or in dreams, and said more more to me about this life than any book I have ever read. The setting of the dream was quite simple, and owed something to the fact that not long before my wife had visited the lighthouse here at St. Catherine's to do some bird-ringing. I dreamt I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down upon myriads of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds. But now in some mysterious fashion, the gear was changed and time speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, watched them break their shells, flutter into life, mate, weaken, falter and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek and then, in a flash, bled and shrivelled; and death struck everywhere at every second. What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, this hurried mating, this flight and surge, all this gigantic meaningless biological effort? As I stared down, seeming to see every creature's ignoble little history almost at a glance, I felt sick at heart. It would be better if not one of them, in not one of us all, had been born, if the struggle ceased forever. I stood on my tower, still alone, desperately unhappy. But now the gear was changed again and time went faster still, and it was rushing by at such a rate, that the birds could not show any movement, but were like an enormous plain sown with feathers. But along this plain, flickering through the bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on; and as soon as I saw it, I knew that this white flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being; and then it came to me in a rocket-burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real, but this quivering and hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men, or creatures not yet shaped or coloured, all were of no account except so far as this flame of life travelled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it; what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life. I had never felt such deep happiness as I knew at the end of my dream of the tower and the birds, and if I have not kept that happiness with me, as an inner atmosphere and a sanctuary for the heart, that is because I am a weak and foolish man who allows the mad world to come trampling in, destroying every green shoot of wisdom. Nevertheless, I have not been quite the same man since. A dream had come through the multitude of business.
Keep the Faith!

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