16-year-old Noel's and my intricate theological discussion in the two previous posts took a surprising turn when he revealed that he very much wants to be a Catholic priest.
Noel
Ok ok ok, my grades would not reflect your claiming I have a high IQ and am a prodigy, although I am a little good at drums. I just watch a lot of Catholic apologists argue, some of my ideas are not my own but learned. I conclude abortion is immoral not because I know the mind of God, but that through the many graces and mercies He’s given me, a sinner, along with his divine revelation and pedagogy, I can know moral truths. If not then do I know it’s wrong to kill or rape or steal? If you think my ideas are cool, maybe you should read some of saints and theologians I read.
I don’t agree with the idea of karma, the quote you mentioned earlier where Jesus says you will reap what you will sow can’t be reduced to a teaching of karma provided that just this alone can be interpreted in different ways. It’s important to read scripture in proper context referring to prophesies in the Old Testament related to the verse and in its historical context.
Jesus is God, Jesus is omnipotent and omniscient, he knows every problem that has happened, and will happened. He has not addressed every single problem ever, because they are all contingent upon rejecting God. There are probably many other vices that Jesus did not address, or at least we’re not written down, across the world. The reason why is because Jesus did not come to make peace, but for the sword, to set a father against one son and a mother against one’s daughter. He came to die on the cross to pay for our sins, as sin and death came into the world through disobedience, and Our Lord was obedient unto death as the Son of Man for our sins. God has established multiple times what is right and wrong through his 10 commandments, and has addressed vices constantly. The devil, who used to be the second to God in power, knew quite well what was wrong and right. The contingence of a moral person is not based on whether someone knows certain truths or not, rather if a person is willing to carry his or her cross and follow our Lord.
Maybe I can be wrong about what God wants, but when Gods gifts of rational will and intellect is used correctly, we can conclude what God wants. This is why the application of the rigor of logic is extremely important and this is why the Church stresses theology. But I know the right answer the same way I know mathematical truths or historical truths, because it’s reasonable to conclude so. If I can’t make logical conclusions on what God wants, then I can’t make logical conclusions about anything, because the same faculties I’m using to conclude in what God wants in using to conclude many other truths as well. I wouldn’t know anything, which is problematic considering I’m exercising my knowledge right know. Certainly one’s bad circumstance does not justify one’s vice. A robber doesn’t rob a store because it’s his favorite hobby to do on the weekends, he robs money likely because he’s impoverished and he sees crime to be the only way out of that poverty. Despite the unfortunate situation, it would still be immoral for him to steal the money of others. Likewise, despite the unfortunate situation some women may be in, it is immoral to kill innocent children.
It’s certainly not my intention to destress you or anything, I deeply respect I’m your spiritual process through the dark night and deeply lament over the death of your son. My mother went through something similar. When she was young she contracted an STD, and so every time she wanted a child she would have to go to the doctor(she didn’t get into the details why). They didn’t find this out about her until her second pregnancy, and two of her children died. For her third pregnancy, she talked to the doctor and went through the proper procedure, but she fell off stairs, crushing and killing her third baby. By the grace of God my parents tried again, this time they went to a cathedral and asked for the intercession of Our Lady at a cathedral in the Dominican Republic for the pregnancy. This time the procedure went well and she didn’t fall off anything, and she gave birth to a boy. That boy was born on Jan. 21, the day when the Church celebrates the presentation of Our Lady, and that boy is me...
I’ve tried. I haven’t always been this serious about my faith, and even at times I’ve become an agnostic like you. I’ve even had a close relationship with a demonic person. But every time I would come back to the Holy Church, because my Our Lady has loved me so much. When asked why he chooses to spend 3 hours for a mass, Padre Pío responds with that God knows I want to stop, to lead a regular mass, but he won’t let me. Leading a Catholic life is not easy, especially not in this day in age, but I do it not because it’s convenient, but because I morally have no other option.
Sloan Bashinsky
After all I have told you about me, I can't imagine how you say I'm an agnostic. I know for a fact that God, angels known in the Bible, Jesus, Lucifer and demons exist. I have run into some Deists lately, and they are very big on using logic, or reason, to define God. If they lived in my skin for a while, they very well might wish there was no God. Same, if they lived in the skin of a good friend of mine for a week.
You told me a while back that you aren't a religious fundamentalist, but you sure come across as one, based on my many dealings with religious fundamentalists. Based on your latest, you are deeply connected to the Roman Catholic Church. I do not doubt you have experienced some of the workings of God, but Jesus is not God, and he did not claim in the Gospels to be God. He did not tell the Devil in the wilderness that he was God. Jesus taught people to pray to their father in heaven. When he was in Gethsemane, sweating blood over what he knew lay ahead, Jesus asked God to spare him from it; then he surrendered, and said, not my will, but your will be done, O Lord.
Jesus came to show by his own example and words how to walk with God on this world, and he won over a few people, and he really upset the Jewish leaders, and they had him crucified for it. To the extent Catholics, or any followers of Jesus, live as he lived and taught, they are saved by him. The rest is just church propaganda to cause people to want to belong to that religion and give it money so it can keep going. You told me you like Francis of Assisi, so I recommend the movie, Brother Sun Sister Moon, which portrays very well how pompous the Catholic Church had become in Italy during Francis's time, and how God used Francis to try to fix that.
I am not ridiculing your church. I simply am saying God is so much larger than any religion, and there is no need for anyone to attend church to walk with God, but if church helps people do that, then that’s good. But if they get to doing what you are doing, telling women what you, as a man, really know nothing about and never will, because you are not a woman, you cross a line that many religious people have crossed in all branches of Christendom.
The Eastern and the Western Church got a divorce over the Western Church requiring its priests to be celibate. The disciples knew Magdalene and Jesus were a couple. If Magdalene washed his feet with her hair and tears before the disciples, what did she wash him with when they were in private? It was the solemn duty of every Jewish man to marry and propagate the race of God’s chosen people. Paul was a Pharisee, yet his letters never mention he was married and had children. Every woman around Paul knew his thorn in the flesh was he was gay, and he was celibate to atone for it. He wrote that he wished his followers all were celibate, like him. He wrote that women could only know Christ through their husbands. I hear Christians quote Paul far more than they quote Jesus, whom Paul never met in the flesh.
I can' help it if you don't care for some of what Jesus in the Gospels said. Such as, what I told you about John the Baptist. What Jesus said about sowing what we reap, both the good and the bad, that is how it is. I have heard many Christians say the only way to be saved by Jesus is to accept the formula that he was the son of God who died for their sins. But in one of the letters of Jesus' brother James, James says don't ask him about his faith, but look to his works and there see his faith. Jesus was about living life raw, up close and personal, in sync with God's ways, not man's ways. Jesus was always in church, and so is everyone, even if they don't realize it.
We all stand before God, every moment of our lives, even if we don't know it. And when we reach the afterlife, we have a life review, to the extent it did not happen before we crossed over. After that, the next phase of our existence begins. Either back on this planet, like Elijah. On some other planet. In some other dimension. The soul is eternal, as it emanates from God, as does everything emanate from God, even Lucifer.
I know that I am not persuading you, but you are very young, and hopefully, you have much to experience, and by the time you are my age, maybe you will look back like I do now, and see just how little you really knew when you were 16. If that doesn't happen, you have made no progress since you were sixteen.
Some people follow what I write, because it is so very different from what is put forth by any sect of Christendom, it is so very different form what is put forth by any religion. In the Letter to the Hebrews, which most theologians do not attribute to Paul, as it is not his writing style, the author tells the audience that they should be eating meat, they should be teachers, but they are still drinking milk. In my experience, that pretty well sums up the state of the various sects in Christendom.
Feel free to share your and my back and forth with your priest. Ask him what he thinks? Ask him, also, if he has actually been celibate the entire time he has been a priest, and ask him if he is straight, or gay? I have no problem with either sexual orientation, because (a) God does not make mistakes, and (b) I have known a lot of gay men and women, and some bis, and some who had sex change surgery, and they simply were wired to be where they were, and there was nothing they could do about it. My bisexual brother killed himself because someone was going to out him and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
You have much to experience in life. I recommend that you get on with it.
Noel
I’m very sorry for the loss of your brother, I will certainly keep him in my rosaries
As for your claims, I was going to write another response but I would agree with you that we are not persuading each other. Certainly I never thought I would be debating with an actual writer and intellectual and someone with spiritual experiences like you, so I have to thank you for your time.
The reason I try my best to study and defend the faith is because I want to be a priest myself, especially in light of the clerical mess today. You might not be too happy to hear that, but I don’t see myself leaving the faith anytime soon.
As for our back and forth, I might send it to my spiritual director who has a PhD in theology and maintains all the Hispanic spiritual activity in my diocese. Or my dad who’s also a theologian. Or maybe God is a sufficient spectator.
And maybe you are convinced now that I don’t have an extremely high IQ, saying that your an agnostic was a pretty bad mistake.
Sloan Bashinsky
You have to be very smart to have amassed so much knowledge and be able to write the way you do, and you don't react. You remain level, which is a sign of maturity far beyond your years. What you have done is bump into a person who has ongoing experiences with the supernatural, but he belongs to no religion, and he attends no church, because what he is experiencing obviously is incompatible with the religion in which he was raised, first the Baptist sect, then the Episcopal.
I always believed God existed, and Jesus was the son of God. The only thing that changed was I came to understand that we all are children of God, and Jesus was very accelerated and knew what he was, and he tried to bring other people to where he was, He told his disciples in the Gospels that a student cannot become greater than the teacher, but the student can become like the teacher, and even do even greater works than he had done. He also told them that he taught the masses in parables, but he taught them in secret the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, for which wise men and kings would give all they had to possess. When Jesus left the men disciples, after the near-death experience, they were still quarreling children. After the Holy Spirit grabbed them at Pentecost, SHE, the female side of God, grew them into men God could use. Jesus had planted the seeds, but the Holy Spirit ignited the seeds in the disciples.
In the Jewish scriptures, the Spirit of God is called Shekinah, gender feminine. In the Old Testament, wisdom is assigned the feminine gender. Christianity's Trinity is all male. How does it reproduce, except by cloning itself. A clone of a clone of a clone, is what has become of mainstream Christendom.
So, what did Jesus teach the disciples in secret? We only have bare glimpses of that in the Gospels. I gave you one glimpse, which was their discussion about John the Baptist. In another setting, Jesus gave sight to a man who had been born blind. Later, one of his disciples asked, Who had sinned, the man or his parents, that he was born blind? Now how could the man have sinned before was born, unless he had lived before? The Old Testament had said the sins of the fathers were visited on the sons for generations. Jesus said it was for neither reason, but the man was born blind, so that the glory of God could be seen on that day, when the man received his sight. Jesus did not say the disciple's question was wrong, but that the answer was something else.
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea risked their lives to persuade Pilate to let them take Jesus's body down from the cross on the afternoon of the morning he was crucified. They wrapped his body in linen cloth, which is sterile, a bandage. They salved his body with 100-weight of aloes and myrrh. Aloe is a powerful wound healer. Myrrh dramatically raises white cell count to fight infection.
I hope you will share our discussion with your spiritual director and your father. I wish them no ill or harm. That would be horrible karma to create for myself. I am an anomaly. I do not make up what I tell you has happened to me. That would be horrible karma, too. I have enough problems already. Who doesn't have enough problems already? It's part of being in this world, but not of it, hopefully.
What I hope for you is that God takes you from where you now are to where you are in direct communion with the Almighty, like the Prophets in the Old Testament; like Jesus, and like his disciples after Pentecost; like Paul after his dark night of the soul; like later saints in Christendom; and like people in C/hristendom, and in other religions, such as Rumi, of the Sufi part of Islam, and his irascible teacher, Shams, to whom two American followers of Rumi likened me, and they called me Shams. Go to Wikipedia and enter Rumi and Shams in that search space, and read what comes up. Also google Rumi’s poem, Chickpea to Cook, and read that account of what it’s like to be boiled alive by God many times.
John the Baptist said in the Gospels that he baptized in water, but one greater than he would come, who would baptize in fire and spirit. Jesus in the Gospels did not baptize in water. He said his baptism was in fire and he was anxious to get on with it. He lived his baptism and he administered it to other people. I think Jesus very much would have enjoyed meeting Rumi and Shams, but they lived later.
Shalom, Noel, from the Melchizedek Priesthood, which is somewhat explained in the Letter to the Hebrews.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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