Doubting Thomas, Doubting Jesus

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas - Caravaggio (1573-1610)

It isn’t hard to understand that we, as believers should go through some periods of doubt concerning Jesus’ teachings. We were not fortunate enough to live in the time of his teachings. None of us were first hand witnesses to the miracles he performed or to the good word he spread. So are we sinners simply for the fact that at times we question the reality of our Lord and Savior? We are sinners for sure, but I am not certain it is because we challenge our belief system.

How hard is it to believe in Jesus? If we look closely at Sundays Gospel reading (John 20:19-31) which is the story of Thomas. Some of the disciples told Thomas “We have seen the Lord”, yet he was still in doubt. When he heard these words he said to them “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” These words come straight from one of the twelve. These are the words of a man who had spent the last three years of his life following Jesus and learning from his teachings. Yet he refused to believe, based on the accounts of the other disciples. He needed to see for himself firsthand that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead.

So how do we believe what we have been told if a personal eyewitness struggles with such beliefs? Obviously we cannot witness the resurrection of Jesus for ourselves. All we have to go on are the accounts of others, in this case from the personal accounts of his twelve disciples. Is this hard for you to do? It depends on where you are in your life. For some of you today might be one of those days where your beliefs are strong. But for others of you today might be a bad day; one in which you have turned away from God. We all have these days and need to continually remind ourselves of God’s love for each and every one of us. This is where true faith comes in. Our faith is constantly tested. We test our own faith without the intersession of outside forces. When bad things happen to us we question our belief in God. When good things happen in our lives, we await the bad to follow. These thoughts and feelings are compounded when we read about or listen to people with differing view points on Jesus and God. As I mentioned in my last post, it is important that we understand why we believe what we believe. It is all the more reason why we should explore our faith and continually strengthen it by reading all we can about our religion. There are many historical references we can use to do just this. By understanding our faith completely we will limit the number of times when our faith is challenged. The more we know the more we grow.

It is important to believe not because we think it is the right thing to do but rather to believe because we know it is the right thing. Your God given freewill allows that your faith can waiver. Now is the time to use your freewill to gain a greater understanding. Jesus’ disciples have presented to you the stories of his life. Take this time to expand upon these stories and constantly strengthen you beliefs. Your faith is like a muscle, if you don’t exercise it it will begin to atrophy. But the more you exercise your faith, the stronger it will become and the closer you will be to God.

Amen.

-Scott

Broadening Your Belief System

Why do you believe in God? When were you saved by Jesus? What is the foundation for your beliefs? These are some of the questions you may have been asked by skeptics in the past. There are thousands of others but you get my point. So now I will ask you, why do you believe in God? I want you to think about this for a moment before you answer. Is it because you were nurtured into the belief in God by your parents? Is it because if it’s in the Bible it must be so? Or is it because you can feel the Holy Spirit working through you?

Did you answer yes to any of these questions, or is there another reason for your beliefs? If your sole answer is yes to one or more of these questions then I challenge you to explore your faith in a deeper sense. Before I go headlong into my dissertation on this subject please don’t misinterpret my rationale. There is nothing wrong with believing just because. I know that the Holy Spirit is working through me right now in the writing of this entry. Bear with me as I get to my point.

I am not a Christian recruiter. Heck Catholicism alone has nearly 1.5 billion members worldwide, so how effective would I be in the first place? My point here is simple why wouldn’t you want to know more about your faith? The Catholic Church through the teachings of Jesus asks that we be good Christians every day of our lives. This means that going to mass on Sunday just isn’t enough. We need to search our souls and ask ourselves, what would Jesus do? So, what exactly would Jesus do? In order to find out we need to know everything there is to know about our religion. So how do we go about doing this? Reading the Bible on a regular basis is a good start. But is that all there is to it? The simple answer is no. Now I know most of you are thinking of course that isn’t all we need to do Scott. We need to attend mass regularly, we need to pray, we should always give alms when we are able, we should fully participate in the sacraments and we should devote our time and our talents to the ministry of the church through it’s many outreach programs. That too a good start. But it is just that, a start. What I am alluding to is a deeper understanding of our beliefs and why we do what we do.

There are hundreds of great books on the market today which enable us to garner a deeper understanding of our belief system. I encourage all of you to explore these texts and to absorb their knowledge. (in future blogs I will reveal to you some of my favorites) It is healthy to explore your faith. Quite frankly I think it is a necessity to gain as much knowledge about your faith as you possibly can. You wouldn’t buy a car without taking it out for a test drive would you? So why wouldn’t you test drive your faith? What do you have to lose? Again I am not here to sell anyone religion. Don’t fear I won’t be knocking on your door to proclaim glory of Christianity. My point is this, nothing but good can come from taking the time to evaluate and strengthen your faith. You don’t have to justify your belief in God to anyone. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a litany of answers for the next person who asks you “why do you believe in God?” Rather than answering, “just because.”

Peace be with you,

-Scott

Navigating Faith Part I

Faith is defined as a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. This can be a tough concept for a many of us to swallow. We aren’t wired to accept things as they are. We have an internal need to personally verify the existence of everything we come to accept as true. Unfortunately, we do not come by faith intuitively. As in all things we need to weigh the options and make our own conscious decision as to whether or not we believe in something. Take for example a toddler who has recently learned to speak. When you tell this young person something that is fact there response to this new piece of information is inevitably, why? As you proceed to expand upon this fact they continue to ask why. Through the use of reason this child wants to know and to completely understand the rationale behind why something is what it is. It is our nature to be inquisitive and to be able to understand things completely. So it is not hard for us to understand why taking something on faith is an extremely difficult thing for us to do.

So how do we come by faith? In some cases we are nurtured by our families to have faith in God. As is the case with many life lessons we are instructed and mentored by our loved ones. If our parents and siblings have a stronghold on faith it is easy for them to pass the beliefs onto us. This was not difficult in my case, as I stated earlier my father was a Lutheran minister. He dedicated his life to the teachings of Christ. He not only believed in God, he lived God’s teachings on a daily basis. I not only learned to have faith through his teachings but better yet witnessed his faith through his actions.

Not everyone has had the benefit of coming to faith through the nurturing of others. Some people live their entire lives wanting to believe but weren’t provided with examples by which to follow. So how do these people come to have faith? There are many reasons and circumstances that transpire to inspire people to come to faith. In some cases finding faith beats the alternative. What I mean by this is that being a faithless person can be a lonely existence. As we all know trying to sort through life’s challenges on our own can be a very difficult thing to do. I have come up with a term for the times in my life when my faith has wavered, I call it Free Solitary Confinement. I know this term is an oxymoron, much like artificial intelligence but let me explain the rationale behind my phrase. I use the word free because we are all free. We can do what we want when we want to. We are free to choose where we work, who we socialize with, and what we do with our spare time. When I speak of solitary confinement, I am referring to the times we spend in the personal cell of our minds, if you will. These are the times when we try to rationalize the purpose behind why we are here. What purpose do our lives have? What does it all mean? Is there something greater than me?

A faithless person will spend a lot of time within the hallowed halls of their minds. If that person doesn’t allow themselves the ability to believe in a power greater than he, he will begin to feel a lack of self worth. Additionally he will begin to put the weight of the world on his own shoulders. Living in such a way lends itself to be a miserable existence. As some might define it, these people spend their days in a living hell.

So how do we come to have faith if we weren’t nurtured in such a way as to have a foundation in faith? I wish I had the magic answer to this question. There is no magic wand that can be waved over the faithless that will instantly grant them a belief in God. Finding faith takes a concerted effort on your part. Although, I can say with conviction that Jesus is constantly tugging at our heart strings and asking us to believe in him. Whether or not we answer his call is completely up to us. God provided each and every one of us with free will. There it is again, the word free. Although he wants us to believe and trust in him, he allows us to make this decision for ourselves. How can I be so sure that Jesus is constantly calling, you might ask? Let me provide you with an example. How many times in your life have you done something that you know in your heart is wrong? It may be that you lied to your spouse, or took something that wasn’t yours. How did that make you feel? What power was so great that it made you act in a particular way even though you knew it wasn’t right? That power was evil. Now I am not suggesting that you are an evil person, I am simply saying that evil has a calling card just as does God. Free will allows you to listen to which ever voice you choose to hear.

Present day humorists continually demonstrate the constant struggle between good versus evil. A common tool they use to illustrate this is through the depiction of a person with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the opposite shoulder. The devil pressures the person to do something they shouldn’t while the angel tries to counteract this by persuading the person to do the right thing. These types of exhibits haven’t occurred by accident. God through the power of the Holy Spirit is constantly calling for us to be with him. He wishes for us to be keenly aware of his presence in the world. But at the same time he has refused to impose his will upon us. The choice is yours; will you accept his call and follow him?

I'm not preaching, I'm just teaching.

-Scott

The Day God Became a Red Sox Fan

It was a cool night on October 17, 2004. I remember it like it was four years ago. The Boston Red Sox were down 0-3 to the dreaded New York Yankees in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series. It was on that night the Red Sox began their “Reverse the Curse” campaign. The Sox went on to win four in-a-row and were crowned ALCS Champions. They then went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. They were Champions once again! It took eighty-six years worth of blood, sweat, and tears but the beloved team of Red Sox Nation finally brought another championship home to their fans.

So does this make God a Red Sox fan? Probably not, but let me live in my own little world, will ya? My twisted little example stems from a recent dinner table conversation with my family. One night our trivial banter of “how was your day today?” turned into a discussion about God. The focus of the discussion turned towards predestination. We have all heard the phrase that everything happens for a reason. Some members of my family believe that God is fully aware ahead of time how everything, everywhere is going to turn out before it, well; …..turns out.

I am not too sure that I can subscribe to this methodology. I think it might be because I am uncomfortable with the feeling of someone knowing what I am going to do even before I do it. I believe in free will as it is described in the Bible. God gave each one of us the ability to act on our own accord and to make our own decisions. In a sense I guess I feel that if God already knows my every move that my will is no longer free.

One could argue that by subscribing to the concept of predestination doesn’t essentially strip one of their free will. Even though God has the script of the real life movies for all of mankind, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he wrote the screenplays. I guess it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I know God is all powerful and ever living and that the mere 10% I use of my little brain that I cannot even begin to fathom his all knowingness.

So how do I carry on? Quite frankly I forget about it. Not with a conscious effort mind you. It’s just that my short term memory isn’t worth a darn. But every once in awhile this thought skips back into my stream of consciousness and I have to deal with it. One of the big 4 TV networks used to run an ad campaign for their sitcom rerun season which went something like “if you haven’t seen it, then it is new to you.” I guess I should subscribe to this line of thinking. Even if God already knows my every move it shouldn’t matter, because it’s new to me.

God Bless,

Scott

Why Am I Here?

As a brand new member of the blogging phenomena I thought I would use this first entry to describe the inspiration behind this site. I am a recently converted Catholic, so recent in fact I have only been Catholic for 3 days, 12 hours and 16 minutes. As a member of the RCIA program I was confirmed and received my First Communion from the Roman Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil last Saturday evening. I was born and raised a Lutheran. My father was a Lutheran minister up until his passing in November of 1988.

After the passing of my father, I became disenchanted with the whole concept of God. It wasn’t that I stopped believing in him altogether but rather I made the conscious decision to go it alone. I put God and Jesus in the background and decided to take life as it came. I stopped attending church regularly, I didn’t pray, and began to adopt a more atheistic (not entirely, but so I felt) view of the world. In a sense I put my faith to the ultimate test. I began to ask why.

My whole life I had been taught to believe in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, yet I never really knew why I was supposed to believe in him in the first place. I have come to the realization that one can’t believe in Jesus just because. Personally I use the “just because” case with my two and four year old children. And for now it is quite effective, but I am well aware that this will not be a forever standing justification tool with them. “Why do I have to go to bed now, Daddy?” To which I respond “Because I said so.” This is usually an end of conversation statement. My father (the loving minister that he was) used the following classic end of conversation statement with his kids, “Amen, end of story!” As a person, when we transition from our adolescent years into our teens and finally into adulthood, we are not satisfied with the “just because” form of reasoning. We need more to quench our thirst of understanding.

So how do I come to be faithful again? Well, in humanistic terms it happened by accident. My wife has been a Roman Catholic for her entire life. We were married in a Catholic Church and I had made a promise to her that we would raise our children Catholic. Now that my daughter is four years old her inquisitive nature has started to take hold of her. I felt it would be far easier to join the church rather than to answer her questions such as “why don’t you accept communion with Mommy?” Heck, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? So without any pressure from my wife I looked into the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) at her church. I joined last September and have been hooked every since. I honestly never could have imagined the overwhelming transformation I would have when I originally joined the program. But it happened and here I am. I have come to the realization that although I left Jesus behind, he never left my side. I don’t mean to trivialize my transformation process; I just don’t want to bore you to death with all of the details in my first blog. I will elaborate on this in future postings as the topics arise.

So why did I begin this blog in the first place? I wish to reach out to other Catholics to get their feedback and feelings on their beliefs. Additionally I hope my postings will appeal to people of other faiths as well. I will use this forum as a place to discuss real life issues and to delve into them as mush as necessary and for as long as the topics generate a common interest. I admit this first posting is a bit dry and I expect future posts to be a bit livelier. I just needed to let you know where I was coming from as a starting point. In this blog I will be discussing many topics and though they may not always be religiously related, as a good Christian they will sustain a religious theme.

So with all of that said, I would like to be the first to welcome you to my blog. Well I guess since it is my blog I am the only one who can welcome you. In any case welcome and I hope to see you again real soon.

God Bless,

Scott