How can the suffering of one Holy man wash away the sins of mankind?

[cosvis]

Hi Tina, Pat and all,

When I was stationed in the mission and had the opportunity to contemplate the panorama of many starry nights, the words of Scripture came to me: "The heavens proclaim the glory of the Lord." I felt very close to God. But, I also had to ponder on the fact that so many of my fellow men and women in the world, still do not, and indeed cannot, believe in a good merciful God who could send his own son to redeem all mankind by means of his own death on the cross. A possible answer to this very difficult question I thought may be found, in right knowledge and in the gift of faith.

Knowledge is fairly easy available to any one who seeks it today, especially by means of books or now, by the internet. Faith, however, is a gift from God and it is not easily acquired. Faith to me is basically a trust that one gives to someone that one loves. A small baby first places its trust in its loving mother and father who give it nourishment and care. Later, as the baby grows into a child, it will come to trust and to love its brothers, sisters, grand parents, relations, and friends. As the person matures it will be able to trust strangers, one of whom she or he could fall in love with and marry. The greatest trust and love a person can acquire would be a love for God.

God shows his love by given each person a unique life, personality, with many gifts, talents and opportunities in life to do good. The greatest good is to follow God's commandment as the Lord said; "If you love me keep my commandment." One of the strongest proof for the existence of God is the love one finds in others, especially in parents, bothers and sisters, grand parents, grand children, relatives, friends and fellow men and women. This is so because love comes from love and the first love comes from the one who loved us first, our loving God and creator.

There are other proofs for the existence of God but the strongest to me is the love and goodness we have experienced ourselves.

Yours Cosvis.

[Tina]

Hi Tina, Pat and all,


There are other proofs for the existence of God but the strongest to me is the love and goodness we have experienced ourselves.

Yours Cosvis.

Who could come up with any better advice than to "love one another"! Imagine if EVERYONE did that!

[cosvis]

Hi Tina and all,

Thank you, and you are so right Tina, "love makes the world go round,"; if we could only love one another instead of killing and hurting each other, we would build a better world. St John said: "God is love", and theologians say that love in God is the moving force that enables God to create our beautiful world in order to share his goodness with creatures that could also freely love him.

I tried to sugguest before, that by experiencing love in our lives we can come to the realization of the love and the existence of God. I also mentioned that love to me is basically a trust. The question is: trust in what? I think we have to come to trust in truth, in other word, in what is right. Our Lord said: "The truth will make you free." Fortunately, for believers they have the guidance of the Holy Bible and the teachings of the Church. I feel it would be more difficult for non believers to find truth.

However, every person, even non believers, are given a sense of propriety or a sense of morality, what theologians call, a conscience. Even children would know that they should be good and avoid evil; that they should love and obey their parents; they should work hard and try to be good to all. Unfortunately, when children grow up, they might get false teachings or might have bad personal experiences. Thus, it could happen, that they could loose their sense of what is right or wrong and become amoral.

I believe, for a person who does not believe, who has lost his sense of morality, he could still have the noble gift of reasoning. Reasoning separates us from the animals who have no reasoning power but rather an innate natural drive or instinct that makes it respond or react to situations. If it is hungry it will look for food; if it is in heat, it wants to mate, if it is in danger it will fight for its life.

The saddness is that people who have no faith, who have no sense of morality and who do not want to use their proper reasoning powers, could just depend on their lower instincts and become brutes and tyrants. They could be very clever and knowledgeable but they have lost their sense of propriety. Thus they could cause great evils; as we have seen in the past by the evil caused by Nazism, communism, and we can still witness today by all the brutal killings of innocent people, especially in the Middle East. May God preserve us!

Yours Cosvis.

[Profpat]

Who could come up with any better advice than to "love one another"! Imagine if EVERYONE did that!

Hi Tina and all;

I believe John Lennon had a very beautiful song Imagining just that.

Best to all,

Pat

[Tina]

Hi Tina and all;

I believe John Lennon had a very beautiful song Imagining just that.

Best to all,

Pat

Yeah...and look what happens to people who imagine LOVE. (Martin Luther King, Jesus, etc) They usually get killed for their crazy imaginings????

[Tina]

Hi Tina and all,

"love makes the world go round,";.... by experiencing love in our lives we can come to the realization of the love .....love to me is basically a trust. The question is: trust in what? ... they might get false teachings or might have bad personal experiences.

I believe, for a person who does not believe........,

Yours Cosvis.

I've edited your post to strip down to how I see things.

Hi Covis - Have you had a shot at answering the question on forum "the root of all evil". I can't remember so I'll have a look. If you have not please consider offering an answer.

[cosvis]

Hi Tina and all,

Thank you for your responses but your last one about: "the root of all evil," is a difficult question. I heard of a witty cardinal who suppose to have said: "Money is the root of all evil; it is the offal of Satan, but it certainly makes good fertilizer." This may be so but I feel, to properly understand the question, one has to have a clear idea of what is evil. I remember St. Augustine explaining the idea of evil. He said, look at a beautiful woman and ask what makes her beautiful? Everything is proper and proportional, her hair, her eyes, her body and so on. However, just remove one of her eye brows and she will become to look ugly. Thus, St. Augustine said evil is the absent of good.

This idea of evil being the absent of good can be applied in many fields philosophy, the arts, science and here in our thread, to religon and morality. Religion is the object of study of theologians who have studied the Bible, revelations, traditions and faith, the belief of people. I feel it is important to remember that theologians are not physical scientists and not strictly historians in our common understanding of history. But they do talk about historical religious events like creation, the fall, redemption and final retribution of the good and the bad.

Theologians say that before the creation of the universe and mankind, God created the angels, spiritual creatures who are very intelligent, have great knowledge, even preknowledge and other powers. The purpose of the creation of the angels was that they would do the bidding of God, and thus, to serve and help mankind. The greatest of the angels was Lucifer, the bearer of light. The angels had a free choice to obey God or to revolt. Lucifer and one third of the angels revolted because they thought that they were superior to mankind and would not serve God. Their sin was one of pride and consequently they were expelled from the presence of God.

When God created mankind and placed Adam and Eve in paradise, he also tested them. They could eat of all the fruits in the garden of Eden except from the tree with the fruit of knowledge of good and evil; the consequence of disobedience would be death. Satan who from his rebellion, hated mankind and tempted Eve with the first great lie: "You surely will not die, but be like God." Poor Eve fell for the lie and so did Adam, they disobeyed God out of bride and greed, they wanted to be equal to God.

But this was only the beginning of evil as we could read from the Bible. Kain slew Abel and the killing started and has never stopped. Evil of everykind has entered human history and it is still with us today; it can infect every family, society, institutions and even religions. But the first and greatest root of evil, I think is pride, people refusing to believe and listen to God. These people want to be God and in their ignorance, greed and pride bring evil and havoc everywhere.

Yours Cosvis.

[Tina]

Hi Tina and all,

Thank you for your responses but your last one about: "the root of all evil," is a difficult question. I remember St. Augustine explaining the idea of evil..... Everything is proper and proportional, her hair, her eyes, her body and so on. However, just remove one of her eye brows and she will become to look ugly. Thus, St. Augustine said evil is the absent of good.

This idea of evil being the absent of good
Yours Cosvis.

Well St Augustine should have taken his observations one step further and asked himself "Why do I think this woman [once thought of as beautiful] now ugly for lack of an eyebrow?

[Profpat]

Well St Augustine should have taken his observations one step further and asked himself "Why do I think this woman [once thought of as beautiful] now ugly for lack of an eyebrow?

Broken symmetry Tina. Everybody has a sense of beauty inside them and it has to do with a symmetrical face. So if you have one eyebrow Tina, get yourself an eyebrow pencil and pencil one in.

But here is a question for both you Tina and Cosvis.

If you could eliminate evil, but to do so you would also eliminate the good, would you?

In other words would you go back to the garden before we ate of the fruit of good and evil.

Best.

Pat

[Tina]

Broken symmetry Tina. .... So if you have one eyebrow Tina, get yourself an eyebrow pencil and pencil one in.

But here is a question for both you Tina and Cosvis.

If you could eliminate evil, but to do so you would also eliminate the good, would you?

In other words would you go back to the garden before we ate of the fruit of good and evil.

Best.

Pat

Well it's beyond me how broken symmetry = ugly/evil/absensce of good?
Why so abhorent respose - balance is pleasing - but krickey we are talking about a human being!

Talk about one eyebrow - I've had plucking disasters where I did have to fill in the gaps with pencil (that was so no one would think I was ugly - didn't want to offend their sensibilities!)

Too right I'd eliminate the good - because like St Augustine says it is good to have two eyebrows. Most of what is considered good is total rubbish. I know this was only used as demonstration but it does reaveal our flawed reasoning re: good and bad.

I say back to pre-apple eating fiasco 100%