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Love

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It can be expressed in innumerable ways to an unlimited number of people; nothing can equal its omnipresence. Yet it is so often ignored or shunted to the peripheries. So totally important, yet often misused and abused. It can be expressed as a feeling, an emotion, a passion; all of which may have some validity, but it is only in action that it can really be seen and treasured. It is Love! Love is so important that the roman poet, Virgil, noted that “Love conquers all.” Similarly emphasizing the importance of love, the English author, Robert Browning, insightfully noted that ” Take away love and our earth is a tomb.” Jesus emphasized on numerous occasions that the key to man’s happiness was love of God and of man’s neighbor. Since God is Love, He should be the example man follows. There is the realization that without love life is barren, incomplete, or worse. Since love is vital for man, hopefully man will continue to seek the author of love and give Him the love that He deserves.

Since he first began to think, man has attempted to describe love. Throughout the centuries and in current times, he continued his effort to define that which may not be able to be defined in words. Yet love is more than a feeling…. indeed much more. It is an act of the will. Love can only be realized in action, when feelings and thoughts are expressed concretely. The action may be as simple as a smile or a kind word or it may be as complex as the lasting relationship of a husband and wife. It is easier to describe what love is not…. it is not self seeking, centered only on pleasure or reward. The only certainty that one can say about love is that without it man is destitute.

Man’s great consolation, his only hope is that God loves us. If God does not exist or has forsaken us, then in what can man hope? But God does exist! Since God loved us first; he created us, forgave us when we failed Him and suffered for us to open eternal salvation for us. In all things he showed us that love is action; it is so much more than feelings or emotion. Love demands action and God is always available to help us in love. However, there is a major caveat, love cannot be twisted to man’s own wants or desires. Love comes from God, its author, not from man. Jesus provided man with His own example of love….compassion for others, a willingness to forgive, and most important, the courage to endure disappointment or even suffering for the beloved. Thus man must acknowledge and follow Jesus’ example of love, which some seem to find too radical and challenging. The choice is clear; accept and follow God’s definition of love and achieve true happiness or accept a false description of love created by man and achieve only sorrow and disappointment.

Choose God or man.

No Chance

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The Hurricane violently crashed into the Gulf coast cities, shredding all of man’s designed structures and possessions. All was rubble and chaos; what life remained was battered and stunned into disbelief. The tsunamis in Asia, the tornados in the central U.S., the earthquakes in many parts of the world all leave the physical results of man’s intelligence and design in utter ruin. Little is left. The order in man’s physical life has been obliterated. The forces of nature eliminated the work of the intelligence and the design of man.

Nature by itself designs nothing; it exists for an intelligent being to do the designing. Yet some humans will strongly contend that the universe itself occurred by accident, by chance, without a designer, without an intellect. Contrary to some theories, science, rather than providing proof that the universe and nature are the result of chance, is leading man to realize that chance is not a viable explanation for the creation of the universe. Some recent studies theorize that, even before the beginning of the universe, information existed. Whatever theories may be contemplated in the future, it is becoming increasingly clear that the universe was not created by chance, by some unintelligible forces, controlled by nothing. Would anyone accept the notion that forces of nature, such as hurricanes or tsunamis, through their random tossing and churning of nature could ever produce a computer or an automobile…or any complex item. Of course not! Yet there are those who propose that the universe and nature, with all of their unique and intricate complexities and orderliness, are a product of chance; the product of the churning and tossing of various forces without any intelligence involved.

The chances of the earth being the right size, the proper distance away from the sun, containing water, and the innumerable other conditions for life are extremely minute. The mathematical odds that all of these and other essential conditions happened by chance are astronomical–beyond billions to one!The fact is that the universe is orderly and reliable, indicating an intelligence behind it. Albert Einstein, one of the most acclaimed scientists in history, noted,” “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.” Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, said, “Why nature is mathematical is a mystery…The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle.”Once one accepts that rules exist, then intelligence must precede the rules. The order in the universe contrasts very vividly with the chaos and destruction evident in the randomness of hurricanes and other natural disasters. If the universe was not designed with intelligence, then one would expect the chaos of unintelligible randomness, but the universe does follow rules and is orderly.

One wonders why many non-believers argue with such disdain against the logic of intelligent design for the universe. Robert Laidlaw’s answer to this question is very perceptive, “God exists whether or not men may choose to believe in Him. The reason why many people do not believe in God is not so much that it is intellectually impossible to believe in God, but because belief in God forces that thoughtful person to face the fact that he is accountable to such a God.” Man does not want to face the fact of his accountability to God.

Some suggested readings;

“Faith and Certitude”, by Thomas Dubay. Fr.Dubay writes a powerful and readable commentary on faith, included within the commentary is a discussion about whether the universe could be a product of chance.

“The Devil’s Delusion, Atheism and its Scientific Pretentions”, by David Berlinksi, who is an agnostic secular Jew. Mr. Berlinski received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University and was later a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia University. He has written several books on mathematics and has taught at universities in the U.S. and France. In “The Devil’s Delusion”, with humor and cogent arguments, Berlinksi notes there is nothing in science proper that undermines religion, that most of the new atheists badly misunderstand even the most rudimentary arguments of theology and are not logically consistent, and finally that much of science has become rather dogmatic, like a new religion.

“From Atheism to Catholicism”, by Kevin Vost, who is a clinical psychologist and a member of Mensa. Mr.Vost subtitled his book, “How scientists and philosophers led me to Truth.”