Hitting the Mark

Sin is a word and concept that is contemptible in our libertine age. The only "sin" is even implying that an action or feeling is not right for someone else to do or feel. According to former President Obama, a sin is to do something against one's principles; there is no external reference for those principles.

Well, the above approaches to sin would be correct if there were no God. As Sartre wrote, we create our own meaning without reference to any god. His entire philosophical matrix would fall apart if God existed-in-fact.

If God existed, He made you and me a certain way to live rightly. What sin really includes is missing the mark of living in the right way.

Think of a bow, arrow, and target. The goal of bow and arrow shooting at the range of life is to get a bullseye. We have to train, practice, and obtain the correct materials/equipment to get the maximum number of bullseyes. We'll more likely hit the mark.

Then we'll be truly happy.

Heaven is Awesome

Is heaven boring? I have a teenager that thought that it was. In heaven, you just sit around for eternity and get bored, bored, bored without end.

Well, I combined something I learned a long time ago from Real Catholic TV (before it changed to Church Militant) and his love of soccer.

When we die, think of it as a snapshot, a moment in time that lasts forever. At the same time, think of how you feel when you play a really important and excruciatingly tough game that you win.

The experience of heaven is like the feeling of winning that game forever. It never goes away like it does on earth with the Church Militant. As a member of the Church Triumphant, we are always in God's presence. We won the game of life through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, along with our participation with his work. The game was a killer, but the victory was a miracle beyond understanding. We are teammates of Jesus in His Church. He purchased the grace of forgiveness of our sins through the cross for the heaven win. Heaven is awesome.

The Wolverine Part II

Here is the last part, Wolverine Part I.



In the last post, I gave one reason why living forever in heaven could be a good thing.

In this post, I would like to give the other. The second reason is that the other possible outcome of death is that we could end up in the other place, hell.

So, whether we like it or not, when we die, we either have everlasting life or, essentially, everlasting death.

This is not meant to scare or tick-off people. If that was the case, I might as well say that we are given the gift of life. Life just is, we didn't create it. Well, life after death just is too. The difference is, we get a say about what happens after life in this fallen universe since we have free will.

That's why Jesus came to redeem all of humanity on the cross. That's why he rose from the dead. That's why He commissioned the Church to go and make disciples of all nations through baptism.

Thank you God, since we can't do it all on our own, that is, get to heaven. We just have to respond to His call to discipleship in His body, the Church.

The Wolverine Part I

Last week, I watched The Wolverine with Hugh Jackman. Logan, Wolverine's real name, constantly regenerates his body, so he essentially can live forever.



This movie was about the idea that living forever is a curse since those whom Wolverine loved would eventually die, while he would continue living. This seemed to be the main reason that perpetual living is a depressing thing.

This got me to thinking about the fact that the main purpose of Christianity is to enable people to get to heaven, to live forever.

In light of this movie, wouldn't living forever be a bad thing? Why would we want to even think about considering the life of the Church if the ultimate outcome will hopefully be heaven?

There are two main reasons that I can see. First, living forever in heaven is not like living forever in this world.

There are two examples that I've heard about that can shed some light on this. One is the lost boys from Uganda. 60 Minutes (CBS News) did a twelve year story on some boys who were displaced (to say the least) by their homes due to war who ended up in Uganda. There was a program during U.S. President W. Bush's time that allowed many of these refugees to come and be naturalized in the U.S.

This is the thing: even though they were taught by an American citizen about the U.S. in a classroom, when the lost boys came to the U.S., they didn't understand what they were seeing at first. Most couldn't determine what was fake, especially on TV.

Another example is the Aztecs in South America when they first encountered the European men. The ships that approached the shore were so novel to the natives, that they actually didn't see them. It took a long time for the new sights to sink in for them to recognize the ships.

Heaven for all people is like American TV and technology is for the lost boys and like the European ships for the Aztecs. No matter how much we might consider the life or reality of heaven, on this side of the veil, we can only speak of everlasting life as a mystery.

Thank God there is Jesus who was there to tell us about it.

The second reason will be in the next post.