OLSS Confirmation 2017January 15

God

Who is God?

The Vatican Council said of God:

"The holy, Catholic, apostolic Roman Church believes and professes that there is one true, living God, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth. He is almighty, eternal, beyond measure, incomprehensible, and infinite in intellect, will and in every perfection. Since He is one unique spiritual substance, entirely simple and unchangeable, He must be declared really and essentially distinct from the world, perfectly happy in Himself and by his very nature, and inexpressibly exalted over all things that exist or can be conceived other than Himself" (Denzinger 3001).

Our Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth

By calling God “Father,” the language of faith indicates two main things ● 1. God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority ● 2. God is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children.

“He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.” (CCC 239)

Qualities of God

● Eternal

● Love

● Self Existence

● Holiness

● Immutable

● Ever Present

● All Knowing

● Good

● Just

● Grace

● Righteous

● Mystery

● Indescribable

● Incomprehensible

“If you understood Him, He would not be God” (St Augustine; Catechism 230). Our minds cannot truly comprehend God’s infinite and eternal characteristics, but there are some characteristics of God that we can describe in human terms.

St. Thomas Aquinas Attributes of God

● The Simplicity of God:The Simplicity of God means that God has no parts, that He is not composed in any way. He is not, as we are, the composition of body and soul, nor is He the composition of essence and existence.

● The Perfection of God: The perfection of God means that God lacks nothing. He is the the fullness of being

● The Goodness of God: God, who is the greatest conceivable being, is also goodness itself, since being and goodness are really convertible. A being, in so far as it is like God, is good, and a being, in so far as it is unlike God, is not.

● The Infinity of God: The infinity of God refers to the fact that God is in no way limited. He is Subsistent being itself.

● The Ubiquity of God: The ubiquity of God means that God is everywhere.

● The Immutability of God: The sixth attribute put forward by Aquinas is His immutability, that is, his unchangeableness. If a thing changes it changes for better or for worse. If God was mutable, therefore, his changing would make him better or worse.

● The Eternity of God: The philosopher Boethius, in The Consolation of Philosophy defines eternity thusly: “Eternity is the everlasting, totally simultaneous and perfect possession of life.” And this is the definition St. Thomas adopts when speaking of God’s eternity. God is eternal because he immutable.

● The Unity of God: Unity, like goodness, and beauty, is a transcendental of being. It is because God is being that he is simple that he is perfect unity. St. Thomas writes, “that which is simple, is undivided both with respect to act and potency.” And since it is not possible to divide God in any way (matter/form; essence/existence, etc.), then it follows that God is perfect in unity.

Our Relationship To God

The reason that God desires that we know Him is because He wants us to love Him. This is the first commandment. The more we come to know God, the more we come to know love, because God is Love. The more realization and awareness we have of God’s love for us the more we will love Him. (1 John 4:19) We love because he first loved us.

Principle One: God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life: God created you. Not only that, he loves you so much that he wants you to know him now and spend eternity with him. Jesus said, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

Principle Two: All of us sin and our sin has separated us from God: We sense that separation, that distance from God because of our sin. The Bible tells us that "All of us like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way." Isaiah 53:6

Principle Three: Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sin for us. He now offers us complete forgiveness and a close relationship with him: Jesus Christ took all of our sins--knowing everything we have ever done or will do--suffered and paid for them with his life on the cross. Jesus died for us, in our place. He did this out of his tremendous love for us.

Principle Four: We must individually accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord: The Bible says, "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." We accept Jesus by faith. The Bible says, "God saved you by his special favour when you believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it." Revelation 3:20

What God Wants For Us● Love: "Jesus said to him, 'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest

and the first commandment. The second resembles it: You must love your neighbor as yourself.'" - Matthew 22:37-39

Love is the most important of the Ten Commandments, and the Commandments are the most important guidelines to follow through life. Loving one another can mean several things, depending on what your relationships consist of, but one thing is certain: Love is two-parts forgiveness and one-part acceptance. God wants us to love one another just as much as we love ourselves. We are well aware that we are not perfect - so forgiving those around us and embracing their good points is what God is calling us to do. We must learn to love ourselves, then move to loving those around us to live a life surrounded in the love God wants for us.

● Joy: "The hope of the upright is joy, the expectations of the wicked come to nothing." - Proverbs 10:28

God is saying those who life for Him experience joy, while the wicked never get to experience the joy God has in store for His children. When was the last time you felt genuine joy, not just a simple happiness? God wants us to experience only the best - and to do so, we must live for Him and remember to stay close to Him.

● Peace: "My brothers, consider it a great joy when trials of many kinds come upon you, for you well know that the testing of your faith products perseverance, and perseverance must complete its work so that you will become fully developed, complete, not deficient in any way." - James 1:2-4. Peace is something few of us get.

There is always a screaming child, too many errands, traffic jams, stressful jobs and unexpected situations that steal our peace.

Just remember, God wants us to give him our frustration and anger. The next time you feel something stealing your peace, pray that God save you from the "other" and to restore your peace. Pray specifically for whatever it is you need, whether that be patience, understanding, more peace or for God to take your anger.

Discussion

● Pair up● Brainstorm how you can get to know God more● Discuss how you can make more time for God in

your own life

God and Evil

● If God Exists why is there so much evil and suffering?

Examples:

– Holocausts: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot,

North Korea, ISIS

– Ethnic cleansing, genocide

– Terrorism

– Poverty, famine, drought

– Personal Tragedy

God and Evil (cont.)

● Free Will – God did not create puppets, nor do we want to live as puppets.

● God's love for us and our love for him is meaningless unless it is given freely.

● Evil, pain, suffering and sorrow are real and devastating but they are also temporary.

● God's plans and thoughts are impossible to fully understand. He is All Knowing and therefore understands the evils and pain that beset us. We do know that God is all wise and all knowing and that He has reasons for allowing things to happen that are beyond our comprehension. - The horrors of Hitler brought about the liberation of Europe, the eventual liberation of Eastern Bloc countries and the downfall of the Soviet Union.

Atheism and God

a·the·ism:ˈāTHēˌizəm

Noun, disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

Main Points of Atheism:

– There can never be proof of the existence of God

– Trying to prove God's existence employs poor logic

– The world is observable and can be explained through science

– Believe free from religious oppression and bigotry

– Free-thinkers - free from religion and its ideas

– Implicit atheism: The state of not believing in any gods.

– Explicit atheism: is a conscious rejection, either of the belief in gods or of their existence.

Richard Dawkins

● Bestselling atheist popularizer of Darwinian evolutionary theory and its counter-religious implications. His scientific field is ethology, the study of animal behavior.

● Wrote The God Delusion, 1.5M copies sold in English, translated into 31 languages

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” ― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)English-American intellectual whose stock in trade was writing provocative essays that challenged the the philosophical underpinnings of the state and the (Christian) church.

Wrote for The Nation, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and Slate

Noted anti-theist

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, where he criticized virtually every religion on earth and began occupying a prominent place in the atheist movement

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”

“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”

“[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.”

“Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”

Talking To An Atheist

Above all be respectful

● Know the basic responses to the most common attacks

– God is the Prime Mover

– The order of the Universe

– God wants a relationship with us

● Avoid responding with arrogance, disdain, or the verbal equivalent of eye rolling

● Don’t interact with trolls

● Don’t always take on the burden of proof

– If an atheist is trying to convince you that you are wrong, the burden of proof is theirs. Atheists often act like the opposite is true because this is a lazy man’s way of intimidating people in order to end the argument before it begins.

● In the end it will be an article of Faith. All the arguments are out there, you either believe or you don't.