Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 11:56pm

Find God In 60 Days!

 

I agree with you Klavan on the Culture, prayer over time tends to build belief.  I have had several people tell me that the force of habit of prayer has gotten them through rough spots in their religious life.  One fellow I know promised his mom that every night he would say a Hail Mary before he went to sleep.  He spent several years as a stone cold atheist, but every night he would heed his promise to his mom and say the Hail Mary, even though he thought it ridiculous.  Faith returned ultimately,  and he thinks he might have been lost forever without that nightly prayer for the intercession of the Blessed Mother. 

CS Lewis understood this well, judging from this passage of The Screwtape Letters:

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs– to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.


 Catholics of course have the added advantage of Soul Wow!
 

  

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Joe Green
Joe Green
Friday, February 25, AD 2011 9:49am

Don, did you get this off the Onion Network? I remember an old TV commercial featuring a guy by the name of Fast Eddie who used to shill electronics and power tools in NYC. Is this really the way to peddle Christianity? If so, no sale here. I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind when he told his disciplines to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Foxfier
Friday, February 25, AD 2011 11:33am

Jesus had a heck of a sense of humor– as a great priest I once heard pointed out, he had TONS of stuff that wouldn’t be out of line in a stand-up comedy club, or CGI assisted slap-stick.

Swallowing a camel while complaining about a little gnat? Walking around with a bloody LOG in your eye, talking about a little splinter in someone else’s?

Klavan’s made me laugh. ^.^

trackback
Friday, February 25, AD 2011 2:36pm

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G-Veg
G-Veg
Saturday, February 26, AD 2011 7:42am

The video affirms two ideas that don’t get much play, even from the pulpit: that standing fast through the down periods is essential to long term well-being and, relatedly, faith is part of the social fabric.

Marriage has been, for me, a true blessing. It is wonderful… Except for those times when it isn’t, when things are out of sinc and connecting requires work… The thing is that working through those trials requires remaining engaged. The reward has been to have a marriage that grows and changes. Is it stronger? Better? More beautiful? For the perseverance? I don’t know. I harbor an affection for the time when we lived in an apartment, went away on unplanned vacations, and ate out with friends two or three nights a week. (Plus, I was a whole lot thinner and had hair.).

The thing is, the marriage that we had couldn’t have handled a sick child, no money to fix a washing machine, or ill health. It was the subtle change over time that turned me into a different person, one able to handle what was thrown at us. That subtle change was the result of perseverance through times where everything wasn’t “great”.

I don’t think we hear enough about perseverance in prayer or relationships these days. Thus, I applaud the messages of the video.

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