DNOTS, part 3

3. Attached to the Feelings

. Many of these beginners will also begin to have spiritual greed, the second capital sin. They will become discontented with what God gives them because they do not experience the consolation they think they deserve. They begin reading many books and performing many acts of piety (that means "doing acts with reverence & dutiful respect for God", such as praying and fasting) in attempt to gain more and more spiritual consolation (meaning "comfort", like how a child feels when getting a hug from its mom) .
. Their hearts grow attached to the feelings they get from their devotional life. They focus on the affect, and not on the substance of devotion. Quite often these souls will attach themselves to particular religious objects or holy places and begin to value visible things too highly.
. But those who are on the right path will set their eyes on God and not on these outward things nor on their inner experiences. They will enter the dark night of the soul and find all these things removed. They will have all the pleasure taken away so that the soul may be purified. For a soul will never grow until it is able to let go of the tight grasp it has on God.

DNOTS, part 2

FYI, DNOTS stands for "Dark Night of the Soul." So here's the next part. Sorry I've been bad about getting back here. I've been having a dialog with some atheists and I think that conversation is coming to a close, so I'm back. It was an interesting discussion. I have some more arguments for the existence of God. I'll explain after discussing the DNOTS.

2. Secret Pride
. Beginners in the spiritual life are apt to become very diligent in their exercises. The great danger fro them will be to become satisfied with their religious works and with themselves. It is easy for them to develop a kind of secret pride, which is the first of the seven capital sins.
. Such persons become too spiritual. They like to speak of "spiritual things" all the time. They become content with their growth. They would prefer to teach rather than to be taught. They condemn others who are not as spiritual as they are. They are like the Pharisee who boasted in himself and despised the publican who was not as spiritual as he.
. The devil will often inflame their fervor so that their pride will grow even greater. The devil knows that all of their works and virtues will become valueless and, if unckecked, will become vices. For they begin to do these spiritual exercises to be esteemed by others. They want others to realize how spiritual they are. They will also begin to fear confession to another for it would ruin their image. So they soften their sins when they make confession in order to make them appear less imperfect.
. They will beg God to take away their imperfections, but they do this only because they want to find inner peace and not for God's sake. They do not realize that if God were to take away their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptuous still.
. But those who are at this time moving in God's way will counter this pride with humility. They will learn to think very little of themselves and their religious works. Instead, they will focus on how great and how deserving God is and how little it is that the can do for him. The Spirit of God dwells in such persons, urging them to keep their treasures secretly within themselves.

Dark Night of the Soul, part 1

I realize I've been going through something called "Dark Night of the Soul," originally written by St. John of the Cross who was a monk who lived from 1542-1591. Though this isn't something that has do do with apologetics, you may be interested in this anyway. Good discussion material! I'm going to copy this down from a book I have (though you can find another translation on the internet too). It just gives short excerpts from the whole work.

Introduction (just a part of it)
It was in confinement that his most famous work, The Dark Night of the Soul, was written. It describes the work of God upon the soul--not through joy and light, but through sorrow and darkness. The concept of the "dark night" has become an integral part of understanding the spiritual journey. Though he died four centuries ago, John of the Cross continues to exercise a significant influence on Christian spirituality.

Section 1: To Purify the Soul
. At a certain point in the spiritual journey God will draw a person from the beginning stage to a more advanced stage. At this stage the person will begin to engage in religious exercises and grow deeper in the spiritual life.
. Such souls will likely experience what is called "the dark night of the soul." The "dark night" is when those persons lose all the pleasure that they once experienced in their devotional life. This happens because God wants to purify them and move them on to greater heights.
. After a soul has been converted by God, that soul is nurtured and caressed by the Spirit. Like a loving mother, God cares for and comforts the infant soul by feeding it spiritual milk. Such souls will find great delight in this stage. They will begin praying wiht great urgency and perseverance; they will engage in all kinds of religious activities because of the joy they experience in the activities.
. But there will come a time when God will bid them to grow deeper. He will remove the previous comforts and consolation from the soul in order to teach it virtue and to prevent it from developing vice. The following sections deal with the seven capital sins. In each of the sins, it becomes clear how the soul has begun to misuse its spiritual comforts and why God must take it away in order to purify the soul from these imperfections.

What is "faith" and "belief"?

Hey, if anyone is still reading this, there's one thing I'd like to discuss a bit, since I have a little bit of time (woo hoo!).

Jessica had brought up a question about what faith is. That's a good topic to bring up because there are a lot of misunderstandings. Often, many people mentally define the words "belief" and "faith" as meaning "things that have no evidence" or "non-science things". However, I think they are wrong. Faith and belief are sooo much more than being limited to the invisible... it even includes the visible. Keep reading...

Is faith simply believing that something exists that we don't see? Not quite, because I have faith that I'm typing on a computer right now; I have faith that my eyes aren't tricking me; I have faith that I'm surrounded by walls and windows right now (oh, and some doors too!); scientists have faith that they are seeing chemical reactions when they mix two substances; people have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow.

When the word "belief" comes up, many people quickly associate it with religion. One of the professors here at UNLV is an atheist, and in conversation (I think we were talking about what knowledge is) and although for most things we can't say we know with ABSOLUTE certainty, we can have a "justified true belief". Automatically he brought up religion and how people will invent a god and then get others to believe in it. That wasn't what I was talking about at all.

The important word is "justified".... do I have good reasons for believing something? Do I have good reasons to believe that I existed more than 5 minutes ago? Of course I can be skeptical and say that I don't know with ABSOLUTE certainty that I existed 6 minutes ago, but I have good reason to believe that I really did exist more than 5 minutes ago. Why?

When I am honest with myself, I simply have more reasons to believe that I did. What are my reasons? I have memories of yesterday (youth group, playing dominoes, dancing with HeatherL, etc.) and I can go and find some of the people from yesterday and ask them if my memories are similar to theirs. I can check my clothes that I remember wearing and smell them to see if they no longer have that "fresh and clean" smell. (Yes, I know... ew, yuck... but if you're searching for reasons, here they are)

With all these reasons and more, I think I have enough justification for my belief. Christianity has such a history of giving reasons for believing that God exists, that Jesus existed, that Jesus was God, that he died and rose again, etc. No other religion that I know of has such a history like that. The four gospels and Acts (if read as historical documents) as well as non-Christian writings from that time period give good reasons give a lot of good evidence. There's also a lot of archaeological evidence that show that the places in the Bible weren't simply invented by the writers.

Faith means having good reasons for believing that something (whatever that something is) is, in fact, true. We also aim to match our beliefs as closely to reality as possible. We admit that we could be wrong, and that's when we say, "show me better evidence and I'll reconsider." But the evidence has to be good.... a balance of positive and negative arguments & evidence.

So... everyone has faith: both theists AND atheists.