DNOTS, part 8 (last one)

8. God Works Passively

. Let it suffice to say, then, that God perceives the imperfections within us, and because of his love for us, urges us to grow up. His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness.

. In doing so he is able to take away all these vices and create virtues within us. Through the dark night pride becomes humility, greed becomes simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength. No soul will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul means of the dark night.

DNOTS, part 7

7. Weary with Spiritual Exercises

. The last two sins are the vices of spiritual envy and spiritual sloth. People who consider themselves as spiritual are quite often not pleased to hear about the spiritual growth of others. Their chief concern is to be praised themselves. They are not pleased that such attention is being given to someone else and would prefer to be thought of as the most spiritual of all. This is contrary to love, which, as Paul says, rejoices in goodness.

. Spiritual sloth happens when the pleasure is removed from the spiritual life. Such souls become weary with spiritual exercises because they do not yield any consolation, and thus, they abandon them. They become angry because they are called to do that which does not fit their needs. They begin to lose interest in God for they measure God by themselves and not themselves by God. Such souls are too weak to bear the crosses that are given to us to help us grow, crosses we face in the dark nights of the soul.

DNOTS, part 6

6. Beyond the Limits of Moderation

. The fifth sin is spiritual gluttony. Many souls become addicted to the spiritual sweetness of the devotional life and strive to obtain more and more of it. They pass beyond the limits of moderation and nearly kill themselves with spiritual exercises.

. They will often try to subdue their flesh wiht great acts of submission, lengthy fasts, and painful penances. But note: these are one-sided penances; they do not come from God. Such persons are working their own will, and thus, grow in vice rather than in virtue.

. They are not walking in true obedience, but rather, are doing what they want in the time and measure that they have chosen. They do these things not for God but for themselves, and for this reason they will soon grow weary in them. For this reason, it is probably better for these persons to give up their devotions entirely.

. The problem is this: when they have received no pleasure for their devotions, they think they have not accomplished anything. This is a grave error, and it judges God unfairly. For the truth is that the feelings we receive from our devotional life are the least of its benefits. The invisible and unfelt grace of God is much greater, and it is beyond our comprehension.

. It may be said that through their efforts to obtain consolation such souls actually lose their spirituality. For true spirituality consists in perseverance, patience, and humility. The sin of spiritual gluttony will prompt them to read more books and say more prayers, but God, in his wisdom, will deny them any consolation because he knows that to feed this desire will create an inordinate appetite and breed innumerable evils. The Lord heals such souls through the aridity of the dark night.

DNOTS, part 5

5. Saints in a Day

. When the soul begins to enjoy the benefits of the spiritual life and then has them taken away, it becomes angry and embittered. This is the sin of spiritual wrath, the fourth capital sin, and it, too, must be purged in the dark night.
. When their delight comes to an end, these persons are very anxious and frustrated just as an infant is angry when it is taken away from its mother's breast. There is no sin in this natural disappointment, but if it is left to itself, it may become a dangerous vice.
. There are some who become angry with themselves at this point, thinking that their loss of joy is a result of something they have done or have neglected to do. They will fuss and fret and do all they can to recover this consolation. They will strive to become saints in a day. They will make all kinds of resolutions to be more spiritual, but the greater the resolution, the greater the fall.
. Their problem is that they lack the patience that waits for whatever God would give them and when God chooses to give them. They must learn spiritual meekness which will come about in the dark night.

DNOTS, part 4

4. Three Causes

. The third sin is spiritual luxury. It is from this sin that all of the others proceed, and thus, it is the most important. Here is what happens; a soul which is deep in prayer may experience profound temptations and find itself powerless to prevent them. Sometimes this even happens during holy communion, or whne saying confession. This happens from one of three causes.
. The first cause is the physical pleasure the body takes in spiritual things. The lower part of our nature, the flesh, is sometimes stirred up during times of devotion. But it cannot possess and lay hold upon the experience, and so, begins to stir up what it can possess, namely, the impure and the sensual.
. The second cause is the devil. In order to disturb and disquiet the soul, the devil will try to stir up impurity within the soul, hoping that it will give heed to these temptations and become lax in prayer, and if they persist, it may even give up on prayer altogether.
. The third cause is an inordinate fear of impure thoughts. Some souls are so tender and frail that they cannot stand such thoughts and live in great fear of them. This fear in itself can cause their downfall. They become agitated at the least disturbance and thus are too easily distracted.
. When the soul enters into the dark night, all these things are put under control. The flesh will be quieted, the devil will be silent, and the fear will subside, all because of the fact that God takes away all of the sensory pleasure, and the soul is purified in the absence of it.

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.

Losing their faith in college

I came across an article that discusses how many students, when they go on to college, end up giving up their faith in college. I'm thinking this is sooooo important for anyone who is in our youth group (or any youth group for that matter) to read.

If you have the email of any of the seniors that are going off to college, let them know about this. They need to know this. And I'd like them to know that when they encounter the storm, they can always contact us, any of the people at Cornerstone, and we'll help them! If we can't answer your questions, let me know and I promise I'll do my best to find someone who can! I do have a list of some very smart Christian professors that can help be a refuge for students in a storm. The difficulty is that at some universities, Christian professors are harder to find simply because, truth be told, some university departments are more "hostile" to Christianity than others... and some universities as a whole are less Christian-friendly than others. So at a university it's possible that only 5-10% of the professors to be strong Christians (as opposed to Christian by name only), but at other universities you might find 20% to be strong Christians.

After reading this graph, hopefully you'll see why I'm so passionate about helping others strengthening their minds. If it's hard to read the graph, you can click on the title of this blog entry or click here and it'll take you to the article where I got this graph.

Also do keep in mind that these statistics may not be wholly accurate... there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes when statistics are calculated. There's a popular phrase among staticians: "There are three types of lies: lies, d*** lies, and statistics." (I omitted the d-word. I don't consider it a cuss word, but others might.)

So here's the question: why do you think so many students lose their faith in college?... or even in high school?

if God loves us, why does He allow us to hurt?

This ties into the "problem of evil" question in the last post. If God loves us, why does He allow us to go through pain, suffering, emotional hurt, why does He allow bad people to stay in power. If God loves us, why...? This question has mostly to do with the character of God: if God loves... We have to figure out first what really is love? We've always heard the distinction between love and lust, but here's an easy way to think of it...

Love searches and strives for the good of it's object....even for the best of its object if possible.
Lust strives only for the self... to satisfy the self. For example: lust of power, lust of another, lust for money... me me me.

When we sin or a person hurts another it absolutely hurts God, but still He endures it. (We rarely think about how sin affects God because we don't see it, we don't hear it. He loves us sooo much that whatever pain we inflict on others or whatever pain others inflict on us, He feels it just as intensely as we do. But we have to remember, God loves them as much as He loves us.) He wants us to come under His wings, but because He loves us, He won't force us to. And with the people who are inflicting pain, God has chosen to not cross over their free will, but instead aims to use it to bring out an even greater good from it than what we can see today.

Let's take an example... the one Pastor Chad talked about a few weeks ago. A boy was raped by a man many years ago. Later the boy grew up, dealt with the pain, and rising above of the hurt he turned to God. Later a lonely old man in a retirement center confessed to the horrible crime and the younger man who was a boy found out about the confession somehow. He went to the retirement center, met the old man who begged for forgiveness, forgave the old man, and told the old man about Christ.

For perhaps 30 or 40 years, the man who was the boy may have continuially asked, "God, why did you allow that to happen?" However, when the old man gave up his life for Christ, I bet it all made sense then. That may have been one of the only ways to get the man to turn his life around and live for Christ. What I'm trying to say is that sometimes life stinks. Why? Because sin has entered the world. We may not know all the reasons for why the world is this way... but we do know that God is infinitely intelligent and truly loves us, and we have to sometimes simply trust that His ways are higher than our ways.

People will sometimes say, "If I were God, I would do _______." ... or set up the world this way or that.... or wouldn't do _______. However, we're not as intelligent as God. He's already thought of every possible game-plan for His ultimate goal (which I think the goal is for us to freely choose and love Him and have a strong, well-developed character... not forced, not robots) and out of every possible world this is the best one for accomplishing those goals.

As many people have said, God has reasons, but we may not know all of them. This is where trust comes into play, and we have to look for the good in all things instead of being swallowed up in the bad.

Well... this is a tough topic, but what do you think? Anything you'd like to add or ask about? (If you want, you can even play devil's advocate ;) )

Afraid of discussing Christianity

So far, we've discussed that truth and the existence of things does not depend on our perception. Just briefly, I want to discuss a few reasons why discussing religious issues can be difficult. One thing people will say is, "How do you KNOW?" ... as if I should have all the answers in my back pocket. (yeeeeaaah, right) So we will get into that question next, but to start this topic off, I'd like your input.

I think there are a bunch of reasons why we are afraid to discuss various personal issues with people (such as politics and religion). But before I give my thoughts as to why people might be afraid of talking with others about religion, I'd like to hear what ideas you have.

Why do you think people get butterflies in their stomach when trying to share the gospel with others? And if possible, be specific. What do other people do that makes us nervous?