Nathanael Szobody on If one justifies religious belief primarily by reason, then reason is his foundation for that belief. Reason is a product of the human mind. So if one founds his religious belief on reason, then his religion is primarily human and not of God
Nathanael Szobody on As mortals we fear death. Death is the end of what we define as life, the end of the known, and therefore terrifying. We try to reconcile ourselves to the idea that we all must die, but we rarely ever come to a sense of peace about it until, perhaps, our last moments.
Next to death, we fear suffering. All that we pursue in life
Nathanael Szobody on All humans are subjective beings. There does not exist within the scope of human experience anything purely objective, for all creation is fundamentally relational, and all humans are personally and emotionally relational.
Reason is not objective. It is the part of a person which can operate almost entirely apart from emotion, but it is not purely objective. Its nature is however a constant among mentally healthy humans and is, therefore, universal
Nathanael Szobody on The Parable of the Dishonest Manager, in Luke 16, is an unusual one, in that Jesus is not giving an example of how one should act, or on the nature of the kingdom of heaven, but he is giving and example of how the people of this world are shrewd with their money. His point is not to tell us to do as the manager did–it was a dishonest thing! He is telling us that we should be just as shrewd with our money in the practice of good. When his point is learned, it brings great freedom!
Nathanael Szobody on The ideas of mankind concerning God, the true worship of God, and God’s will, are altogether stark blindness and darkness. For the light of human wisdom, reason, and understanding, which alone is given to man, comprehends only what is good and profitable outwardly. And although we see that the heathen philosophers now and then discoursed touching God and his wisdom very pertinently, so that some have made prophets of Socrates, of Xenophon, of Plato, etc., yet, because they knew not that God sent his Son Christ to save sinners, such fair, glorious, and wise-seeming speeches and disputations are nothing but mere blindness and ignorance.
–Martin Luther
Nathanael Szobody on A lead actor in the film “Second Hand Lions” states in a portion of his “What Every Boy Needs to Know About Being A Man” speech: Sometimes the things which may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most: that everyone is basically good, that good always wins over evil, and that love, true love, never dies.
Religion is the set of guidelines for the practical application of one’s spirituality, or faith. Faith is what ascribes meaning to knowledge. Therefore religion is that act of knowing, understanding it within a context of the meaning of the existence of all things, and acting upon it. If these actions are profitable for the advancement of civilization and the evolution of our species, some might argue that it is good to hold to religious belief regardless of our ability to prove its objective truth.
It is true that to believe in such things causes people to be better citizens. But it is also true that the Apostle Paul states that if Christ did not rise from the dead, then we [Christians] are to be pitied above all else. Doesn’t belief assume that the one who believes it is convinced that it is absolutely true? Even those who state that you cannot ever know if there is a God, believe that this statement is true.
Humans are not objective; they are helplessly subjective beings, so to some extent it can be stated that faith is self-actualizing; that to believe something causes it to be true in the life of a believer pragmatically speaking. And here is the crux: If one is to justify belief pragmatically, then one is condemned to a pragmatic religion.
However, personal, subjective inquiry into the nature of God and the purpose of humanity demands to know who we are, not just how we interact. Isn’t there something terribly wrong with holding to a belief only because it causes you to be a better person? Doesn’t our quest for purpose and meaning in life depend on our identity? If this is the case, wouldn’t the idea that we are deceiving ourselves for the sake of a better life fly in the face of what we are seeking to do: validate ourselves?
The truth is that who we are is a fallen, sinful, human race. This accounts for our desire to be better, to act better, to be fulfilled, because obviously we are hugely lacking if we have all these desires! But in Christ, we are what he is. We can recognize our guilt, our failures, our relational problems, our dysfunctional families, our frustrations, anger, sadness, and grief.
All those things are realities, and the truth which transcends it all is no less real: we are the body of Christ. The point of this statement is not so much to make us better people, but to make us a people to begin with! We were not a people, community, or good, we only were trying to pretend and make ourselves feel like we had some meaning on our own. But Jesus, the real Jesus who lived on this earth and really died and really rose again made us a people for him. He has washed us with his own goodness, perfection. He gives it to us, and that is our true identity. That is the only thing worth believing, because it is true; all else is despair.
Nathanael Szobody on “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
These are the words of Jesus to his disciples in Luke 11 after he instructed them how to pray.
Again he uses the analogy of a father to his children, just as he does at the beginning of the prayer that he taught them. From a child’s perspective he does not know all that is good for him. He doesn’t know that going to the dentist is good, nor that homework, or hard work, or respect are good things. And yet without these things he would be left with an unhealthy body, mind, and unable to enjoy right relationships with the rest of society. These are good things, but as a child he only sees the here and now, and what makes him feel the way he wants to in this moment.
How difficult it is for a parent to get a child to understand the importance of life’s responsibilities and the necessity of unpleasant experiences. How much more difficult will it then be for us to understand the reason behind the struggles, pain, frustration, death, suffering and all other emotional and spiritual difficulties that God allows to enter our lives. Are we not his children who have “died to sin”? Does he not care for us?
We know from scripture that the ultimate reason that we experience suffering and death in this world is because of our own sin. Death is said in scripture to be the sting of sin. If we are in fact sinners (and we are!) then we are cut off from the life of God and thus already experiencing spiritual death. Is it not then gracious of God to allow us to feel the pain of this death so that we might flee it?
If he did not care, would he not simply let us remain in our complacent state of death until the ultimate end came without warning us? But rather he cares so deeply about his creation, that even after sin he desires to give us good gifts–but only through the Spirit that comes by faith in his son’s sacrifice on our behalf.
Sometimes the greatest gift could be in the form of suffering. For whenever we suffer we are jerked out of our blind selfish lives and forced to examine ourselves and atleast ask “why?”.
For this reason, we need to know how to approach God so that we know that we are atleast benefiting from the trial that we are going through so that it may indeed be a “good gift”. If we remain preoccupied with self pity we blind ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work.
For this reason the disciples ask Jesus: “Teach us to pray.” For the suffering is a good gift and this must be taken by faith. But to receive the good gift, we must learn to take on God’s perspective through the gift of his Holy Spirit. And this learning process is prayer.
Jesus is not telling his disciples to ask for anything that you find to be good and God will not refuse you. He is telling his disciples that whatever happens these are good things to ask for, for they are the gifts of the Holy Spirit which will cause all things to work out for good in your life if your eyes are on your relationship with him
Nathanael Szobody on By faith we ascribe meaning to knowledge. There is a meaning which is deeper than that of utilitarian purpose. We have what we call the ‘meaning’ of something, that is, what it is ‘meant’ for, but then there’s the meaning of existence, life, the world, which covers everything we know. There is a significance attached to all knowledge that varies from one culture to the next in the minds of individuals. This significance or meaning cannot be observed, measured, or proven through scientific method. It can only be experienced. The experience of holding to a particular understanding of the absolute meaning of life and of all knowledge is called faith.
Nathanael Szobody on To save his elect, God sent Jesus Christ to satisfy his justice, and to merit the redemptive grace of his mercy, the medicinal grace, the grace of Jesus Christ, which is nothing other than a richness and a delight in the law of God, poured out in the heart by the Holy Spirit, which, not only equaling, but even surpassing the desires of the flesh, fills the will with a greater delight in righteousness than in what the desire of the flesh offers in evil, and that in this manner the free will, charmed by the sweetness and pleasures that the Holy Spirit inspires within it more than the attractions of sin, unfailingly chooses by itself the law of God for no other reason than that it is there alone that it finds more satisfaction and there experiences its blessedness and joy.
In such a way those to whom it pleased God to extend this grace, are themselves moved unfailingly by their own free will to prefer God over created things. And this is why we say invariably that the free will is moved to do so on its own by means of this grace, for it does in fact move to do so, or that grace carries the free will to do so, for whenever grace is given the free will is unfailingly moved to do so.
— Blaise Pascal (my translation)
Seduced by grace? It’s like Piper on steroids!
Nathanael Szobody on The self may be the defined as its ability to reflect upon itself. To conceptualize death is to conceptualize the end of this reflection.
Immortality can be defined as the existence of the self apart from a reflection of the self upon itself with a recognition and experience of its insignificance before God; without a concept of its end.
The human self was created to abide in the life which caused it. It was not created to be autonomous, nor to need to reflect upon itself apart from God. For God created humans to reflect his image. His image is the capacity to give of the self without measure.
So humans were created to give of God’s life without measure or concern to their own well-being for they were abiding, or resting transparently in his providential life.
When humans sinned, they died. Prior to sin, they had the capacity to reflect upon themselves, but they did so only in acknowledgement of the God that filled their selves, and did not experience nor recognize the insignificance of the self before God. They could not conceptualize the end of the reflection of the self, for they conceptualized nothing apart from the sacrificial life-giving life of God in themselves.
Spiritual death occurred when they could no longer reflect upon the self as that which is only what God fills it to be. The reflection of the self as it was in spiritual perfection ceased. There only remains the reflection of the physical self as that which is filled by the now dead human spirit, i.e., it experiences its insignificance.
The physical self now conceptualizes the end of the physical self, and is able to do so, because it has experienced and recognized its insignificance before God. Thus, it conceptualizes the end of the reflection of the physical self upon itself.
However, because of an infusion of the life of God by his characteristic means of self sacrifice, there is once again the concept of the self as that which is filled with what God is. Though this is not complete since the concept of the end of the reflection of the physical self upon itself still remains, there is now the concept of a time when this will not be the case. This is the concept of immortality.
One could not conceptualize immortality unless it is possible in the present. For to have the ability to conceptualize the self without regards to itself apart from God, requires the gift of some measure of this life from God. Otherwise the self sees nothing but the self and is, therefore, dead. This means that either one has immortality in the present or he cannot even conceptualize or desire it as it truly is. He can only experience his nothingness.