predication.net

 Did God Create Evil?
Simple logic says that if everything in the world has its originator and evil exists objectively; God must have created evil. But how could an infinitely good God create evil? This is a question that has employed and still employs the minds of many laypeople and educated thinkers. In history, a whole theological discipline has been formulated, the so-called theodicy, which deals with justifying God for creating (or perpetrating) evil. A remarkable statement on this subject can also be found in the Old Testament (Isaiah. 45: 7): “I create light and create darkness, I create peace, and I create evil. I, the LORD, do all these things. “

In the light of previous knowledge, this whole problem is moving to a different level. When we stated that Creator’s intention to have a free-thinking being in the universe forced both the existence of deterministic and chaotic dynamics, then the problem of “becoming” good or evil shifts to the realm of various small stimuli (fluctuations) that are under certain favorable (or sometimes more unfavorable) circumstances able to program the development of systems in a specific direction, in the example of the influx of water, we can illustrate this very clearly: if the “butterfly” were above the ocean (or other large body of water) waving so that the relevant climate front pointed to the parched landscape, this dynamic would become “good.” However, if this (symbolic) waving forced rain clouds’ movement to sufficiently water-saturated localities, a flood would occur, and one would evaluate this dynamic as evil. Figuratively speaking, the “butterfly over the ocean” decides whether the lawful process develops into good or evil in this particular example.

In this way, it works in a completely general and universal way, both in the material and spiritual realm. Let us recall again that certain diseases (such as leukemia and AIDS) also occur in a mode of deterministic chaos. In practice, this means that slight fluctuations, of which there are always innumerable, can direct these diseases to a wide range of possibilities. Some of them can also represent the extinction of viruses, i.e., healing. While in some patients, these stimuli mean the development of the disease and eventually death, other fluctuations result in healing (without treatment), which the affected person qualifies as good. These cases are indeed observed in clinical practice.

Thus we conclude that God did not directly create either good or evil (at least not in some of their specific forms), but the “technology” used by him in the imminent creation of the world to have a thinker in it leads a similar being through small impulses to that the relevant phenomenon from the point of view of this being can develop as a good, resp. Like evil. In the area of ​​moral qualities, the situation is complicated by the fact that the free will of a rational being also enters the “game.” Genesis must, therefore, be sought in evolutionary “technology.” Teilhard de Chardin makes it clear when he writes: “If evolution is the only way God has created the world, then evil is a necessary side effect.”

Constructions spontaneously arise in every person’s brain, which can potentially transform into moral good or moral evil; for example, when meeting another person, the idea of ​​helping or killing him is spontaneously generated. However, God endowed man with the ability to decide for a variant freely. At the same time, at this stage, he provides instructions for action through a whole range of different factors: upbringing, education, environment, acquired and revealed information, etc. All this together will decide whether a person will act morally or amorally, t. j. whether it will present good or evil. Thus, God did not create the “good Abel” and the “evil Cain,” but both of these cases were generated within the framework of a mechanism that God had clearly set out for this world.

For the above explanation, we find a beautiful justification and confirmation in St. Fonts. God did not directly create wheat or cocoon. Both originated as a product of the evolution of inorganic and organic nature, the first representing good for man, the second evil. One may ask why God did not ensure that the fluctuations that lead to evil do not occur. Within the universal dynamics that are characteristic of our world, this would mean a direct divine intervention in cosmic events, miracles. Why doesn’t God do that? We also find a comprehensive answer to this in Scripture. In a certain, somewhat transformed form, it says (Mt 13:29): “Let the wheat and the cocoon grow, so that when you destroy the cocoon, you may not trample the wheat by accident.” this would also make it impossible for good to arise, and he probably does not want that. So what about the problem of good and evil in the world? Here, too, there is a clear instruction: “At the time of harvest, the cocoon is separated from the wheat and burned.” Thus, one should accept good and evil mechanisms, but one should reject evil and do good once that has arisen. He received from God the gift of free will and enough necessities, information, and grace; it is up to him to decide.

We have tried to show that the problem of good and evil – at least in its partial part – cannot be solved in the “static” plane (i.e., in the “a priori” plane of the existing categories), but in the dynamic plane, i.e., j. at the level of “becoming.” This approach provides us with some indications for a satisfactory solution to good and evil genesis. They should not be considered phenomena created “ad hoc” (we do not discuss here, of course, good and bad as absolute categories), but as products of two basic mechanisms of emergence of new qualities: deterministic and chaotic. The very existence of man as a free-thinking force both “technologies,” but how the divine creative activity has enabled and continues to enable can spontaneously generate both good and evil. Preventing the emergence of evil would at the same time prevent the emergence of good, therefore – as St. says. Font – wheat and cocoon must grow side by side. And only in due time to burn the cocoon.

Advent – time to contact Jesus
We have somehow become accustomed to the fact that Jesus always infuriates us with something just when it is we are least waiting. It is no different today. Perhaps no man on this earth would, for all his worries, he didn’t notice what time it was at the door.  This joyful anticipation is heard in Jesus: “I’m telling you, Elijah has already come, but they didn’t recognize him and did what they wanted with him.

The Son of man will also suffer from them ”(Mt 17:12).
The scribes and them all, or rather almost all of Israel, did not know the One who came. Because they were waiting for the prophet who was to ask the Lord to correct James’s generation, he has reconciled the heart of the father with the son. Rather, they said he was confused and crazy and did so with him what they wanted. Just because they did not turn to His call, they do not recognize in Jesus a judge offering them forgiveness. They indifferently go through the revealed truth; even this one, they reject the truth. And what about us? Aren’t we kind of indifferent to John’s call these days?

Certainly not as visible as before the coming of Christ. Today, no one stands on the corners of our streets and does not tell us that the time has come to balance the way for the Lord. True, and we do not count the Jehovah’s Brothers. Today, it’s a bit up to us to get ready and did what was necessary. But today, we know more than people knew two thousand years ago. We know what awaits us if we are not blind and have witnesses to it. We don’t slap a little preparation for this day. Surely we can argue that it is still impossible to expect and watch that you need it to relax and save strength.

As St. Paul says. In his beautiful book “Filotea,” Franz of  Sales says that according to Kassian, the hunter blamed St. To John the Evangelist, his amusement was tamed to which the saint asked him, “Why don’t you, the hunter, still have a bow tense”? He replied, “He lost on its flexibility ’. At that time, the saint rebuked him: if I hadn’t rested over time and covered with innocent fun. ” That is why St. Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord continually” (Phil. 4: 4)! But still, we know how important it is to be prepared exactly like a student who goes to school, like a doctor who watches over the lives of his patients even in a service that is often exhausting and demanding.

Beloved, let us not miss the time we have left until the Lord comes and knocks it out late. Let’s not forget that this Christmas may be our last and by this fact you are none of us can be sure. Sir, please give us not to miss a minute of the time you give us!

Feelings and perceptions do not disappear from the plan’s mental world; they remain as a physiological basis for both imagery and memory. At any time, we can imagine an absent event—Visual, auditory, taste, tactile, and olfactory. Imagery is the ability to reproduce and connect images and create the new creations presented; it is an associative and constructive ability. In the mental activity, perceptions refer to the present reality of the idea of ​​absent things. Imaginations are of two kinds. Some teach us about immediate reality; others are real ideas, i.e., images. Healthy splints have the ability to hold images. This ability is called memory. In the case of a healthy person, the idea shows things much weaker than the sensation. Imaginations have a driving force. If we imagine an object of our pleasure, such as a good beer, we immediately feel a strong salivary excretion. All our ideas have a response. Imaginations have a dynamic power in human mental life. Every idea, if we want, contributes to its realization. Imaginations can arise from the direct intervention of intellect and will. The activity of imagery is of great importance in mental development. Its function supports mental growth and contributes to the formation of the soul. The more mental knowledge a person acquires, the less he is subject to the imagination. In artistic creativity, imagination is a productive and constructive ability. It combines images and ideas of things and actions and creates new combinations and connections. The continuity of images is best done in dreams. However, it must be controlled by intellectual reflection.

Physics does not know the concept of good or the concept of evil. All processes in the real world occur according to the strict and precise laws that apply to the material world, regardless of how they appear to the thinking subject. These concepts belong to the spiritual realm, which differs from the material in principle, so at first glance – it seems that physics cannot say anything trivial about the problem of good and evil. It should be noted. However, that good and evil are not – at least for the most part – “a priori” given as finished and once and for all given phenomena, but that they are categories that are generated only as a consequence of certain processes, while the same process may, depending on the circumstances, appear once as good, other times as evil. A large amount of rain is perceived as evil (flood) in a certain locality, while the same phenomenon if it took place in a parched country, would appear as a blessing.

Thus, things and phenomena are profiled as good or bad (judged from a human point of view) only in the process of “becoming” in certain specific circumstances. Hence, they represent categories related to the dynamics of processes taking place in certain specific “borderline” and “initial” “Conditions. The problem formulated in this way characterizes one of the basic tasks of physics: based on known laws, to find, under precisely formulated boundary and initial conditions, the states through which the system will go in its evolution. It seems, therefore, that the results that physics has developed in this endeavor could, at least to some extent, be instructive for considerations relating to the general controversy over the categories of good and evil. We will try to show that physics can really contribute to it with interesting and surprising “outputs.”

Encourage the use of Advent time.
Bigger? How bigger? After all, at school and everywhere else, we are taught all our lives that John the Baptist is the greatest of the prophets. And now this. And yet it is so. Jesus firmly states:
“Among those born of women, no one greater than John the Baptist arose. But that, he who is smaller in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he ”(Math 11:11).

What did Jesus mean by that greatness? The truth is that John the Baptist is indeed the greatest of the prophets, for his unique position in the kingdom of God, he made an old covenant and opened the New. He deserves to be called the greatest of all prophets because he was the first messenger Malachi spoke of. And yet Jesus exalts him above him as well the last of his disciples. Why? Because of Jesus’ disciple through the donation, the experience of His redemptive power gained a deeper insight into the essence of Jesus’ action than it was given to John. But if this was true of those who knew Jesus then, how much more today it applies to us, through whose history the greatness and glory of Jesus was even more miraculously revealed.

Conscious of his importance, John the Baptist did not forget God, his glory did not rise to his head, but he grew tighter and harder toward Him. He wasn’t just a cane swept in the wind; he was a fixed column. How are we doing? We are really worthy of the label he used on us.
Christ? Are we really bigger than John the Baptist, or are we just playing at someone? Let’s not forget that even a small light can radiate even the densest darkness, just like at one concert. Years ago, a lecture was held with a music program at the celebration of the anniversary of the great composer. When they started playing the first song of the evening after the opening program, they turned off current. One instrument after another, stopped playing in the middle of the bar. Uncertainty seized people, some fearful, some got up and went looking for the east, slipped, and fell to the ground. Panic began to arise, somehow hysterically, he shouted. Someone lit a lighter. A small flame of light began to search through the darkness and uncertainty. Types the lighter helped him, a few dozen lights burned in the auditorium for a while so that the organizers could turn on the auxiliary unit. After a while, the chandeliers lit up, the musicians grabbed the instruments, and the music removed the last remnants of nervousness.

Darkness breeds fear and despair. Darkness is a sin. Light inspires and gives joy. That’s the picture of the grace in which Christ himself comes. The night progressed, the day approached. Christ’s Day coming in the flesh, in grace, to the court.

It all means Advent. We have almost half of Advent behind us. Half
the time when we are to prepare for the coming of the One who will change the world. As we have so far used? We play that we are, or are a real light, or a lamp for our surroundings. Let us think that Christ will not come into darkness. Let’s be at least a small light for our neighbors, as was the lighter in the concert hall because even a small flame can be a source of great light.

We looked into the study of our souls only through the open door. Let us now look at the details of this working mental world.
The first instrument of the soul is our receptors for the sensory perception of all feelings. Sensory sensations evoke a corresponding reaction in the nerve pathways. The feeling has a passive, waiting character. Only when we realize from the reflex the esplanes, into which, with the cooperation of the soul, there is a perception, namely the perception of an object, which we then see and know. In perception, we know that we see. Therefore we look, we know that we hear, and therefore we listen, we know that we feel. Therefore we taste. By cognition, we have sensory awareness of the existence of our feelings. Diverse feelings that come from external feelings are combined into the unity of objects. For this uniqueness of objects, each core of the explain cloud is available, which perceives, receives, and incorporates into unity several feelings of different senses, such as warmth, winter, sweetness, glow. The wider content of feelings arose, for example, by looking at the sky, that it is spacious, with stars, with the moon, sorted in the order in which we first received them. The soul participates in this sorting and distinguishing activity with its central sense, which has the ability to simultaneously perceive the activity of the external senses and all newly accepted feelings. Everything we experience as new is not pushed into the brain plans at all times, but is quickly processed, formed, and compared with previous experiences, evaluated and only then used by the new directive for our personality’s needs. But the soul also participates, according to interest. Every new experience entering consciousness is evaluated from the moment we experience it according to our previous experience. To a certain extent, every new experience has an impact on everything that has previously passed through our consciousness. With each new experience and thought, our relationship with the past changes. If we then compare today’s and past experiences, we are often surprised by our previous attitudes. For example, someone elected such and such a president. Based on new experiences with the president, the negative will change his attitude and tell himself. How could I elect such a president? I should have listened more closely to the people who told me not to vote for him and so on. But when the person was convinced of the bad qualities of the president, he changed his position.

No doubt you have noticed that the gospels of these days are filled with optimism and strengthening our weaknesses. It is no different today. Jesus wants to convince us and assure us. He is our hope and strength. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will strengthen you” (Mathew 11.28). He who owns everything calls us to come, even though all those who despise grace and reject him. You cannot be discouraged from failing your task! Despite all hatred stands here and cries out, “Come to me, all of you, and I will strengthen you.” Two qualities must have those who are to come. They must be tired of effort and harassment. Tiredness and harassment
in search of Christ and his treasure. Tired and bothered by rejecting the world.

When we want to get someone or something, we promise them the same benefits. A man so often subject, it is once such, the result of inherited sin. But today’s man is somehow subject to one more. Subject to activity. We’re still looking for something, and when we have it, suddenly emerges another thing we absolutely need. Spouses forget each other, parents forget about each other children, and get better in the future. And when we already seem to have everything, there will be another problem – pension. But where did we leave the place for God? And it comes to another effort, the hardest of all, to stay human in this rush. Man faithful God and come safely to the kingdom of heaven.

We don’t sometimes feel like a professor at a world university who has decided to invent it speech for all, universal. He told the university management and locked himself in his house. He wasn’t coming out; he was fed by a woman who took care of his household. The professor didn’t even know how looks outside. Years later, he came out with a speech that everyone would understand. He came to the university
to the lecture room, where students and professors were already waiting impatiently. He started lecturing on his discoveries. He spoke for a long time, completely lost track of time, listeners fell asleep, left until he stayed in the room on my own. The next day he was fired and sad that no one understood his speech, that all the work was useless,
he wandered the park. There, on the bench, a little girl ran up to him and asked him what was wrong with him. Everything to her, he said, and he said, “Uncle, don’t be sad, I love you.” The professor smiled broadly. and he cried out, “Eureka.” He found a universal language and has been walking around the world ever since, telling everyone that he has it glad. Isn’t that us, this professor? We try to find a solution to all the world’s problems. You say the sure fictional story, but somewhere there is a hidden secret of the reinforcements he has for us, Christ. The secret of love. The words that have changed so much in history. The words that are a solution to all our pains and worries. Words that put your hands on this in a moment, the world and will wait for the world to accept it. Will I accept him?

It is a feast. However, no one forced us to come to Holy Mass today. We came voluntarily. Even though we are experiencing deep advent, today we sing Gloria, and our churches can be decorated with flowers. We will say, “Today is the feast of the Virgin Mary.”
We are reminded of a serious moment in her life that addresses believing Christians until the end of time. We celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. We have come to pay homage to the Virgin Mary, not to worship her, and at the same time to enrich ourselves in our spiritual life. This is what we are doing right because we find encouragement in the Scriptures to do so.

The angel Gabriel addresses Mary: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” And after a while, he adds: “Fear not Mary, you have found grace with God” (Lk 1: 28-30).

We know the words. We pronounce them often when we interrupt our work when we hear the sound of bells in the morning, for lunch, or in the evening. These words form the framework of the most widespread prayer among us Christians – the prayers of St. rosary.
It is so well known to us of the Gospel, in which Luke tells of the proclamation, that many Christians know it by heart. Today we are more aware in the text of the words “full of grace” and “you have found grace with God.” In these words, God’s great love is manifested in Mary herself and the human race in general. When he punishes the grandparents for their sin, Already in paradise gives them a promise, the first good news is heard; protoevanjelium that God will give the world hope to get what he wanted to give to humanity right from the start. The woman will play a serious role in this (cf. Gen 3:15). The angel Gabriel informs Mary that the woman is her. We learn that God gives Mary great grace without her merits. God the Father for the merits of his Son, who was born as the son of Mary, only protected her from inherited sin. The Church has always taught of the Virgin Mary that her soul has never been marked by sin. Not only did Mary not consent to sin, but God, who is purest, will also protect Mary from the sin with which all men come into the world as a sad inheritance from their grandparents. This mystery can be understood and accepted when we realize what lies behind its answer to the angel: “… let it happen to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Today’s holiday is especially happy for us. We realize that even after the sin of our grandparents, God did not stop loving us. God could have arranged things in other ways. But God wanted man to be responsible for making amends.
Mary’s consent is an important step in the salvation of humanity. And what the Church taught and believed over the centuries, Pope Pius IX proclaimed on December 8, 1854. for an article of faith. Four years later, at one of the apparitions of Bernadette Soubirous on March 25, 1858, in southern France in Lourdes in the Cave of Massabiella, the Virgin Mary said: I am the Immaculate Conception! The pastor of Lourdes was surprised when his parishioner told him this. Until then, he didn’t believe her. Even today, many people do not believe in what we remember today. These include those who believe in the deity of Jesus Christ but do not want to believe the Church’s teaching on the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. But no one is forcing them to do so. This fact, the article of faith, only enriches us. For us, Mary becomes a teacher of faith and a model of pure life.
Although we are marked by inherited sin, today, we can realize the value of pure life. As God prepared the womb of Mary to be pure for the conception of his Son, so God rewarded Mary with the ascension when she, as a free man, never gave her consent to sin. From the beginning, Christian writers, philosophers, and theologians have paid attention to Mary. From the beginning, we have seen reverence for the Mother of Jesus. Already in the Gospels, we find reverence for the mother of Jesus. First, the writers compare it to Eva. While Eve is credited with the unbelief and disobedience that brought unhappiness to the world, Mary is credited with the faith and obedience that brought happiness to the world and contributed to its salvation. This is how St. Justin wrote about the mother of Christ in the 2nd century, St. Irenaeus in the 3rd century, and also Tertullian and others. Other writers likened Mary to the Church. We know that the Holy Spirit conceived Mary. So St. Ambrose teaches in the 4th century that the Mother of God is a Church type. Sv. Ignatius of Antioch, already in the 1st century, points to the concept of the constant virginity of the Mother of Jesus. St. Chrysostomus, vol. Gregor of  Nazianz, vol. Ephraim and St. Augustine are explained seriously by the words “I do not know a man” and point to the greatness of Mary’s consent in the history of salvation.
As early as the 5th century, attacks against reverence for the Mother of God appeared. In 431, Nestorius was convicted of his delusion at the assembly in Ephesus. Respect for the Virgin Mary spreads along with the teachings of Jesus Christ. The core of the Church’s doctrine of the Virgin Mary are the articles of faith, the subject of which are here:
1. Divine motherhood.
2. Constant virginity.
3. Immaculate conception.
4. Assumption.