Monthly Archives: March 2020

Ep4 Why does God allow school shootings and other evils?

March 31, 2020UncategorizedAlbert Camus, Dumbledore, Free Will, God, Harry Potter, Morocco, Nazism, Predestination, Road Rage, Robots, Toasters, Tragedieswrestlingwithgodshow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:47 — 11.7MB)

Father Len uses an interesting analogy comparing a toaster to being human as part of his explanation for why a loving God permits school shootings and other evils.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

God gives us free will to choose our actions. It’s up to us to choose good or evil.
If God took away our choices, we’d no longer be human beings. We’d be preprogrammed like toasters and robots.
“It makes no sense to pray for somebody to do something. I pray that someone’s heart will be open to see the right choice.” – Father Len
God loves us so much that he allows us to choose our own actions.
“The Plague” by Albert Camus
“The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.” – Albert Camus
“A loveless world is a dead world.” – Albert Camus
“All a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.” – Albert Camus
Our choices are not predetermined. God exists outside of time and space. God’s view of our lives appears much like a painting does to us. God can see it all from beginning to end. All the choices we make in our lives are in full view to God. They are not predetermined by God.
Throughout our lives, God will constantly urge, beg, and intervene to try to change our hearts to make the right choices.
God allows us to choose light or darkness.

Ep3 Aaron Rodgers’ Spiritual Journey

March 14, 2020Uncategorizedwrestlingwithgodshow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:05 — 27.5MB)

Green Bay Packers’ star quarterback Aaron Rodgers shares his bumpy spiritual journey. Irish and Father Len react to his experiences – good and bad – that caused him to walk away from organized religion and ask some tough questions about God and church.

Ep2 Sex before Marriage

March 12, 2020UncategorizedCatholic Church, Commitment, evil, God, Love, Passion, Pleasure, Promiscuity, Selfishness, Sex, Sexually Desirable, St. Augustine, Theology of Desirewrestlingwithgodshow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:49 — 7.2MB)

A high school listener asks, “Will I go to hell if I have sex before marriage?” Father Len offers some sober, surprising, and humorous answers and insight about passion, sex, and promiscuity.

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Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

There’s nothing wrong with sex. It’s so natural. Nothing could be more natural. It’s part of the drive of life that God gives us.
Sexual passion is good. It drives us to seek each other out. It brings us together, but there’s something better.
Augustine’s highly promiscuous life taught him what was missing in his life.
Sometimes things are wrong, not because they’re evil, but because they’re not good enough.
Promiscuity is wrong because it can train you to use and hurt other people and not be committed.
Being sexual is part of what it means to be a human being, but the best part of being human is something greater. Commitment and love.
Passion and pleasure can be blinding, but also be very enlightening. True passion opens you up for God.

We welcome your questions and comments:

Email: irish@wwgproductions.org
Text or voicemail: 208-391-3738

Links to Podcasts from Wrestling with God Productions

Wrestling with God Show: http://WWGShow.com
Life Lessons from Jesus and the Church He Founded: http://LifeLessonsfromJesus.org
A Priest’s Life: https://idahovocations.com/resources/video-podcasts/

Ep1 What to Expect from Us

March 4, 2020Uncategorizedwrestlingwithgodshow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:38 — 14.3MB)

Meet Irish and Father Len as they reveal what it means to “wrestle with God” and why we all should do it. They also manage to poke a little fun at each other while unveiling the specific stuff they’re likely to grapple with God about in future episodes.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

The troubling trend that inspired the “Wrestling with God Show.”
The surprising similarity between atheists and people who describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.”
Life is full of mystery that we can’t ever explain in human terms so we can completely understand it.
Religion is not supposed to give us absolute certainty about life. It’s supposed to give us mystery and cause us to question everything in our lives. Good religion causes us to ask more and better questions.
God is life. Wrestling with God is wrestling with life.
God wants us to wrestle with him about meaningful things in life – the existence of God, faith, hope, love including sex, children, belonging, identity, authenticity, death, the afterlife.
God made us and we try to return the compliment by making God in our image. Humanlike. Doing that is refusing to wrestle with God. It turns God into an idol that we can control rather than trying to understand what God really is.
It’s very human for us to struggle with our identity because we’re always deceiving ourselves. Our identities are always evolving, hopefully for the better. That’s a choice.
We should be willing to challenge our ideas and beliefs. If we don’t, how do we know if our thinking is clear?
Life is a constant journey of discovery, the search for truth, meaning and purpose. Our hope for the “Wrestling with God Show” is to find peace in the chaos of life and discover who we’re really meant to be.