Category Archives: Uncategorized

Ep6 Wrestling with Money

April 17, 2020UncategorizedBill Gates, Catholic Church, Charity, CharityMoney, Gospel of Matthew, Mahatma Gandhi, Melinda Gates, Money, Poverty in Spirit, Warren Buffetwrestlingwithgodshow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:49 — 10.8MB)

Father Len helps listener Sarah grapple with her relationship with her money and how much of it to give to charity.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

Father Len introduces the biblical concept of “poor in spirit” from the Gospel of Matthew 5:3.
“Poor in spirit” doesn’t mean that you’re actually poor. It does mean money has no control over you and it’s not your primary source of joy and self-worth.
Father Len shares the story of an elderly couple with a net worth of $50 million to illustrate the effect of being “poor in spirit.”
Father Len describes the relationship Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates have with their money and their charitable giving to help listener Sarah grapple with how much she should give to charity.
Father Len explains why he loves the image he saw as a kid of a tiny box containing all of Mahatma Gandhi’s material possessions when he died.
It’s irresponsible not to save money for retirement. Otherwise, you can become a burden to other people. Morally, you don’t have that right.
Assessing your real relationship with money is about honestly recognizing why you do what you do with it.
There isn’t a mathematical formula for how much money to give to charity. It’s living a life of “poverty in spirit.” It’s balancing the responsibilities we have of taking care of ourselves and making the world a better place.

Ep5 The Good of Coronavirus and Other Evils

April 13, 2020UncategorizedAdam & Eve, China, Christianity, COVID-19, Darth Vader, Enkidu, Epic of Gilgamesh, evil, Garden of Eden, God, Jonah, Judaism, Lord of the Rings, Luke Skywalker, moral evil, natural evil, St. Irenaeus, Theodicy, Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, Tree of Lifewrestlingwithgodshow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:47 — 22.7MB)

Father Len helps us wrestle with evil. What is it? Why is there evil in the world? How can the consequences of evil help us mature and become better and more complete human beings?

Highlights, Ideas, & Wisdom

Father Len explains why the Corona virus crisis demands that we wrestle with God about what is evil and why there is evil in the world in hopes that this pandemic will become a species changing event.
Father Len introduces us to theodicy, the theology that grapples with evil and why an all good and loving God permits evil in our world.
Father Len shares “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” The story of a man whose pain, suffering and loss from the death of his best friend cause him to look deep into the purpose of life and how to become a complete human being.
Father Len explores the theology of St. Irenaeus that looks at evil to find the ultimate goodness of God.
Humanity is born innocent, but immature. We have work to do to become mature and complete human beings.
We don’t get to define goodness for ourselves. Only God can define what is good.
Maturing is a complex process. It requires that we experience the pain we inflict upon ourselves by going after the wrong things to make us happy. We must come to understand what is evil, evil’s consequences and die to our selfishness.
God did not cause the Corona virus, but God can use it to make us better people.
The coronavirus demonstrates how interconnected we are in this world. What happens in China affects us no matter where we are in the world. A problem in one part of the world becomes a problem for all of us. We’re waking up to the fact that either we survive together or we fall apart.
There are two types of evil. Moral evil and natural evil.
Moral evil is the things we do to each other. Often, without knowing or thinking about it. A good example is texting while driving. We’ve trained ourselves not to care about the accident it might cause and the pain, suffering, and loss it can inflict on other people.
Natural evils are things like the coronavirus, earthquakes, and floods.
St. Irenaeus would say the coronavirus itself is not evil. What is evil is the way we respond to it. If we deny its danger and existence, think only of our own well-being, endanger others, or be unwilling to come together as a community to battle the virus, that’s evil.
The coronavirus offers us a source of bane and enlightenment. For some of us it will be a source of spiritual enlightenment and help us to become more mature human beings. For others, the experience will be dismissed or quickly forgotten.

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
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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.