Tag Archives: Christians

Ep58 The Big Mysteries of Christianity



Father Len and Irish grapple with the mystery of the three big events that are the foundation of Christianity: God taking on human flesh and living among us, God being tortured and killed by us, and God’s miraculous resurrection from the dead.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len explains why we should view these events as a whole, as one.
  • Father Len identifies three groups of Christians and their sensibilities: Christmas Christians, Good Friday Christians, and Easter Christians.
  • Christmas Christians love the idea of God becoming a human being and the practice of giving and receiving gifts as a way of showing appreciation for the gift of people in their lives.
  • God recognizes there’s a problem in creation and it’s us. We don’t realize that being a true human being means living a life of love. So God takes on human flesh to teach us the way of love.
  • Good Friday Christians see the brokenness in the world. They have a deep awareness of sin in the world. They recognize the fight between goodness and corruption and injustice, even in ourselves. They see and understand the need to “die” for what is right.
  • Atheists, like Richard Dawkins, believe that we can solve the problems of the world, on our own, with education and our intellect. Father Len explains why this is a big lie.
  • We have to be able to see sin and corruption in the world and realize that it’s not the world that needs to change, it’s us. We’re the ones that have to change.
  • Father Len uses the movie “The Help” to illustrate how Christ’s model for becoming a true human being and living a life of love actually works.
  • The struggle against injustice and oppression and dying to our ego purifies the soul. It gets us ready to enter the kingdom of God here and now.
  • Christ’s resurrection from the dead is not just a singular event. It represents a whole way of life that begins for us right here and now and is fulfilled in heaven when we die.
  • If Christ didn’t die, he couldn’t have been resurrected.
  • Resurrection for us is not returning back to our former life. That’s resuscitation. That’s continuing to live like zombies with half a conscience.
  • The resurrection for us is a whole new life. It’s Christ putting his life in our hearts. It’s freedom from all the shame and darkness in the world. It’s so extreme that in the early church those who were resurrected were called “new persons.”
  • Easter Christians live in the resurrection. Their hope is in them and beyond them. They live with love and joy inside them that can’t be taken away because they’ve died to anger and fear.
  • “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • All our sins begin on the inside, in our hearts.
  • Our modern culture tells us that the problems in the world are outside of us. Therapists believe this is the result of a generation raised with the idea that self-esteem is all important. A generation constantly told, “you’re smart, you’re good, you’re beautiful, you’re special, you’re a winner, you can’t be the problem.”
  • If you’re not participating in the resurrection, right here and now, why do you think that you’ll be participating in it in heaven? If you spend your whole life denying your own brokenness, not becoming something new, better, and connected, what makes you think that you will be ready for heaven?

Ep38 Why is There Nothing about Dinosaurs in the Bible?



Father Len explains the relationship between science, history and the Bible and why dinosaurs aren’t present in the Bible.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len reveals that some Christians and members of a group known as “young earth creationists” believe that dinosaurs aren’t present in the Bible because they didn’t exist. They fear science is driving God out of the human experience and therefore they deny rigorous scientific evidence of such things as the age of the earth and the existence of dinosaurs.
  • Demanding that belief in God requires rejecting scientific facts is committing intellectual suicide and damaging to religion and the image of God.
  • When science challenges us, we should be grateful, discerning, and welcoming of scientific truths.
  • There is an ancient belief in Catholicism that God gave us two books of Revelation. The Bible and the book of nature.
  • Thomas Aquinas believed that if nature and scientific facts prove your interpretation of something in Scripture is wrong then clearly your interpretation of the Bible is wrong.
  • The Catholic view is that religion supports science and science supports religion.
  • “Science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind.” – Albert Einstein
  • Galileo believed that scientific exploration is a noble endeavor of faith saying, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
  • The first book of the Bible is not Genesis. It is the back story for the first book of the Bible which is Exodus. The purpose of Genesis is to explain that God created everything to be good.
  • The Bible is not a science or history book. Its purpose is to explain what it means to be a human being. There is no mention of dinosaurs in the Bible because they are not relevant to becoming a free and loving human being.