Tag Archives: Love

Ep25 Tour of Hell

August 28, 2020UncategorizedBook of Corinthians, Book of Malachi, Book of Revelation, Catholic Church, CS Lewis, God, Gospel of Matthew, Heaven, Hell, Jesus, Love, Montana, Purgatory, Rich Man and Lazarus, St Paul, The Bible, Universalismwrestlingwithgodshow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:27 — 23.3MB)

Father Len takes us on a tour of hell exploring its origin and history providing glimpses of heaven along the way.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

Hell can be hot and cold.
Hell is complete separation from God.
Heaven is complete union with God.
God is the source of life, love, community, justice, and compassion.
Hell is being separated from life, love, and community.
God offers life and love to all people as a free gift, but that doesn’t mean all people accept the gift.
Hell is often associated with fire, but in the Bible it is also depicted as a cold and lonely place.
The image of fire is also connected to heaven in the Bible.
Could it be that the fire of heaven and hell is the same, the fire of God’s love?
Life is a matter of preparing to live in the fire of God’s love or forever rejecting it.
If you live your life with hatred and selfishness, maybe pure love is something that you can’t stand.
People can create their own hell right here on earth. It’s not just an imaginary place where we might end up.
You separate yourself from God when you fail to live a life of love.
God wants everybody united in heaven, but that doesn’t mean everybody will be in heaven.
“The gates of hell are locked from the inside” – CS Lewis
Hell is something we create by our own choices, not something created by God.
God permits those who reject community, justice, compassion, and love, which is God, to live in the hell they create.
The images of heaven and hell help point our lives in the right direction.
Hell is a choice of selfishness and cruelty over love.
The gates of heaven are always open for those who love.

Ep21 “Crazy” and “Annoying” People

July 31, 2020UncategorizedCatholic Church, Hate, Judaism, Love, Sin of Distancing, Teambuilding, The Biblewrestlingwithgodshow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:22 — 13.2MB)

Father Len reveals how distancing yourself from “crazy” and “annoying” people in your life can separate you from parts of yourself that need attention.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

There are multiple stories in the Bible that reveal how distancing yourself from people in your life causes you to lose part of yourself.
Father Len explains the “sin of distancing” and how it affects us.
The problems we have with people in our lives often reveal problems we have within ourselves.
When we build walls around ourselves to avoid problems, we pay a price.
It’s easy to hate people from a distance.
Arguments and disagreements with people in our lives can be incredibly healthy because they can help us recognize and force us to deal with our own issues.
Life is supposed to break our hearts at times. When we experience pain and frustration we develop humility and the ability to love.
A whole heart is a broken heart. Distancing ourselves from “crazy” and “annoying” people will keep us safe, but we won’t have whole hearts.

Ep10 What is religion?

May 21, 2020UncategorizedAtheism, Catholicism, God, Judaism, Love, Neolithic Times, Paleolithic Times, Religion, Scripture, Soviet Russia, The Biblewrestlingwithgodshow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:02 — 24.8MB)

Religion has been with us since the beginning of human history. Father Len explains what it is and what it always has been.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

Religion is a binding of a relationship and commitment to God and other people.
Religion can be traced all the way back to the Stone Age, Paleolithic and Neolithic times.
Early religion was a mix of storytelling, music, art, architecture, astrology, and ritual that brought people together, unified them and tied them to a common purpose.
Stone Age caves were like churches often containing the same 32 symbols that are believed to be a hieroglyphic response to God.
Religion is not a monologue from God. Religion is a dialogue between us and God with us responding to God.
There’s good religion and bad religion. Good religion is one that binds us together and to God. Bad religion is just a structural form for coercion that often divides us.
Good religion is both educational and unifying. It helps us discover the presence of God in our daily lives.
Human beings have forever been trying to answer this call from a mysterious thing we call God that binds us together and directs our lives.
There have been cultural experiments without God in countries like Soviet Russia and Communist China. These experiments in atheism haven’t gone so well and led to lots of bloodshed and millions of deaths.
Atheism’s failures can be traced to the lack of a higher moral code beyond human reasoning.
We like to proclaim ourselves as rational, but we’re not. We’re really good at coming up with excuses to justify our behavior.
Atheism says there is no source of justice beyond “how I view things.” In religion, we say God is the source of justice and our behavior will be judged by God.
Atheism is a type of religion. It may take more faith to believe that “I am the measure of morality” than the faith it takes to believe in God.
Taking the Lord’s name in vain is to misuse religion for power, wealth, or violence. To commit evil in the name of God.
There’s good Scripture and bad Scripture. When you think God is telling you to do something that is not in the Bible, that’s bad Scripture.
Father Len explains how to choose a religion and why not to choose a religion.
Love is not just an emotion. Love is also a type of reasoning.
Father Len shares a fun MacMillan family dinner table conversation to answer the question, “should you choose a religion for your child?”
Religion is incredibly human because it’s constantly seeking the deep connections we all crave and need in this life.

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.

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