God's Good Will vs. Satan's trickery QUESTION from Amber Simmons December 19, 1999 Dear Sir,
First let me thank you publicly for answering my last question. Now I have another.
As I posted before, I am not Christian, though I have been, and I still respect this religion. Because of my religious choices, I havebeen told over and over again that I am being led astray by Satan. Now, I don't believe in Satan. However, I will assume ther eis one if it will help me understand this topic better. Here goes:
God is an omniscient being. God knows how many hairs are on my head and HE certainly knows what is in my heart If God knows what is in my hearts, and sees that I have only love, kindness and th ebest intentions to do good in this world in my heart, why would GOd allow me to accidentally worship Satan? If witchcraft is evil, and if I truly am worshiping Satan, it is certainly not with conscious intent that I do so. So why would GOd allow it? Why won't He reveal himself to me and make it known to me that what I am doing is wrong?
I am not asking if I will still go Hell if I continue my practices even if I am a good person. I already know what you think about that. What i don't understand though is why GOd would allow Satan to continue to mask this pracitce as beautiful in my life?Like I said: if I have only good in my heart and if I truly beleive that what I practice is not satanaic or evil, why does God not make His point to me?
BEfore closing I'd also like to add that I am in no way trying to be disrespectful or argumentative. I am truly interested in an answer.
Thank you, Amber
ANSWER by John-Paul Ignatius on December 20, 1999 Dear Mrs. Simmons:
Thank you for your question. I know you are not trying to be disrespectful or argumentative. If I thought you were, I would not have answered your previous question, or this one. I appreciate your desire to understand even if in the end you do not agree. That is what this forum is for – to seek understanding.
Before getting into this question, there were a couple of items that you mentioned in a private email that are extensions of your public questions that I would like to address.
One was on the issue of feminism. My remarks on that score was not to suggest that you are personally a feminist. Rather, I was identifying what I saw was a feminist contamination in your thinking. We are ALL contaminated by the current worldview of our culture which is essentially feminine. The Post-Modern worldview is a worldview dominated by the feminine. Part of that include the feminist.
Whenever a culture is overpowered by one side or the other – the masculine or the feminine – we have major and catastrophic problems. When culture is to the masculine extreme we have Hitler and Stalin, for example. When culture is to the feminine extreme we have what we have today – a culture that is not being destroy outright like a Hitler, but a culture that is eroding and falling apart piece by piece. The three main tenets of this feminized Post-Modern worldview is talked about in my essay Three Secret Strategies of Satan.
Within this overall feminization of America, as one writer puts it, comes the hardest of the hardest core – the radical feminist.
All of us grow up in this feminized worldview, all of us, including me, are contaminated by it. In addition, even though the radical feminist is a severe minority of women, they have been successful in contaminating the well too. Thus many people will express ideas that have their influence and origin with the radical feminist specifically, or with the overall Post-Modern Worldview generally, and not even know it.
O believe it is important for all of us to LEARN the sources of the assumptions we live by, of the worldview that we adopt, of the philosophy we live.
I believe, that the Catholic Church is the only source were the propre balance can be found in worldview, in the masculine/feminine balance of culture, and in the philosophic assumptions to living a good life. The source for these things is God Himself. But God knew that man would take His precepts and misinterpret them – sometimes innocently, other times with deliberate agenda. Thus He set-up a supreme court that would have special protection from the Holy Spirit to decide matters of faith and morals infallibly so that the precepts that God has taught His children would not be contaminated or changed from what He intended. That supreme court is the Pope and Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
A second point I think is important to clarify is why, as you asked, haven’t Catholic given Mary the title of goddess, since we give her such honor. This is a good question.
We do not call her goddess, because she is not a goddess. She is solely a human being. We honor her because Mary accepted a special job from God and was given a special grace by God to carry out that mission, which was to be the mother of Jesus, the mother of God. That makes her unique and special among all the other purely human beings who ever lived.
Jesus, on the other hand, was also a pure and complete human being, but he was also the pure and complete God. He was fully Man and fully God.
You stated that your concern was the idea that Jesus could be Man and God at the same time. Well, this is a mystery. We cannot understand it completely. But God is God and thus it is within His ability to incarnate if He so desires.
And finally you wondered why we need an intermediary. Why not go directly to God? Why would He not want to speak to us and interact with us directly?
Amber, if I may call you that, He did and does desire to speak to us and interact with us directly. That is why Jesus was born. That is why God incarnated Himself and was born of Mary, so He could relate with us directly.
I am reminded of a story told by a Presbyterian Minister, J. Vernon McGee. When he moved to into a new house he noticed that an army of ants were coming into his kitchen to a sugar bowl he had on the cabinet. Rev. McGee was a very kind and gentle man and didn’t want to kill the ants. He thought to himself, If only I could communicate with these ants on their level so they would understand. I would tell them that I meant them no harm but that I didn’t want them coming into my kitchen. I would place a bowl of sugar on the porch for them if they would just remain outside.
That was God’s dilemma also. How could he relate to his creation, his children in a way that was intimate, personal, and real for them? God found a way. He decided to become one of us ants. He decided to humble Himself to become human for us. He loved us so much that the Second Person of the Trinity humbled Himself from His great estate and became one of us creatures.
God has communicated to us, Amber. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, that we may have a relationship with Him in a direct way.
Now, through His Son, Jesus Christ, we have access to God who would otherwise be beyond our understanding and knowledge. As one little boy profoundly said once, Sometimes you want to talk to God with skin on. Jesus is God with skin on. Jesus remains with us even today spiritually in our hearts and the Real Presence of the Eucharist.
Now to your current question: The issue you are raising is the issue of free will. God loves us so much that he did not want us to be robots, or merely instinctual animals who live according to instinct and the influence of stimulus in the environment. No, He made us in His image, with a immortal soul and with a capacity to think, create, and love.
But in order for us to be able to think, create, and love we also have to have the freedom of our wills. Otherwise we are not truly thinking, creating, or loving – we would be nothing more than computers programmed to perform a certain way.
Thus, because of His great love, He gave us free will. But having that ability also means that we can freely choose to turn our backs on God. As parents we have a similar experience. We raise our children to think for themselves so they may survive in the world, but the very thing we give them to make them adults, can be the very thing that turns them against us. Our children may choose to disown us, or ignore us.
So it is between the Heavenly Father and His children. He gives us free will, but we may use that free will to turn against Him or to otherwise make bad decisions.
God understands the good intentions of your heart even if you have chosen a path that He does not approve. We all may make decisions that are bad even though we made them with good intentions. The good intentions do not remove the badness of the decision.
Witchcraft is evil, not because of how it is practiced per se. You may practice your craft in a way that is most uplifting to you and those around you. It is evil because all things that are not of God are evil. It is Satanic not because you literally worship Satan, you may hate Satan, it is Satanic because all things that are not of God are of Satan. There are only two choices – God and the things of God, or Satan and the things of Satan.
This is not to suggest that you are personally and deliberately involved with Satan, but it does mean that you are on a path that is not of God.
Why does God allow you to make a decision to travel down the wrong road? Because he has given you free will and he will never intrude upon that. He respects you too much. You have complete freedom to choice the direction you want to go.
But God does not leave his children without guideposts and advice and encouragement, and direction. He wants all His children to find the narrow road that leads to Him. He reveals Himself in millions of ways to try to convince you and all of us to find and to follow the path to Him.
You ask why doesn’t he reveal Himself to you, to make His point to you, to let you know you are on the wrong path?
He has done these things Amber. That is why you found this Q & A Forum. God is revealing these things to you through the ministry of this Q & A Forum. He cannot be any clearer. All you must do is listen. Listen to the inner depths of your heart for there you will know that what I am saying is true.
God is here Amber. He is reaching out to you in so many ways.
Out of the 10s of millions of Websites on the Internet, you happened to find this one. Coincidence? Hardly. The Holy Spirit is speaking to you as you read this.
Come home, my sister. Come home to the true and Living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Universe, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Creator, the Almighty, the Counselor, the Father, the Guide, the Wisdom, the everlasting and mighty God.
Hear Him calling you right now!
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