I don’t see where I made the first assumption given I said people can be faster (better) on their own through their use of reason or through someone like a gym teacher (self help people, teachers of philosophy, non-Christian religious leaders, etc.). Jesus is not a gatekeeper to being good. There are plenty of very good people that have never heard the Gospel.

Regarding your second point, it again seems to be a matter of definition. What is “sin”? Where do you see nature being sinful? If you’re referring to a lion hunting its prey, that’s not a sin. Humans can and do sin because we are rational animals with the able to discern right from wrong (morality). When we act counter to the eternal law, we sin. You and I agree that nature, otherwise known as creation, is good. Very good, in fact. God created all of this out of nothing so that we too can enjoy it and even create alongside Him and be stewards of the world. Many come to God in their jobs/work.

I agree it’s good to question. I encourage you to seek for you will find. The Church does not guarantee salvation. It cannot and will not ever make such a presumption because the Church is not the judge. We don’t know who is or isn’t in Hell aside from Satan. Hell is a choice. People, by their own free will, choose Hell. I believe it was C.S. Lewis that said the gates of Hell are locked from the inside.

It seems the crux of it comes down to Original Sin. I believe in it, you deny it. We live in objective reality, one of us has to be right. I believe humans can act selfishly, be rude, harm others, lie, steal, cheat, deceive, etc. You believe humans don’t do those things as part of their nature. I ask you then, if you look around the world why do humans constantly act against their nature? If a cat has a particular nature, wouldn’t you find it bizarre if it was constantly behaving like a dog or a pig or a beaver and going against its nature?

*What better way to learn to be good than from the best person there is, was, and ever will be?

What does a “good” person have in common with a “good” cheeseburger or a “good” story? You don’t think a cheeseburger or a story are good because they’re honest and caring. Again I’m not being facetious. Thinking deeply about this is what will ultimately help lead to true happiness.

Let’s change adjectives. Some people are naturally faster than others. Fast being the characterization of being quick relative to the average of a particular category or instance. If I want to be a faster runner, wouldn’t I first need to know what fast means? As in, why would I spend my time bulking up and gaining weight like a sumo wrestler if my goal is to be fast? Knowing what “fast” means (in this case “good”) is of utmost importance.

Back to the context above. Like you said, some people have a disposition of being more good (faster) than others. But if I wanted to be even faster than I am naturally, wouldn’t I benefit from training on my own? So too we can become better people using our reason without the need for divine revelation (just as people like Socrates, Plotinus, and the multitude of people that are still good people without Christianity). But what if I could ask someone like Usain Bolt to teach me how to be faster? That’s the case with Jesus (God) who is perfectly (meaning the absolute of the abstract concept) good. He established his training academy (the Church) with approved teachers (the Magisterium) to guard and promulgate his divine revelation (Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture) so that all may know how to be better people (or faster like the analogy). What better way to learn to be good than from the fastest there is, was, and ever will be? Sure a gym teacher (non-clergy) who’s never been taught by or even heard of Usain Bolt could still teach me how to be faster but it would only take me so far.

If someone has a trainer to be faster (like Usain himself), would you say they’re not a fast person? If someone looks to Jesus for his help in being a better person, are they not really a good person?

This analogy has some flaws like treating God as an option or a utility (means to an end). He’s not an option and we are to love Him for Him not for oneself. However, it should hopefully make apparent the point of needing to know what “good” means in the abstract just as we know what “fast”, “big”, “hard”, and other adjectives mean.

Define “good”. Is there such a thing as “the objective good”? What’s the highest good you can conceive of? These are genuine questions, I’m not being facetious. These are the kinds of questions that got the ball rolling for me and I can’t believe how much truth I’ve been blind to all the years I rejected God.

Wonderfully insightful, love how you brought it all together at the end. Thank you for the homily Father.

If good vs evil is always so obvious, why is there such a big disagreement on so many controversial issues? You and I know there’s evil everywhere but will we agree on what is and isn’t evil or will our definitions differ? Does evil exist substantially? If so, who created the evil if God is supposedly all good? St. Augustine answers this by pointing out that evil is the absence of good just as cold is the absence of heat. Then we’re back to square one, what does “good” mean?

I don’t know you but I know you are a sinner (as long as you’re not some AI bot) because you share the same human nature I do. And our human nature was separated from God when Adam committed the first sin, which St. Augustine coins Original Sin. This now sinful nature is apparent as early as infancy when we see babies steal, be selfish, yell with anger, cry, strike others, etc. We do all of that even as adults. Original sin has more profound implications that I suggest you look into what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about it. To deny such a reality is to believe the heresy of Pelagianism which St. Augustine ardently battled. We need a redeemer to pay the wages of our sin. That redeemer must be spotless or else He has no redeeming ability. And so the lamb of God came in the flesh ~2000 years ago and died on the cross for you specifically.

It’s true that people should not self flagellate themselves because to despair is to deny God His mercy and love for us which is a sin. But I urge you to humbly discern, is it your pride preventing you from recognizing truth? What is shameful about a full grown adult saying they’re taller than a newborn? Nothing because it’s reality. If you are actually a sinner (you are) then do not let your pride prevent you from going to the hospital for sinners, the Church. You will fall again and again since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But we are not God. Do adults ever get angry at a toddler for trying to walk and falling? No, we love seeing a baby go from sitting, to crawling, to walking, etc. Where we hurt as parents is when our toddler pushes us away. So, too, God’s saving grace is helping you even now as He keeps you in existence. Turn to Him and use the free will He gave you to become the saint in heaven He wants you to be.

Circling back to your question on definition, sin is “an offense against God as well as a fault against reason, truth, and right conscience. Sin is a deliberate thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the eternal law of God”.

Essentially, anything that turns one away from God. Yet we don’t need divine revelation to have a sense of what sin is. God created humanity to be able to naturally discern good and evil through use of reason and right conscience. However, we can and do often err so divine revelation by His grace helps us get closer to living a good, loving life than we would be able to otherwise.

Definitions are incredibly important. I encourage you to ask yourself what the definitions of “good”, “evil”, “truth”,“happiness”, “love”, and “freedom”. At least for me, the more I dug the more I realized the beauty of faith and Church teaching.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Insightful, thanks for sharing 🙏

I did exactly this just over a year ago. The result was absolutely life changing. Bitcoin is truth and (by God’s grace) I followed that thread to Truth Himself. Truth is out there for us to know it/Him, firstly through our reason and then enlightened through faith (reason and faith never contradict) as is beautifully portrayed by Dante in the Divine Comedy. I’d be more than happy to share my story, experience, and/or thoughts if it’s of interest. One thing I would encourage is that you attend mass, especially with Holy Week coming up. A profound celebration that really brought everything together when I first attended last year. Praying for you 🙏 ✝️

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Disagree. Can’t decentralize God. Order and unity are good and we see it reflected in His nature (the Trinity).

Catholics.

Agreed. I did return to the faith partly thanks to the bitcoin crowd here. Bitcoin is a great segue as it shifts people from short to long time preferences. The next logical step is the eternal time preference. Would love to see and share more about Catholicism here. Tempus fugit, memento mori ✝️

Followed.

Never would I have imagined God and bitcoin going hand in hand but they really do. Just need to follow the Truth, the Good, and the Beautiful and one will lead you to the other. Thanks for sharing and may God bless you.

I encourage you to look at the original text for Luke 1:28. “Kaire, Kecharitomene”. When translated to English means “Hail, full of grace” which is properly depicted in Catholic bibles (RSV-CE, Dhouay-Rheims, etc) but is grossly misinterpreted in Protestant versions (KJV, ESV, etc) as being a salutation followed by “favored one” instead of the actual reverence St. Gabriel the Archangel is showing to the Mother of God. It is important not to fall into the 5th century heresy of Nestorianism which suggests the Virgin Mary only gave birth the Jesus’s human nature. No, Jesus IS God incarnate. The Catholic Church is not alone in understanding this either, the Greek Orthodox that read the Book of Luke in its original text show great reverence to Our Lady the Theotokos, the ever Virgin Mother of God.

No properly catechized Catholic would attribute any divinity to Our Lady. There is only one triune God. The Hail Mary prayer quotes scripture (Luke) and asks her to pray for us in the same way you would ask your friends or family to pray for you just as James 5:16 says we should. Would you not agree that Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, is righteous and therefore someone we should ask to pray for us?

Hail, Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

I say this all with love and in hopes that you more seriously consider the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church that God promised the gates of hell would never prevail against. ✝️

Likewise! Let me know if you ever have any questions 😄

Pints with Aquinas and Thomistic Institute are great YouTube channels to start exploring. A big hurdle I overcame early on was realizing how insanely intelligent religious people can be and how little I knew about philosophy, theology, morality, epistemology, ontology, anthropology, etc. (still learning!)

It’s been really enlightening and fulfilling to find objective Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

I encourage you to dig deeper. The story of Jesus Christ is evidence with apostolic succession and a Church that has remained in continuity since. Why believe the lives of people like Socrates or Cleopatra who came before Christ but not all the various sources of the Gospel?

Beyond that, one cannot “prove” God in a scientific sense but can through philosophy and reason reach the conclusion of an uncaused cause, unmoved mover, of pure actuality (Aquinas 5 ways).

As a former atheist as well, bitcoin led me back to Catholicism. Once I realized there were objective truths (like bitcoin) I was on the quest to find more. I fell into the rabbit hole of Thomism (Aquinas’s 5 ways) and have been on a spectacular ride ever since.

Abortion is evil because it depraves a life of its telos. And the result of that action we believe sends a life to purgatory as they have not been baptized, but that is ultimately a decision of God’s grace.

Man’s fallen nature is distinct from being “intrinsically evil”. There can still be virtuous pagans or unbelievers meaning there’s a moral sense imbued within us. To what ease and effect we’re able to hone that morality, I would argue, is to what extent we seek “the way, the truth, and the life”.

It’s true chastity can be a cornerstone of the ascetic life but that’s not an idea promulgated by wokeness, quite the opposite. Instead the focus is almost entirely on “sexual liberty”.

I don’t think our concepts of flourishing are at odds! It really comes down to how you reach a conclusion like that through the perception of objective truth or moral relativism which then requires the imposition of the will.

Hm, “God is Nature” is interesting. Maybe you could expand on that. I would say nature (in the physical sense) is God’s creation which while good, is separate from God. For example, we can admire the beauty of people, the sun, a tree, etc. and think God is great for its creation but we wouldn’t attribute any divinity to the creation itself. There’s a hierarchy to the world. We don’t take shoplifting grizzly bears to court because they don’t have the capacity to be rational/moral. Plants and animals show intelligence but humans are above them because we have a rational soul.

Then again, we may be disagreeing over the semantics of what “nature” and “reality” mean based on how much we consider the metaphysical or non-material.