Questions from the Unsettled Mind

It is common to hear both from the pulpit and in popular culture the merits of unconditional love. From the one, we hear that God loves us unconditionally, that heaven is a free gift, that a last-minute prayer can save us from the flames of hell. From the other, we hear that we are only truly loved when those who love us do so without any direction, without any judgment, without any purpose or aim...

Much is made today of the dictum, “follow your heart.” Usually, it is a popular appeal to the relativistic sentimentalism that has replaced traditional rational morality. But there’s an odd twist on this imperative that can infect Christian ethics, for it is sometimes thought that one’s inner life—one’s emotions and desires—must be put in order prior to any expectation that one’s outer life—one’s...

Why did Adam fall? It’s an intriguing question, because we are told by the old texts that Eve fell through the seduction of a deceiver, the serpent, who tricked her into misunderstanding the aim of the divine prohibition.

American Catholics are becoming increasingly alarmed as once-overflowing parishes find their pews emptying, their pulpits shared with other churches, and their college-aged kids abandoning the faith in unprecedented numbers.  Why is this happening?  And what can we do about it?

The caterpillar lives a fairly simple existence, slinking along, dodging the ravenous appetites of birds, all the while devouring as much food as possible.  At some point he finds a choice spot and forms a cocoon around himself and begins one of the most astonishing transformations within nature: he turns into a butterfly.  During this metamorphosis he sheds all his caterpillar “fur” (hi...

Idealizations of human love run deeply within the human imagination.  While contemporary romantics search longingly for their soulmates, the ancient Greeks spoke of seeking their other half.  If human beings were made for intimate love, then it seems that human lovers must be two halves of one whole.  Neither is fulfilled in themselves, but each needs the other for completeness.&nbs...

Science fiction tends both to illuminate and obscure many issues related to human nature and its relationship to the animals below it and the spiritual natures above it.  Our science fiction literature and film are filled with creatures with supernatural qualities as well as hybrid human qualities, not all that different from the ancient myths’ depiction of a universe bursting with gods, demi...

The dramatic story of the Israelite escape from slavery in ancient Egypt makes riveting reading from the book of Exodus, but when we look into Egyptian history for some record of the event, we find next to nothing.  So, is there any reason to really think that those events occurred, or does it all just amount to Israelite myth?

A very famous philosopher named Immanuel Kant flipped traditional ethics on its head when he suggested that the commitment to moral goodness is only truly noble and “pure” when it is fully detached from any reward, from any happiness, from any other purpose whatsoever.  Kant was worried about the problem of ulterior motives that, he thought, could water down the noble purpose of the truly goo...

While most people consider the question of the meaning of life to be the biggest mystery of all, in fact it’s one of the easiest questions we’ve confronted together in Questions from the Unsettled Mind.  Why?  Because we already know the answer!  What is less clear, perhaps, is why it is the answer, but even more importantly for human destiny, why we ignore it.

Sometimes religious people have this idea that religion allows you to shortcut the normal human processes of agony, misery, decay, and death.  I mean, if God is with you, why shouldn’t he enable you to be happy?  But that’s not how it works.  In fact, with respect to grief, St. Paul himself warned that we Christians do grieve, just not as others grieve—without hope.  So, in eve...

There has been a trend in modern historical methodology to pretty systematically ignore tradition. The irony with this approach is that it is fully anachronistic, imposing contemporary categories onto the past, since all ancient cultures embedded their history in tradition, in practices that could be handed down to future generations. Many cultures lacked written languages, while those that develo...

Esoteric knowledge is one of those things that sounds very cool—that word, “esoteric”—but for most of us lacks a clear definition. It conjures up the mists of the East, ancient riddles, dark secrets, and the promise of ultimate power—all things that entice many contemporary human beings, because, whatever esoteric knowledge is, it seems that an exciting offer is on the table. As with most offers,...

While various Protestant sects have their go-to complaints with what Catholics believe about salvation apart from grace (Catholics don’t believe that), worshiping saints (Catholics don’t do that), or even that the pope is the anti-Christ (he isn’t), there’s probably no one issue that galvanizes them more than the Marian doctrines, that Mary is elevated to the level of a deity. When Protestant...

Of course, it is! Re-incarnation strictly means that the human soul-spirit is reconnected to the body after being separated from it. We have enormous evidence of this happening in near death experiences (NDEs).  During an NDE, a person experiences separation from the body and its associated processes (especially pain, but also all sensory links to the body), and usually initially fi...

When faced with an enemy assault, it is critical to identify the strategic objectives of your enemy, for once these are known, you can create effective counters to his aggressive moves. However, as we know from metaphysics, evil is not a positive objective but instead is classified as a privation by philosophers, meaning that it merely negates what God is positively trying to achieve. Th...

We often pray to God as our Father for things that we think would very much improve our lives, yet we usually find ourselves empty-handed afterward. We are told to pray harder, so we try that, but the results are the same. Church leaders might suggest that we give more, and though we rightly smell a rat, we very marginally increase our giving just to test this hypothesis, but again find...

The problem of evil—that great suffering is permitted by God in this world—haunts many people. It seems that if God really loved us, then he would do something to assist us. So, if he does nothing, it appears that he doesn’t really love us, in which case he isn’t all that good. But if he isn’t good, then he isn’t God. As such, it seems that God cannot exist, because great suffering does occur in t...

In a previous podcast, we examined Plato’s famous “Myth of the Ring of Gyges” story. In that story where, as usual, Socrates is Plato’s primary dialogical character, we faced the ultimate moral challenge: what would we do if we were put into a situation (the invisibility ring) in which all of the rewards for justice were replaced by all of its penalties in this life and in the next, in which the r...

This is one of those questions that terrifies a great many people around the world, since they have been told that at some point in the future Jesus will secretly arrive in the clouds, yank all of the believers into the air, and then zip back to heaven, “leaving behind” all the wicked unbelievers. Portrayed in the books and films of the “Left Behind” series, this “Rapture Event,” the sudden r...

Since posting the blog and podcast on the point of fasting, I’ve run across some very screwed up applications of fasting that is undermining some people. So, I’m going to address these misunderstandings in this follow-up blog on when not to fast. The fast recognizes that we are spiritual/physical hybrid creatures, so that what happens in the body impacts the mind, just as what happens in...

Are you a good person? Or perhaps that is too strong. Would you like to think of yourself as a good person? Almost everyone answers this question with a resounding “Yes!” There is something about goodness that we human beings find attractive. We want good steaks, good sex, good kids, good government, and we want a good God. But why? What is it about goodness that is so wonderful?

Christians and Jews of the ancient world practiced periods of fasting pretty seriously. Jesus did too, including those forty days in the wilderness prior to his temptation. But many Christian communities around the world don’t fast at all. Some Protestants suspect the activity, thinking it confuses genuine spirituality with mere ritual. They believe that the essence of prayer i...

“The ancient Epistle to the Hebrews contains a hitherto unnoticed enigma. It refers to a man without beginning or end – one who lives forever. So, who is he, and where is he?” These words of enticement draw the reader into my novel on Melchizedek, entitled, The Search for Melchizedek . The text of Hebrews really does describe him as a man who never died, meaning that for all we know, he is st...

We tend to distinguish who we are from what we do. So, I am Jeff, and I am always Jeff. I might be skiing or not skiing. I might be fishing or not fishing. What I do can change, but what I am remains the same. In modern times our names don’t tend to tell us very much about who the person is that bears it, but this wasn’t always the case. Take the famous Viking, Ivar t...