Wrestling with God Show

Father Len explores how grit helps us get through difficult times and succeed in life. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Father Len explains why he is grateful for the COVID 19 pandemic. Father Len explains how the pandemic helps reveal the existence of God and why God allows suffering in the world. Father Len introduces the spiritual virtue of grit and illustrates how and why it helps us mature as hu...

Father Len shares some remarkable love stories to illustrate what true love is all about.

Father Len and Irish explore the life-changing benefits of death and funerals. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Father Len shares his moving and powerful tradition for commemorating the victims and heroes of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and what it reveals about life and death. Father Len explains how funerals make us better human beings. Father Len spells out the difference between a funeral and a “ce...

Father Len explains why guilt is a good and shame is evil. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Father Len reacts to the pain and suffering inflicted on Tarana Burke , founder of the “Me Too Movement,” by the shame she felt after being raped and sexually molested as a child. Shame is evil because it mars the image of our being made in the image of God and crushes our self-worth. Shame is dangerous and co...

Father Len explores the relationship between gratitude, happiness, and finding the presence of God in everyday life. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom The custom of athletes and entertainers thanking Jesus after winning games and awards inspired this episode. Father Len uses the ancient Jewish feast that celebrates the birthdays of trees to reveal the importance and value of gratitude. Gratitude helps...

Father Len and Irish grapple with the mystery of God’s intention for sickness and suffering in our lives. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Irish shares his gut wrenching experiences with his youngest son’s heart attack and multiple kidney failures. Father Len tells the story of his father finding joy late in life after contracting ALS. Health, wealth, and personal achievements aren’t necessarily what...

Father Len shares the forgiveness method he uses along with his experiences learning to forgive. Highlights, Ideas and Wisdom Father Len confesses that he is “not great at forgiving,” but he’s working on it. Forgiveness is a skill that can be learned just like all the other virtues. Forgiving is like an exercise, the more you do it, the better you get. If you learn to forgive small things, you bui...

Father Len and Irish explore the frequently damaging temptation and tendency for humans to judge each other. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Father Len responds to a listener’s perception that religious people are often judgmental and see themselves as better than others. Father Len explains the difference between damaging judgment of behavior and attitudes and needed, useful and inspiring criticism...

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...

Father Len explains why God doesn’t send anybody to hell. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Father Len answers the question why a loving God creates human beings he knows will go to hell. Free will is one of God’s greatest gifts to each of us. Free will defines human beings. We are free to choose heaven or hell. Heaven’s gate is always open for us to walk in. “The Great Divorce” by CS Lewis tells the...

Father Len explains why freedom is a virtue and what it takes to achieve real freedom. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Real freedom is achieved when we become free to live a life of love and community, free from selfishness, ego, anger, hatred, and revenge. Father Len tells the story of how Congressman John Lewis’s  faith gave him the freedom to love his enemies. Father Len illustrates the opp...

Father Len explains why the wisdom contained in the Bible about what makes for a good life is timeless. Highlights, Ideas and Wisdom “There is nothing new under the sun” – Qoheleth, Ecclesiastes 1:9 People have forever struggled with the same problems, made the same mistakes, and needed the same solutions to solve their problems and the same remedies for their mistakes. The Bible stories are alway...

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...

Father Len explains why defining and fully understanding good and evil is pretty much beyond our ability as humans. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom The only wise reaction to evil is faith in God. The mystery of what seems like evil to us may actually be something used by God for our good. Father Len explains why we shouldn’t settle for cheap and easy answers for why evil and suffering exist in the w...

Father Len explains that we’re all born in the image and likeness of God with gifts, defects, and work to do to become mature human beings and find our way to Christ and each other. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom The Hebrew word for image is the same word as Idol. There was a time when a King was perceived to be the image of God. We’re all made in the image of God regardless of the color of our ski...

Father Len and Irish grapple with the difficulty of having a spiritual, moral, and meaningful conversation about the slogan “black lives matter.” Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Father Len explains why he is reticent to make statements about political slogans. It’s cowardice for religious leaders not to lead and speak out about spiritual and moral issues. People have to come to the truth by themselv...

Father Len reveals why Jesus came into the world as a Jew and why God created multiple races and cultures. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom God chose an enslaved, weak, and hated people to show God’s strength and bring love into the world. Father Len reveals his joke about every Jewish feast. The Bible constantly wrestles with racism. There is just one race in the Bible. That’s humanity. There are ma...

Father Len explains what forgiveness is and isn’t and the powerful positive effects it has on us and those around us. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom We live in an age of anger. It defines our politics, the way we drive, our Facebook posts, and even our religion. A lot of religious people baptize anger and make excuses for it by calling it righteous. Nowhere in the Bible does it mention God’s having...

Father Len shares his love of prayer. He explains what prayer is and isn’t and the purpose of prayer. He also offers some ideas for developing your own personal prayer life. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom True prayer is listening. It’s about being totally mindful of God and being in the presence of God. Prayer is not about providing God with frequent intelligence briefings about stuff we want becau...

Father Len explains what causes a loss of faith and gives listener Jennifer some ideas for finding her lost faith. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Father Len explains the difference between faith and belief. Faith is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, it will atrophy and you’ll lose it. Faith is like a seed. It’s a gift from God. We must prepare the soil in which it grows. The soil is our hearts. T...

Father Len reveals two primary impulses God gives us and how we can use them for good or evil. This episode was recorded before the murder of George Floyd, but it couldn’t be more relevant. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Human evil is the most difficult kind of evil to grapple with because it’s what we do to ourselves. Human evil is never part of God’s plan. God created human beings with two primar...

Father Len explains what’s missing in spirituality without religion in answer to a listener who asks: “Why do I need organized religion? I’m spiritual and I have a personal relationship with God.” Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom What is a “personal” relationship with God? What does it mean? Father Len explores the difference between an intimate relationship with God and a private relationship with G...

Father Len explains how religion helps us recognize who we are meant to be and helps us become our best selves. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom Religion is to spirituality what tea is to water. Religion adds flavor and extracts the essence of spirituality. Practicing religion makes people happier, healthier, and live longer. It reduces depression, lowers blood pressure, crime, and the divorce rate....

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, astrolo...

Father Len explains what the Bible is, where it came from, why it matters and how to use it. Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom The Bible is a collection of books of sacred stories that span thousands of years. The Bible is not a rule book. There are rules in the Bible, but they only make sense in the context of the stories in which they are contained. The stories in the Bible give meaning to why we’re...