Author: jimmyakin

If you’re sick, does that mean you don’t have enough faith in God?

Can you receive medical treatment when you're sick? Or does that indicate a lack of faith?
According to some Christians, we shouldn’t ever be sick. If we ever are sick, it represents a failure on our part.

We haven’t had enough faith, they may say, for if we had perfect faith, God would heal us.

Some would see going to the doctor as a sign of bad or weak faith.

It would be nice if we could be healed, instantly, of any sickness or infirmity.

It would also be a great evangelization tool, if people saw Christians never got sick.

But the fact is that God allows sickness in our lives.

In fact, I’ve been sick for the last week with a bad cold, but I’m feeling better.

At least I’m feeling enough better to make this video, and I thought I’d to one about sickness.

Here are some biblical reasons why being sick does not indicate a lack of faith, and why it’s okay to go to the doctor.

(Click here to watch the video on YouTube.)

 

What Now?

If you like the information I’ve presented here, you should join my Secret Information Club.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.

I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.

In fact, the very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is information about what Pope Benedict says about the book of Revelation.

He has a lot of interesting things to say!

If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:

Just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com if you have any difficulty.

In the meantime, what do you think?

8 Things You Need to Know About St. Paul and His Conversion

Paul was converted when Christ appeared to him. What should you know about St. Paul and his conversion?

This Friday, the Church celebrates the conversion of St. Paul.

Here are eight things you need to know about him–and his conversion.

 
1. Where was St. Paul from?

In Acts 21:39, St. Paul states:

“I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.”

Tarsus was the capital city of the Roman province of Cilicia. This is on the southeast coast of modern Turkey, so St. Paul was not from the holy land. He was actually a Jew born in what is now Turkey.

It was a port city and a noted commercial center. For these reasons, and because it was the capital, he can describe it as “no mean city” (that is, no common, ordinary city). It was famous.

One of the things it was famous for was being the place where Mark Anthony first met Cleopatra, after which they embarked on their doomed alliance.

Tarsus survives today as the city of Mersin, Turkey.

More info on Tarsus here.

 

2. Where was Paul raised and educated?

In Jerusalem. In Acts 22:3, Paul gives a bit more information about his background:

“I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel, educated according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as you all are this day.”

Gamaliel was a famous Jewish teacher. So famous, in fact, that we know about him today from Jewish sources.

Gamaliel is also mentioned in Acts, where he takes an open-minded view of Christianity, urging that it not be persecuted (Acts 5:34-42). Paul did not agree with him at this time, because this was before Paul’s great persecution of the Church, as well as before his conversion.

More info on Gamaliel here.

 

3. If he was born in Tarsus and brought up in Jerusalem, what was Paul’s citizenship?

KEEP READING.

Will we have free will in heaven?

Will we have free will in heaven?

Will we have free will in heaven?

If so, does that mean we might sin and fall again?

If not, what kind of free will would we have there?

And if God can harmonize our free will and sinlessness in heaven, why doesn’t he do so in this life?

Here are some thoughts . . .

 

A Robot “Loves” Me. Big Deal.

NOTE: This is part of a series on the problem of evil. Click here to read the previous posts in the series.

In a previous post, we looked at a common answer to the problem of evil–that God allows sin and the suffering it causes to exist because the only way to eliminate them would be to eliminate free will.

Without free will, according to this view, something important would be lost.

If we didn’t freely choose good–to freely love God and love our fellow human beings–then these actions would lose something very important.

It would be like being “loved” by a robot–a being programmed to do nothing else.

  

The Love of the Saints

What about the saints in heaven? They don’t sin. Does that make their love less valuable?

KEEP READING.

Was Jesus Dissing His Mother When He Called Her “Woman”?

At the wedding at Cana, Jesus told Mary: "Woman, how does your concern affect me?" Was he showing disrespect to her?

At the wedding at Cana, Jesus turns to Mary and says, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”

Sounds disrespectful, doesn’t it?

Or at least you could take it that way.

But Jesus wasn’t being disrespectful at all.

Here’s the story . . .

 

Pronoun Trouble

First, the translation “How does your concern affect me?” (John 2:4 in the NAB:RE) is not a literal rendering of what Jesus says in Greek.

Word-for-word, what he says is “What to me and to you?”

In context, Mary has just come up to him and informed Jesus that the people running the wedding have no wine, so you might literally translate his response as “What [is that] to me and to you?” In other words: “What does that have to do with us?”

He’s not dissing her. He’s putting the two of them–both of them–in a special category together and questioning the relevance of the fact that people outside this category don’t have wine. He’s saying that it’s not the responsibility of the two of them to make sure they have wine.

But that’s lost if you take the Greek pronoun that means “to you” (soi) and obliterate it in translation.

 

“Woman”

Part of what makes it sound like Jesus might be dissing his mother is the fact that he refers to her as “woman.”

We don’t talk to women like that today–not if we respect them, and certainly not our own mothers.

But the connotations–of respect, disrespect, or other things–that a word has in a given language are quite subtle, and we can’t impose the connotations that a word has in our own language on another.

Consider: Suppose, in English, we replaced “woman” with a term that means basically the same thing but with better connotations.

For example, the word “lady” or “ma’am.”

Suddenly what Jesus says sounds a lot more respectful.

In British circles, “lady” has distinctly noble overtones (it’s the female counterpart to the noble honorific “lord”).

And even in demotic America, a son can say, “Yes, ma’am” to his mother and mean it entirely respectfully.

So what can we learn about the connotations of “woman” as a form of address in Jesus’ time?

KEEP READING.

Why does God allow sin and suffering?

Why does God allow evil to exist? Why is there sin and suffering in the world? And, what's love got to do with it?

The most perplexing problem in apologetics is the problem of evil: Why would an all-good, all-powerful God allow evil to exist?

There is a real mystery here, and we can only give partial answers.

Here are some of mine . . .

 

Two Kinds of Evil

We need to recognize that there is more than one kind of evil.

When we use the word “evil,” we often mean moral evil (sin), but historically it was frequently used for other things, such as suffering.

These two forms of evil are linked: It is a sin to cause needless suffering, for example.

This brings us to an important question . . .

 

Could God Stop These Evils?

Yes. God is omnipotent. He is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

Without his action, the universe would never have come into existence, and without his continued action, it would cease to exist or go “to nothing” (Latin, ad nihilum–where we get “annihilate”).

God could have prevented all sin and suffering by not creating the universe.

And he could end all sin and suffering simply by allowing the universe to cease to exist.

You might call this “the Annihilation Solution.”

So what doesn’t he?

KEEP READING.

What Frankincense and Myrrh Look Like

Hey, look what I just got!

Here is a picture of some frankincense and myrrh that I just received.

(The frankincense is on the left; the myrrh is on the right.)

I’d never seen these substances with my own eyes before, but I got them for an upcoming video I’m planning on making on . . . you guessed it . . . what gold, frankincense, and myrrh are.

But I was excited enough that I wanted to share an early photo.

When the video goes up, it will be on my YouTube channel, www.YouTube.com/JimmyAkin. (link fixed)

If you’d like to be automatically notified by email when the video goes up, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Just click here to subscribe! (link fixed)

Currently, I’ve got just over 1,600 YouTube subscribers (thanks, everybody!).

Subscribers get a shiny new email every time I upload a video, so they’re among the first to see it.

In the upcoming video, I’m going to burn some of the frankincense and myrrh as incense and give a report on what they smell like.

I’m interested to find out myself!

I’ll also tell you how you can get your own frankincense and myrrh, so that you can find out first hand.

Stay tuned!

The Biblical Hero Who . . . Killed His Daughter???

Jephthah made a tragic vow, and to fulfill it, he would have to kill his daughter. What are we to make of this?

The book of Hebrews has a whole chapter about Old Testament men (and women) who achieved great things by faith.

One of them had his daughter killed–as a human sacrifice.

What are we to make of this?

 

Hebrews on Jephthah

Hebrews 11 celebrates various Old Testament figures who had faith in God and did amazing things. Toward the end of the chapter, we read:

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets–who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions . . . [Heb. 11:32-33].

It continues in the same vein.

The point is: These men, together with some notable women the chapter also mentions, did amazing things as a result of their faith.

One of the people mentioned in this passage is Jephthah.

Who was he?

 

The Stage Is Set

The stage for Jephthah’s first appearance is set in Judges 10, where we read about how the Israelites have been worshipping foreign gods and, as a result, they have become oppressed by a group of foreigners: the Ammonites.

The Israelites repent, and God is moved to have mercy on them.

So God will make sure that they are delivered from the persecution, but what historical form will this deliverance take?

The leaders of Gilead (part of the territory of Israel) start consulting about how they can free themselves from the Ammonite oppression.

Specifically, they decide that if they can find a man to lead the fight against the Ammonites, they’re willing to let him be the leader of Gilead.

 

Meet Jephthah

Turning the corner into chapter 11, we meet Jephthah:

[1] Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a harlot. Gilead was the father of Jephthah.
[2] And Gilead’s wife also bore him sons; and when his wife’s sons grew up, they thrust Jephthah out, and said to him, “You shall not inherit in our father’s house; for you are the son of another woman.”
[3] Then Jephthah fled from his brothers, and dwelt in the land of Tob; and worthless fellows collected round Jephthah, and went raiding with him.

So already, Jephthah has had a hard life. Think about his family situation!

He’s the son of a prostitute, but his father took him (as a boy) to dwell in his own house anyway, with the sons of his wife.

Ouch! Think about how painful that must have been for everyone involved!

Then when his half-brothers are grown up, the legitimate sons drive Jephthah out so that he can’t inherit anything (meaning: he leaves penniless or close to it).

Jephthah then descends into a life of banditry.

So: Hard life. Social and familial outcast. Enters a life of crime.

But he does have one thing that people need . . .

KEEP READING.

A Word to the Wise (Men)

The magi protected Baby Jesus by returning to their country by a different road. Who else were they protecting?

This Sunday’s readings include St. Matthew’s account of the visit of the magi, which I’ve blogged about here.

When I was at Mass, I was struck by the ending of the gospel reading:

And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way [Mt. 2:12].

This reminded me of something that I think is worth mentioning.

We often think of the warning as being one to protect the Baby Jesus–to keep Herod from finding out precisely who and where he was–and it certainly was this.

But there is another dimension that is easier to overlook: It was also a warning to the magi themselves.

What would have happened if they had returned to Herod?

He would have immediately asked who the child was and where he was located.

They would then have the choice of either telling him or refusing to do so.

If the former, they would be complicit in the murder of the very Child they had come to honor, so they would not want to do that.

But if they don’t tell him, what would Herod do?

Threats.

Torture.

Death.

In that order.

So while the magi definitely cooperated with God’s will by going back to their own country by another road, they weren’t only protecting the Baby Jesus.

They were also protecting themselves.

Can Demons Be Saved?

Wouldn’t it be nice is the devil and his angels all repented, stopped doing evil in the world, and turned back to God so that they could be saved?

But can something like this really happen? What is the biblical evidence and how does the Church understand this question?

If you like the information I’ve presented here, you should join my Secret Information Club.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.

I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.

In fact, the very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is information about what Pope Benedict says about the book of Revelation.

He has a lot of interesting things to say!

If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:

Just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com if you have any difficulty.

In the meantime, what do you think?

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