PREFACE: To my children: The article written below is not like a book prepared in a short time, but the reflections that are recorded, accumulated according to the experience stretching in daily life. Occasionally, I review these lines and replace them with new experiences that change with age. And, every time I review and fix it, I want to emphasize to you that I look at life differently every time. It means that I should practice listening to learn more, I no longer think that I know it all.
I learned a regretful lesson and I want to tell you that when I was young, I (as well as some other friends) often criticize the Church's teachings, I always thought that I knew a lot. Many things that I learned at a young age were just some of the basic teachings that were sufficient for first communion and confirmation for childhood. Then when I went to the seminary, I could continue to learn more, I thought I knew everything ... But even though I still try to learn more every day, I feel that I just know enough to sustain my faith… It's funny to look back at my arrogant attitude in the past.
In this text, I refine all the details and writes only briefly, only evoking the main ideas like the key to suggest the details of the title. I know that the youth did not like to read long. I hope you see this as the spiritual property (legacy) I left for you. The property of experiment and challenge in my life through successes, failures, mistakes, good and bad, happy and sad ...
Hopefully, these thoughts help you to understand more about life, family, religion, and my love for you...
I want to add a fundamental concept here: THE ATTITUDE WE SHOULD HAVE WHEN TALKING ABOUT RELIGION.
Religion is the spiritual, ambiguous, and abstract areas it should not be based only on reasoning but rather a part of the experience.
When discussing religion, we should have an open and cooperative attitude rather than looking for winning. When competing, we tend to choose only the arguments to win the opponent and ignore or cover up the arguments that would otherwise come to a conclusion that is unfavorable for our tendency. And in this case, we can win the argument but the truths are not illuminated.
Faith is a great gift not only because of reason, but we must also know how to open our minds to receive it. I remember to bring a sentence saying: "People who open to believing no need to say much, but those who do not want to believe to say much is just redundant".
Here is the topic: WHY DO WE BELIEVE IN GOD and the titles I choose to answer.
1. BECAUSE GOD IS THE CREATOR who created us. Many people do not believe in the Creator.
- Some people referred to science to explain everything such as Evolution, Big-Bang or Man is from Monkey and Monkey is from something… and so on up to the very first object which can be considered as EMPTINESS or unknown!
- Or as Buddhism, believes that everything was from EMPTINESS.
- Catholicism also believes that everything comes from EMPTINESS, but the difference is that we know that there is a One who stands at the starting point of EMPTINESS to turn the EMPTINESS into creations, that is the Creator, God.
This is the way I try to find similarities between factions to avoid controversy.
The people who gave the theory of the other theory had a profound foundation, and Ba did not know enough to criticize. I only studied it a little to reinforce my news.
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2. THE BIBLE IS A RELIABLE SOURCE. The Bible was written three to four thousand years ago. The Bible consists of two sets: The Old Testament and the New Testament of a total of 73 books. They were not written simultaneously by a school or organization but by many people, individually, with time and space apart, stretching out many thousand years. Dozens of authors from different social sectors. There are books written by the Kings and Judges who are of high class and books written by the Prophets of the regular civilian, and young authors of children ages like Daniel, etc.
Old Testament: The material and writing of the Old Testament that was experienced by scientists are in line with the Old Age annals. So if the yearbook of the script has been determined by science, what is the significance of the Old Testament text, let us split it into two areas:
a.areas Specific and character-reasons: historical and landmarks exist to this day. For example, the work transcends the Egyptian land of the Jews and several decades of migration to the promised land. This is great historical evidence from which hundreds of generations of Jews, though scattered all over the world, have preserved this history clearly and respectfully. These are proofs of millions of millions of Jews who have spent the past few thousand years.
b. Realm of abstraction and spirituality: If the recognition of the existence of the Old Testament and the evidence of the historical evidence, then we naturally have to sincerely evaluate the parts abstract and sacred as they were jointly close to the specific and historical areas mentioned above.
Perhaps the area in which most people criticize it is the first part of the Old Testament: God created the universe and mankind. These passages are legendary, unexplainable by science today. These three simple arguments: If we believe in creation, then, of course, we understand that the Creator must be powerful, creating all species with a perfect computation. He could, of course, pass on to Moses (who wrote the Bible) to write down the full scientific and technical details of all creation when he created it.
But what if you want to write it down? Mr. Moses will have to write down millions of pages of books that describe the scientific and technical formulas that he as well as the Jewish people are unable to understand and even today not many people understand. So do not understand, write down what to do? Perhaps that is why the Old Testament has legendary passages.
In the New Testament: The gospel consists of four authors, three authors (Mathieu, Marco, Luca) write in the same way. It also recounts the work of Christ for three years of preaching, the words of God, and the work of God. John's fourth book alone goes deep into God's love and salvation.
Relations between the New Testament and the Old Testament: The Old Testament paves the way for the New Testament. Thousands of years ago, dozens of different authors, different times and spaces, foretold the Savior (New Testament). Looking at the overview, this point is important to prove the value and credibility of both sets of Scripture.
Summary of some of the above facts, we see that no one can direct or set up a big play and span several thousand years like that.
Reading the Bible, we must look at the whole to see the continuity and unity, towards a way of God's redemption.
Another reason is that the Bible is always the most read by the world and it is of course worth it.
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3. WHY JESUS IS PRESENTED FROM THE PRESTIGE. Jesus Christ is a flesh-and-blood man in history, which is unquestioned. But how to prove that He is the Son of God into the world to redeem humanity. Let us read the Bible to explore three stages: Before the birth of the Lord, contemporary and after the death of Jesus:
a. During the thousands of years before the birth of the Lord, there were many prophecies, in many different places and times, foretold about God's plan of salvation.
b. Events in the life of God from birth in Bethlem until death on the Cross. How much fulfillment of the Prophets has foretold in the Old Testament?
During the preaching period, the Lord frankly said that he was the Son of the Father and in parallel with the instructions, he performed many miracles to prove his identity.
c. Things happened to the Apostles after the Lord completed the Redemptive work.
The three points mentioned above are suggestions for argumentation, but nothing new is it?
Proving that Jesus is a son of God from heaven and is still a very high subject, Ba dared not use arguments to argue. A good argument can overwhelm the listener but it is different. Faith is not only due to reasoning, but also the contributions of experience and grace.
So I want to share this experience with you:
Please put aside the argument to sit down and meditate on God's love with us. It is this love that is the MOTION FOR GOD TO MAKE THE PEOPLE.
In life, sometimes we just use love to treat each other. Many things happen every day from the motive of love that we rarely need reasoning with. In families, all-loving elements help each other naturally, parents hope their bodies for their children without reasoning, or in other words, the reasoning is hidden and becomes dependent on the actions of love. Because of love, we can do crazy or unreasonable things, which means we cannot reason.
Also, God is a good person full of love. He created the universe and mankind also because of his love. When humanity betrays God, he suffers pain so badly that an act of folly is to send the King of God into the world as a human being to reconcile, leading men to return to God the Father. Looking at the life of Jesus Christ, he has chosen a model of the poor and ordinary people, when he grew up, to preach about the Kingdom of God, he was opposed to hate and before he died he was also spent hours trembling in fear of spirit and physical pain. The point worth mentioning here is that every development is in God's program, meaning that he is fully active and voluntarily sacrifices for human love.
In reflecting on God's love we find it impossible to understand it. And do not dare to reason anymore.
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4. WHAT THE BLESSING OF CHRISTMAS ARE BELIEVED, PEOPLE. One unusual thing in the Lord's selection of the Apostles is that God does not follow the standard of man. God does not recruit people with qualifications or qualifications for positions. Most of the Apostles are uneducated or uneducated workers. What does God rely on to do such a paradox? - God relies on God the Father. The whole plan of redemption is contrary to human standards and this point also proves that the presence of Jesus is God's presence.
Twelve Apostles probably Peter was the least educated but was chosen by the Lord. In the three years following the Lord, it seemed as if he and other Apostles did not make much progress because sometimes they asked God something quite trivial or sometimes God also scolded them slowly.
If God chooses the Apostles from wise intellectuals to set a plan of peace to conquer the world with great, large intrigues, then perhaps today people have reason to disprove. additionally, the stories of the Bible are unrealistic staged plays.
Then, after the time of the Lord's return to heaven, they were transformed by the Holy Spirit into new people. They started the work of opening the Kingdom of God with courage, vigor in preaching, enduring hardships, imprisonment, and death for the Tao. The strange transformation in his life is eloquent proof of the presence of the plan of salvation of Jesus Christ.
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5. WHERE ARE DIFFERENT WRITERS? The New Testament (Gospel) is a set of four volumes by the four Evangelists, in four heavens and four different times, rewriting the Lord's work and the word of God taught in the three years of preaching the Kingdom of God. The sources are themselves remembering when living with the Lord for several years or being repeated by the communities during their activities.
There are several different details from this book to the other but this does not detract from the truth but on the contrary if we look at it in the same way: It is the same story that many people from different regions live in. many different times that tell almost the same hundred percent, the story is more reliable than just one person set up.
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6. WHAT CHURCH IS THE CHURCH OF JESUS. The many gospels recount the Lord's formation of the Church and giving it to St. Peter. So I don't need to justify it anymore. The article I want to say here is the marvelous wonder of the life of the Church. No Taoist or any organization on earth is as badly beaten as the Catholic Church. On the contrary, we see that the Church is still growing widely on this ground and is respected by many social strata.
In everyday life, when we interact with people around us, we often hear the criticisms of the Church with KHEN and CHE mixed. But many times we do not distinguish clearly the title "CHURCH" when applied to different situations and sometimes I see the PRIESTS are not accurate. Below, he tries to analyze the different cases that he must assign when using the name "CHURCH":
First, on the spiritual and holistic level, the Church is a Church founded by Christ and He is the Head of the Church. The Church is the Church because the divine part of the Lord and the saints in heaven are the part that has overcome the test of earthly life. And the Church is in this world, in the general sense, also called the Church because she is fellowshipped into the holy part by the grace of God and the sacraments. The Church has a loving identity.
But in everyday life, we often call "CHURCH" with the meaning of an earthly organization, which means seeing the Church in the worldly realm through special activities in the locality such as the parish, the union. individuals or individuals like priests, bishops, etc. But criticism and praise according to this view are not necessarily correct to apply to the whole Church, especially to distinguish an individual or local mistakes. the way does not accurately reflect the guidelines or teachings of the Lord and the Church. The Church has experienced many waves from inside and out and as recently, events within the Vatican are only local and isolated. The Church of the Lord has experienced many turbulent winds for two thousand years, still sustaining because of the Church's support.
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7. THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE REDUCED THE BLOOD TO VERIFY THE LORD. Since the early years of the Church have been martyrdom and in every time and place continuously, many people have died or are willing to die for the Tao. These people belong to all sectors, people are naive, but the faith is strong and strong, others belong to the right-to-left distinction, strong reasoning. They cannot be enchanted or joking.
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8. WHY THE FAMILY LICENSE. When Jesus was in the world, He performed many miracles: the dead rose cured the sick people who were as crippled, blind, dumb from illness. No one dares to contradict even the enemies of God. Two thousand years, so many miracles still happen. Certainly, there are some untrustworthy miracles or perhaps coincidence but there are certainly thousands of very obvious miracles that even hostile Church scientists cannot deny. So it must be recognized as a miracle and thus must realize that God has the power to perform miracles.
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9. HOW MUCH HOW DOES THE RESPONSIBILITY DISAPPEAR THE LORD? During the past two thousand years, the Church has always been destroyed everywhere. The enemies of the Church have used every means: direct killing, slaughtering, or indirectly using culture, propaganda, making it difficult to practice religion. Some people bring science to prove that science is everything, God is dead, etc.
But God still exists and grows. This proves that the Church is orthodox by God.
The Church will still be defended because the Church is still a voice for the righteousness of charity, against all injustice, against all kinds of social vices, etc.
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10. WHAT IF THERE IS NO LORD, THIS LIFE WILL NOT BE VARY. We cannot explain how many injustice and unreasonable things happen before us. The good people are suppressed while the wicked are wealthy; poverty, disease, war; centenarians, premature dead at birth ...
Pope Benedict XVI when asked why there is suffering, He answered: He still learns. We cannot use words to answer clearly but if we believe that God is a good Father, we can experience the problem more easily.
(He still avoided writing details, but in this section, Ba must be intermingled here to help clarify: When Ngoc, Ba's beloved child and sister of her children, has cancer and dies. In time painfully long, one day he reflected on Jesus asking the Father to cup the bitterness, the Father did not accept the plea and still forced his beloved son to go all the way to death to complete the program. To redeem humanity, for a moment, the light of his eyes and a soft feeling appeared, it was the Lord's plan for Ngoc, the Lord gave her eight children to her parents, now God regained her There is a kid by the time, so if there is NO LORD there is NOT enough.
Now in old age, Ba is even more poignant because he has religion, if he dies, he has no belief in the next life, how the rest of this life will be empty and bored.
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CONCLUSION: DO NOT NEED TO CHANGE THE LORD BY THE LETTERS EXCELLENT ONLY Because I AM A CONVENIENT. The common concept of people is to "eat trees that fence trees" or "mother sing praise".
The concept of many of us while doing mission is to argue with the object to win. So sometimes we resort to forced arguments that we also know in our hearts are reluctant arguments. Young people today prefer analyzing and better reasoning than before, reasoning and overwhelming reasoning of the mouth are not suitable. Good reasoning can lock the object but the OBJECT that TAM does not subdue.
MANY PROBLEMS THAT SHOULD NEED TO BE FIRST, for example:
I know today that there may be people on other planets. So are they like us guilty and do God redeem them? Do they have the Tao like us?
Or if some scientist dares to create a fake person (clone) does this person have a soul?
My friends and I, during leisure time drinking tea, had these murmur discussions. There are very reluctant answers, but now everyone agrees that we should refrain from humbling to acknowledge that we do not know, then we will learn more ... But at the same time remind us that God is The Almighty, He created everything from the beginning and He also knows everything that is going on today and tomorrow. He has the answer to all.
Nguyen That - Khe
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