Category: Frequently Asked Questions

Due to the thwarting effects of sin in our world, God’s love for us is often hard to see or feel.  But because God DOES love us, he instituted a way for his life and love to come to us and reside within us.  God created the sacraments as physical signs of his love, using rituals and beautiful liturgies that humans can experience.  However, the sacraments of the Catholic Church...

What is love? The simplest ways to define love could be as follows: Love is an emotion, a feeling of strong attraction and connection to someone or something. Love is a choice that we make to put another’s needs before their own, with such empathy and resolve that if their needs are not met, neither are ours. Thereby, the well-being of both are united as one. Love, at its core,...

Advent is a liturgical season celebrated by most Christian denominations during the four weeks preceding Christmas Day.  It is an important time of the year for Christians, but largely ignored by secular and popular culture.  It is typically overshadowed by the “holiday season” of shopping, parties and charity.  Most people think of Advent as a time to wait and prepare for Christmas, but this is only partially true.  Advent is...

Below are some questions on sin that were originally posted on Quora, along with my short but direct answers.  This collection of questions is somewhat random in nature, and does not represent an all-reaching approach to the concept of sin, but does provide some level of insight.  It seems that people are curious about it, and fearful at the same time.  While sin is popularly portrayed as doing something bad,...

God did not create evil. Evil is the unfortunate result of God creating beings with free will… free to love or free to pursue their own interests, outside of, or against, his will. Some have said that love and evil are 2 sides of the same paper… it is not possible to create only one side of a sheet of paper. God knew that creating out of love involved risk,...

It is true, but the focus needs to be on the word “repent”. Repenting means not only being sorry, but sincerely declaring that you will do all in your power to not commit that sin again. Repenting means that you will live your life differently from that point forward. It is not fun, in fact it is usually painful in that you are so sorry for the hurt that your...

A sane or mentally healthy person would not die for something that they believed to be a lie. Therefore, either they were correct in their beliefs about Jesus and in spreading Christianity, or they were insane / mentally ill. As others have mentioned, there have been many who have died for their beliefs, even if obviously false or crazy sounding. Typically these people were not of sound mind. Of course,...

It is hard to say from your question without specific examples. Often in the bible, readers focus on single particulars without proper context or consideration of literary style, which varies greatly throughout. There are common themes and threads across all the books that are often missed. So, I would infer that the opposite is true, and the God is good and Satan is evil. Using some of what was mentioned...

The Bible is primarily a collection of books on how God revealed himself to us, little by little, in accordance with the spiritual maturity of humankind over the ages. The pinnacle of revelation was with Jesus Christ, who as part of the Trinity, revealed the Father and Spirit to us to the degree that we know all that we need / can know. The rest of the New Testament describes...

The story of Adam & Eve provides insight into how we humans came to find ourselves struggling with right vs. wrong, with the world in a fallen state full of temptations. The actions of the first humans had lasting consequences for all of us, because spiritual traits are inherited as well as physical traits. Saying that God is “punishing us” is not the best way to express this. His initial...