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By: Brian Holdsworth
As someone who waited to have sex before I was married, I had a lot of people tell me how doomed my marriage was going to be as a result. They would point out that I wouldn’t know how to keep my wife happy in the boudoir and that I would need to make sure that we were compatible before getting married. I guess the logic is sorta like with a car. You wouldn’t buy a car until you take it out for a spin first right? Well, maybe, except I don’t like to think of my wife as a car, but as a person. And furthermore, notice how self centered that thinking is. It's like saying," I have to put her to the test to make sure she's good enough for me". A marriage is about letting go of your selfish tendencies, but if your thinking is in that frame of mind going in, I can expect that you’re going to have some problems.
Mislabeled
By: Brian Holdsworth
Consider a woman who has just made a significant mistake at work. That mistake has now cost the company she works for and the manager is trying to figure out what the source of the mistake was. When he asks the woman who is responsible, she is confronted with a desire to lie in the hopes that she won’t be punished for her mistake. In spite of that desire, she decides to tell the truth and face whatever consequences are due to her. Now, the question I want to invite you to consider is this: should she be considered a liar because she had a natural desire to lie but chose not to? In other words, are our categories (in this case liars) based on our emotional desires or on our actual choices and subsequent actions?
Defeats the Purpose
By: Brian Holdsworth
What's the purpose of the door then?
Have you ever been in a situation where you were contemplating the practicality of something and the notion was eventually defeated by the realization that the particular something in question would become absurd in its use? You may have even heard yourself say, "It would defeat the purpose". That's a pretty common expression. This is often the case when we're making a choice about something. For example, if you were looking to buy a computer and you only needed it for home use in your office. Considering the type of use you're going to get out of it, you wouldn't take much time to consider a laptop for your new purchase. Obviously that type of use of the laptop would defeat the purpose of owning one. It simply wouldn't make any sense to buy one in this case and would be a waste of resources. Or how about buying a new car? If you are a young single person and only needed it to get yourself around town, you wouldn't consider buying a minivan because that would defeat the purpose. Again it wouldn't make any sense.
Fundamentalism Runs Both Ways
By: Brian Holdsworth
A recent strain of Fundamentalist-Atheist arguments against theism, popularized by personalities such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and, to a lesser extent, Bill Maher (with his crowning achievement: a movie called “Religulous”), tend to run along the lines of, “There is no evidence for God” (I say, ‘to a lesser extent’ with respect to Bill Maher because he is limited to a very unscholarly medium; pseudo Hollywood agenda-mentaries, which are not accountable to any form of bibliographical citation or standard forms of documented research). The argument they use makes an assumption that possibly helps to explain it a bit further. By ‘evidence’; they mean that the omnipotent omniscient God of monotheism, who created matter, space, and time, cannot be observed or understood via the Scientific Method, therefore, He must not exist. This is not the only argument that they use against theism, however; of what I’ve heard and read, it seems to be the most common which is why I want to consider it.
Wounded Children, Wounded Church
By Fr. Mike Mireau
So once again, AGAIN, the headlines are filled with bad news, of child abuse perpetrated by Priests, covered up by bishops - this time in Ireland, where Catholicism is as interwoven into the national identity as shamrocks and green beer - and now in Europe. Its the same sad story we saw a few years back in the U.S., and over a decade ago here in Canada.
Redefining Your Neighbor
By Brian Holdsworth
It seems to me that one of the biggest problems, if not the biggest, with our world stems from our apathy towards our neighbors. Jesus spoke a lot about our neighbors and gave some incredible examples of what it means to be a neighbor. You don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate the timeless wisdom of the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). The contemporary usage of the word neighbor usually seems to amount to people around us, but in that teaching, Jesus specifically singles out one of the characters as being a true neighbor and then He told us to “go and do likewise”.
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The opinions and ideas expressed in these articles are merely those of the individual contributing them. The Point YA Ministry does not necessarily endorse these views. Nothing written on this site should be considered an authoritative representation of the Catholic Church or Her teachings.