Do Good, Avoid Evil, Pray for Help

Polls abound showing more and more people falling away from their church and practice of faith, with an increase in the unchurched or unaffiliated who don’t identify with any religion nor adhere to faith based principles. That ‘dictatorship of relativism’ Pope Benedict XVI warned about years ago has widely spread, and people formerly unlikely to go along with ideas the dominant culture promotes according to wherever prevailing winds blow at this time, are either believing them or are at least willing to let them advance through their silence.

There are consequences to these choices and actions. Consider Pascal’s Wager. Decide either to live and act as if God and the devil exist, and hence spending eternity in heaven or hell, or to live and act as if that’s all superstitious and outdated mythology, or some other unevolved belief.

Fr. Robert Spitzer has spent years and years helping people do more than make a leap of faith on that wager, he’s educating the public about evidence of God’s existence from science, evidence of a soul from medical studies, and much more (like the constantly recurring question ‘Why would an all-loving God allow suffering?’). There’s so much here, and though Magis Center is one big treasure trove of teaching and resources on faith and reason, happiness and transcendence, spiritual and moral growth, with documentation from peer reviewed studies, Fr. Spitzer also runs this site with solid, science infused answers to questions on faith. It’s useful for seekers and skeptics alike, and helpful for just about anyone.

Fr. Spitzer’s array of outstanding books can be found at those sites as well, including the quartet Finding True Happiness: Satisfying Our Restless Hearts; The Soul’s Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason; God So Loved the World: Clues to Our Transcendent Destiny from the Revelation of Jesus and The Light Sines on in the Darkness: Transforming Suffering through Faith.

Fr. Spitzer continued publishing on that latter theme with a new ‘Called Out of Darkness’ trilogy, of which the first two volumes quickly got out into hands including mine. I had a compelling conversation with him about the latest, Escape from Evil’s Darkness, in a new episode of In the Forum and if it seems like a long conversation, know that it easily could have been three times that, and it may become a series of conversations to break open his books and get the powerful teachings out there for listeners to engage.

The book and this conversation about it is filled with fundamental guidance for recognizing many ways evil manifests in the world on a large scale and a personal one, resisting temptation or the lure of soul-crushing behaviors, attachments, addictions and/or choices, and making the spiritual journey from despair and darkness to the light of God’s love. It explores virtues and vices, with practical ways anyone can live a more peaceful and rewarding life in Christ. Even those who may currently be unbelievers.

Consider that choice Pascal posed, that a rational person may (or should) decide to live as if God exists, and try to believe in God. If God doesn’t exist, went the argument, that person will have only lost some finite, earthly pleasures. But if God does exist, the person who lived according to that belief can have the infinite gain of eternity in heaven and avoid the infinite pain of eternity in hell. Fr. Spitzer’s prodigious writings and teachings help people consider that in a fuller, livelier, most engaging way.