a thinking thing

On God's Voice

Yay! I did my oral defence already, it was not so satisfying though. I came to Ms. Chan's office, which I was quite afraid of being the killing field, execution site, for me and my group mate, quite early. My group mates had not come yet. I then did the finishing touch for my preparation for the presentation while waiting for my group mates. They came just in time when the previous group walked out of my scary yet kind tutor's office with confusion and shock on their faces. Having not enough time to even feel nervous, we walked inside her office, pretending to be ready to present our project and expecting to be asked with difficult questions, some general and some specific ones, by her. To my surprise, she directly asked us a question to begin the oral defence. We answered, and some other questions and answers went back and forth between her and us. We were very confused back there, since the oral defence was supposed to be started with our presentation of our project, and after which she should start asking questions that we had to answer. In contrary, the oral defence went on with questions and answers until she stopped asking questions and dismissed us. We went out with confused faces, still did not believe what had just happened. Where was the presentation? Haha.. who knows? Probably it was the same thing that made the previous group also left with confused faces. Overall, the oral defence was quite OK, although I did not manage to answer many questions. It took about fifteen minutes, which can be considered fast, in comparison with the previous group that took the whole thirty minutes as scheduled. Anyway, I am happy now, only one CA left, the final quiz for ME2103 next monday, and I just played FIFA 2004, and the singing practice for ICy's Exam Mass was quite refreshing, although not many people attended. Haha..

On to the serious things. Following from the previous post, I still do not have a sound foundation for my faith. Had not I been born in Catholic family, baptized when still being baby, sent to Catholic schools in which I found a whole lot of friends of the same faith as mine, and happened or fated, no I am not talking about pre-determinism, to meet so many people who constantly helped and encouraged me with my faith, I would presume that there was small chance of me being Catholic and having this Catholic faith. I start contemplating on how the very first disciples of Jesus gained their belief. How did they know that they were on the right path? How did they convince themselves that they were believing the right faith? How did they know that what Jesus said should be accepted as belief?

One of the objections that the anti-Catholics nowadays may assert is that Jesus was just another philosopher, whose teaching could be either accepted or rejected or taken as a belief or trashed away by anyone, whose story of life was just exaggerated from one generation to another, whose claim of being the Son of God and of His resurrection were questionable and should be examined thoroughly from many different points of view as well as approach. Another objection that I have heard is that most of Jesus' disciples were fishermen, planters, slaves, disabled persons, peasants, pagans, and other people of that sort, who were not intellectually dependable and reliable, and therefore their claims of bare-witnessing what Jesus did are also questionable. I am sure many Christian thinkers have already provided their defence towards these attacks, and of course the other attacks as well, as I have read and heard some, but most of them base their argument on history and Bible, which may become sources of other problems.

The main thing here is how they could possibly know that it was God speaking to them. How did Abraham, Noah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Moses, and the other prophets know that it was God speaking to them through their vision, dreams, and experiences? Then how can I determine if someone who said that he just heard God speaking to him, or saw a vision in which God sent a message to him, or dreamed something related to God, is telling the truth in the sense that what he heard or saw or dreamed was really God speaking to him? How should Judah people believe that Jeremiah was telling the truth when he foresaw the destruction of that city instead of the other false prophets that announced the glory of the city? How should the Pharisees and people in that time who went against Him knew that what they did was wrong? How can I know that people next to me is saying the truth? How can I know that this whisper in my heart is God's voice? How can I assure that this feeling is what God says to me and not what my own mind conceive to be what God is saying?

posted by nicho @ 10:39 PM