October 13, 2025 • 54 mins
What if the world isn’t a loose chain of accidents but a held story—with freedom that matters and guidance you can trust? We take an unflinching look at divine providence: how Jefferson and Adams spoke of it, why Washington leaned on it, and where that old vocabulary still speaks to modern hearts wrestling with chaos, choice, and meaning.
We trace the classic idea that God sustains creation moment by moment—“powerful, yet gentle”—without erasing human agency. Along the way, we challenge the cult of pure autonomy and the shallow promise of happiness chased apart from righteousness. One thread runs through it all: evil moves fast and breaks things, but good has weight, permanence, and the quiet strength to outlast. From a priest’s personal story of guidance through setbacks, to a philosopher’s take on evil as privation, to a rabbi’s reminder that blessings train us to see the pantry of the earth as gift, this conversation is both rigorous and human. We put reason in its right place, honoring its reach and admitting its limits, and we ask what science actually discovers versus what it creates.
If Providence ties a nation’s lasting joy to the virtue of its people, then formation matters—at home, in community, and in public life. The simple test we offer is practical: does this choice build or break? Does it cultivate what’s been entrusted, or corrode it? Come for the founders’ quotes; stay for a hard-won hope that neither denies suffering nor surrenders to it. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who loves philosophy and history, and leave a review with one place you’ve seen quiet guidance in your own life.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_09 (00:00):
There's something happening here.
What it is ain't exactly clear.
There's a man with a gun overthere.
Telling me I got to beware.
I think it's time we stop.
Children, what's that sound?
(00:22):
Everybody look what's goingdown.
Nobody's right if everybody'swrong.
(00:44):
Young people speak in theirminds.
I get so much resistance fromthe heart of the time we stop.
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's goingdown.
SPEAKER_12 (00:59):
Welcome to a show of faith, where professor, priest,
millennial, and rabbi discusstheology, philosophy, morality,
and ethics, and anything else ofinterest in religion.
If you have any response to ourtopics or any comments regarding
what we say, we'd love to hearfrom you.
Email us at ashow of faith1070at gmail.com.
You can hear our shows again andagain by listening pretty much
(01:20):
everywhere podcasts are heard.
Our priest is Father MarioArroyo, retired pastor of St.
Cyril of Alexandria, the 10,000block of Westheimer.
Hello.
Our professor David Capes is ourProtestant minister.
He's the director of academicprogramming for the Lanier
Theological Library.
SPEAKER_11 (01:35):
Great to be back with you guys.
SPEAKER_12 (01:38):
Always glad to have you back.
Rudy Kong is our millennial.
He's a systems engineer,master's degree in theology from
the University of St.
Thomas, and I'm Stuart Federal.
Hey, retired rabbi ofCongregation Shar Shalom in the
Clear Lake area of Houston,Texas.
Miranda's our board operator,and together tonight with
Valerie, helps us soundfantastic.
SPEAKER_03 (01:56):
Yay!
SPEAKER_11 (01:57):
Yay.
Way to go.
Hey, I'm glad to be back withyou guys.
SPEAKER_12 (02:07):
Well, it is very difficult, but we braved through
this.
SPEAKER_11 (02:10):
Somehow.
Somehow.
Somehow you did it.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_12 (02:13):
Actually, we didn't have a problem, did we?
No, we'll never do, but let himthink what he wants.
SPEAKER_11 (02:18):
That's the way it is.
Rudy, hope you're doing welldown there in Guatemala.
Tonight we're going to talkabout uh a subject, an idea that
uh is something from the past,and yet it's it's with us still.
But we no longer kind of in themodern world think these ways,
and I think we should.
So here's here's the idea.
Let me let me read uh to youfrom the Declaration of
(02:43):
Independence, and it's a conceptcalled providence.
And this is how Thomas Jeffersonended uh the Declaration.
And for the purpose of thisdeclaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection ofdivine providence, we mutually
(03:03):
pledge to each other our lives,our fortunes, and our sacred
honors.
Our sacred honor.
Now, we we often hear that lastpart.
We pledge to each other ourlives, our fortunes, our sacred
honor.
And but very often we leave offthat part of the sentence, which
is prior that says we have afirm reliance on the protection
(03:25):
of divine providence.
SPEAKER_12 (03:27):
Yes, they cut the God part out.
SPEAKER_11 (03:29):
That's very often what happens.
Uh, and that's what has happenedin modern.
So tonight I thought we wouldtalk about the whole idea of
providence.
And it's it's an idea that it'sa word that we don't use very
often, you know, in in modernterms.
We'll often talk about God or orthe a title for God.
(03:50):
But when you go back to read ourfounding fathers, our four
fathers and three mothers, whenyou go back to read those
documents, you discover thatthey often talked about
providence.
And that was their way of givinga nod to the fact that God does,
in fact, govern the world andthe universe.
(04:11):
Without, at the same time,erasing our uh ability to make
decisions, to have agencyourselves.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_12 (04:21):
Because that's the other side of the coin.
If God controls everything, thenthere's no free will.
If there's no free will, we'renot responsible for our
behavior.
Blame God.
God is the one who ordained it,providentially.
SPEAKER_11 (04:34):
Yeah.
And I think that's the waysometimes it's used or misused.
Yeah, it it that um so so uh Ihope that's that's a kind of a
clear enough introduction.
Let me read another passage fromour founding fathers, this time
from Samuel Adams.
This was not the beer maker, butthe uh the the patriot and the
(04:57):
and this is what he said.
I thought it was wonderful.
This was during the revolutionitself.
He said, there are instances of,I would say, an almost
astonishing providence in ourfavor.
Our success has staggered ourenemies and almost given faith
to infidels so that we may trulysay it is not our own arm which
(05:23):
has saved us.
The hand of heaven appears tohave led us on.
That's an even a more cleardeclaration of the fact that in
in that particular moment, thesemen, who were sons and daughters
of the Enlightenment, right?
These people who were sons anddaughters of the Enlightenment,
(05:45):
said that Providence was in ourfavor and that people uh people
were staggered by how the factthat these this little army of
rebels was victorious over thepowerful and wealthy and
well-funded uh British Army.
SPEAKER_12 (06:05):
I can't remember the details, but there's an article
I read a long time ago thatspoke directly to this.
That there's so many things thatoccurred in the Revolutionary
War that really seemed like Godwas that God wanted the United
States to succeed, to come intoexistence.
SPEAKER_11 (06:23):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_12 (06:24):
And I wish I could remember half of them.
I wish I remembered some ofthem, but it gives credibility
actually to what he said.
SPEAKER_11 (06:33):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, he wasn't the onlyone to to to write about this,
and and George Washington wasalso a big fan of talking about
providence.
So I thought we would just sortof banner that around tonight to
talk about God working in theworld.
We we don't actually think aboutthat very much in in our way of
(06:53):
thinking.
We we look at the world as beingoperated by mechanical sources
and powers and material things,and we don't really give credit
to God, the invisible hand in inour creation.
Let me give a dev definition,and then we can we can move from
there.
Um the idea of providence hasbeen around in Christianity.
(07:19):
I don't know about Judaism.
I don't know if they use theterm.
100,000 years.
So it's been around, yeah.
I mean, you you read Habakkuk,you read you you read Isaiah,
you read, you read a lot ofthings there, and it makes you
understand that that God is atwork at that point.
Um the idea of providence hasbeen around for a long time, and
it especially with Augustine andsome of the others.
(07:40):
It comes from the Latin wordProvidentia, which means
foresight or divine guidance.
That's the kind of the idea ofit.
It's not necessarily that thingsare determined.
It's not necessarily that thingsare fixed and that fate is
working.
Right, yeah.
In fact, providence is thebelief that the world is
(08:05):
governed not by chance, not byfate, but by a purposeful divine
will, that God is at work in andthrough history.
And so that's what I want totalk a little bit about tonight,
and to for us to sort of resetin a kind an agenda that I think
(08:26):
that sometimes people have, andthinking that it's just all
about free will, it's all abouthumans, it's all about this
happened because this nationrose up against that nation and
et cetera, and and and don't seethe the hand of God in through
and behind.
Doesn't mean that these thingsdon't happen through the
instrumentality of human beingsand the agency of human beings
(08:49):
very often, but that to say thatthat's the only power, the only
influence at work, I think is togo way too far.
SPEAKER_12 (08:58):
And you have plenty of instances.
Why did Assyria take over thenorthern kingdom?
God's providence.
SPEAKER_11 (09:04):
Right.
SPEAKER_12 (09:05):
God used them to punish the northern kingdom.
Why did the Babylonians takeover the southern kingdom?
Same idea.
You get that repeatedly throughthe biblical writer.
SPEAKER_11 (09:15):
Right.
And I I it it's interestingbecause I you know, I was
reading uh I think it was Judgesor Josh, it isn't judges
recently.
Right.
And then God raised up thisother power, right?
SPEAKER_12 (09:32):
In other words, God enters into what we now call
history.
Right.
Because it's it's I don't knowthat they had a idea that oh
look, Samson just did something.
That's he made history.
Yeah.
They just went through life, andnow we know it's history.
So God has a hand in history.
SPEAKER_11 (09:51):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_12 (09:51):
Is how he understood the events of history.
SPEAKER_11 (09:54):
Yeah.
So what do what do Catholics dois there a a doctrine of
providence?
Oh, yeah, very definitely.
I mean, is that part of yourideas?
SPEAKER_06 (10:02):
Very definitely.
And all this time I was thinkingof uh uh there's uh prayer and I
can I was trying to look it up,but it's I can't get a hold of
it.
But um there's an opening prayerthat has always impressed me in
the Catholic liturgy.
And it says uh something likeGracious Lord, your hands are
powerfully yet gently guide themoments of our day.
(10:24):
And that has always struck me.
That's the two the two wordspowerfully yet gently guides the
moments of our day.
And that's uh divine providence.
Divine providence is a very,very strong power.
It it's a very gentle power.
And it reminds me of the powerof water.
(10:44):
Um, if you look at a um at acanyon and you have a little
river running through it at thebottom of a canyon, it looks so
nice and peaceful.
And yet that little river carvedthat canyon.
SPEAKER_11 (10:57):
Yeah and a rock.
SPEAKER_06 (10:59):
That's right.
And that's why that's the way II like to uh understand divine
providence.
It's the the power andgentleness, but it's very
powerful.
And we don't see it because wethink that uh something in order
to have power has to be harsh.
And yet the gentleness of God uhguides the moments of our day.
(11:20):
Notice it doesn't overpower usand make us, it guides the
moments of our days.
And so I yeah, I'm very, very,very much a believer in that.
I've seen it in my own life.
You know, um when I look back,see the problem with not the
problem with I I don't know whatit's like to call it.
But when I look back at my ownlife, the fact that I've ended
(11:45):
up here, you know, the fact thatHouston.
Well not only in Houston, butyou know, the fact that I came
to Houston because of a a realproblem psychological that I was
having.
The problem the fact that I wasfired from a janitorial job and
and and I wound up gettinganother janitorial job at the
(12:05):
seminary, the fact that I thethe fact that I was going
through a conversion at the sametime that I got a janitorial job
at the seminary, and the factthat right then is how I
received the moment the the callto the priesthood.
I mean I I I look back and nowcan it all be interpreted as
well, you know, it could havehappened that way anyway you
(12:26):
can't.
But but I start looking and youlook at a life and you go it
doesn't seem like random.
You know, and and so for meprovidence is is a very
important, very importantconcept.
And you can see that providenceone of the things I think I I
(12:48):
tell people regularly is one ofthe reasons I really do believe
that the Catholic Church uh hasbeen guided by God's hand is
because you can't have that manyscrewed-up people in history uh
guiding a church and it hassurvived of a million people for
(13:08):
two thousand years.
And we if it would have beenleft up to us, we would have
screwed it over a hundred.
You would have broken it down along time ago.
So I don't know.
I you know, you can you can havethe problem with it with it is
that you can always chuck it upto chance.
But uh there's too muchcoincidence for it to be chance.
SPEAKER_12 (13:31):
And you know what they say about coincidence?
That's when God operatesincognito.
unknown (13:36):
I like that.
I like that.
SPEAKER_11 (13:39):
Rudy, what I I know we've got to go to break here in
just a second, but let's let'sgive you the last couple of
minutes of of this particularsegment.
Um this is this is language thatwe have largely abandoned.
Uh we hear it, we read it a lotin history, but over the last
couple hundred years we we havebeen less uh vocal about it.
(14:03):
But this idea that not just inour lives, but in in the big
swath of history, that God is issomehow at work.
And we don't always know it atthe time.
Sometimes we do see it,sometimes we do feel it, we we
we recognize it.
But at other times uh we seem tobe m uh uh blissfully unaware of
(14:28):
it, I suppose, in a way.
So so what are your thoughts onon this whole notion of
providence?
SPEAKER_14 (14:34):
Bl blissfully unaware, I think, is uh Well, I
think excuse me, Rudy.
SPEAKER_06 (14:39):
Uh you are too important to us to start talking
about this.
Oh, there is thirty secondsleft.
SPEAKER_11 (14:46):
Is that all we have left?
That's all we have left.
Okay, well see, I am not the thetimekeeper.
SPEAKER_06 (14:51):
I want Rudy to have his full time to be able to
talk.
SPEAKER_11 (14:54):
All right, let's do it.
Let's do it.
SPEAKER_14 (14:55):
God's providence.
SPEAKER_06 (14:56):
Yes.
SPEAKER_11 (14:56):
In the providence.
SPEAKER_06 (14:57):
Not only God's providence, it's Mario's
intelligence.
This is 1070 KNTH, and we'll beright back.
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SPEAKER_05 (17:07):
Scott Jennings sees a clear message from the
president.
SPEAKER_07 (17:10):
Here's the quote from the president.
If Hamas rejects the deal, thenas you know, maybe you have our
full backing to do what you haveto do.
The ultimate result must be theelimination of any danger posed
in the region, and the danger iscaused by Hamas.
SPEAKER_05 (17:26):
Absolute moral clarity from the president.
Weekdays at one, right before QQed at two, on AM 1070 and FM one
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SPEAKER_11 (18:21):
I don't hear that either.
I'm squinting, but the pain isso powerful.
SPEAKER_12 (18:29):
Welcome back to a show of faith on Antins Seven of
the Ant.
SPEAKER_06 (18:32):
Okay, we go back to Rudy then.
SPEAKER_12 (18:34):
Rudy.
SPEAKER_14 (18:36):
Yeah.
So we're talking about theProvidence is God continuous
governance of creation.
That's sort of how I interpretthat.
(19:35):
We discovered this.
I think that we discoveredsomething gravity for all the
turn.
SPEAKER_11 (19:45):
Yes, we discovered this.
We discovered gravity.
SPEAKER_14 (19:49):
Right.
We discovered gravity.
We discovered quantum mechanics.
I think hopefully because wethink we're so good at
observation that we've been ableto put things together, right?
Like gravity.
SPEAKER_06 (22:27):
No, I what I normally a little image that I
made of what a judgment would belike.
You know, that uh when you whenyou die you you will probably go
in front of a mirror.
But that mirror will not reflectyour um physical shape.
It will show you the outcome ofall of the decisions that you
(22:51):
have made because each of thosedecisions has covered your
character.
What's interesting is that theword character comes from the
word character.
And so every decision you makeis a character on the show
(23:16):
before.
And uh I think that on the data,you are going to see the outcome
of all the decisions that youmade.
And then you'll see who youreally are.
(24:06):
You will say yes.
In this life, you say yes, andthen maybe some people may say
no, I don't want to I wanna beyou, I wanna be you want to be
(24:31):
God will take a line from yourfather and he will say you get
to be a human being created inyour own image like that.
You know what the name of ahuman being created by a human
being is FrankensteinFrankenstein.
You get to be a spiritualFrankenstein with the rest of
(24:54):
eternity, and that is calledhell.
SPEAKER_11 (24:57):
Hmm, interesting, interesting.
Wonderful.
Hey, thanks.
I I know we gotta go to a breakhere.
Uh thanks for that.
I I I really appreciate Rudyyour thoughts on that because
that helped me think throughsome things that I need to think
through for me and also now forthe rest of the show.
We're gonna be back to more talkmore about Providence here.
SPEAKER_06 (25:17):
After we come back from the break, which is a
providential thing.
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SPEAKER_05 (26:56):
In one horrific act of violence, a voice of freedom
has been lost.
Charlie Kirk was the leader of agroundbreaking movement for
patriotism in this country.
And the country will sorely misshis guidance.
We pray for Charlie's family asthey battle through this sudden
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(27:16):
Rest in peace to an Americanhero.
Charlie Kirk.
SPEAKER_11 (28:26):
It's a way of speaking about history.
It's a way of speaking aboutwhat is the reality of the
world.
And in fact, uh what Rudy wastalking about a moment ago,
there's an aspect of providencethat describes the idea that God
is at work in sustainingcreation now.
Not just a matter of creating itin the first place, but also
(28:49):
sustaining that creation.
Well, here's a statement made byThomas Jefferson in his first
inaugural address in 1801.
Let us then with courage andconfidence pursue our own
federal and Republicanprinciples, acknowledging and
adoring an overrulingprovidence, which by all its
(29:14):
dispensations proves that itdelights in the happiness of man
here and his greater happinesshereafter.
So he's he's talking here, he'stalking recognizing that said we
are to move forward, we are tomove forward with this
government.
It was 1801, right?
(29:35):
He was the third, I think, thirdpresident of the United States.
We're to move forward with thisgovernment, pursuing these
principles, but we acknowledgeand we adore this overruling
providence.
Now, providence is alwayscapitalized.
It's almost as if it's the namefor God or a a substitute for
God.
What do you what do you call it?
(29:55):
Circumlocution or something likethat.
It's a substitute for that.
And d recognizing that Goddelights in the the the
contentment and happiness ofhuman beings here, but also in
the world to come.
Um this whole idea of providenceand history, uh Father Mario?
SPEAKER_06 (30:18):
No, I I want you to finish.
SPEAKER_11 (30:19):
Yeah, yeah.
The the whole idea of ofprovidence here, you know, the
idea that history is not justone darn thing after another.
You've heard that statement.
History is just one thing afteranother thing, and they're
related.
SPEAKER_12 (30:35):
Well it doesn't say much.
SPEAKER_11 (30:37):
But but it but it but that if that's all it is,
what what we're what we'resaying is that that's not all it
is.
Um there are a lot of darnthings that happen and terrible
things that happen, but there'salso wonderful things that
happen along the way.
So this whole notion ofprovidence is that God is
(30:57):
actively sustaining the world,keeping it together, but he's
also now directing and guidingthe world.
And our that does not erase ourhuman need and our human ability
to choose and make choices, tochoose good, to choose evil,
(31:18):
even.
Um but it but all of all of ourchoices are within that
framework of God's overoverruling of the world.
Father?
SPEAKER_06 (31:30):
Well, I I I just wanted to to caution something
because you said you said thatGod wants our our our happiness
in this world.
SPEAKER_11 (31:40):
Well that was Thomas Jefferson.
SPEAKER_06 (31:43):
Because you know, I I've been enthralled lately with
the moment uh that when Jesuscomes down from the mountain of
the Transfiguration and he tellsPeter, you know, you are Peter
and upon this rock, that kind ofstuff.
And then uh as soon as hefinishes that, he says, Now I
(32:04):
must go to Jerusalem where Iwill be um arrested, killed,
tortured, and I will becrucified and I'll rise in the
third day.
Of course they they understoodrising in the rising in the
future.
And and and then uh when Jesusfinishes saying that, Peter says
(32:24):
something extremely normal.
Uh he says, May that not happento you, Master.
Now Jesus' response should havebeen to thank him.
Because that's normal.
I mean, if I told you after thisradio program I was gonna go to
Target and I was gonna bekidnapped and tortured, you you
(32:44):
would say, that's right.
God forbid.
God forbid, or may that nothappen to you.
That is normal.
Peter was saying somethingnormal.
Yet instead of being thanked,Jesus says, get behind me, you
Satan.
Now the re the but what it whatstrikes me very interesting is
what he says right after that.
(33:06):
He says, You are thinking likeman does and not like God.
Which tells me that sometimesnormal human thinking is not
God's thinking.
Uh and and so explicitly saidthat.
SPEAKER_12 (33:21):
My way is not your way.
SPEAKER_06 (33:23):
No, no.
He said, You are thinking likeman does.
SPEAKER_11 (33:28):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Your your my ways are not yourways, my thoughts are not your
thoughts.
SPEAKER_06 (33:33):
That's right.
SPEAKER_11 (33:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06 (33:34):
But sometimes it's just, you know, because w see, I
don't want us to have a kind ofa Pollyanna understanding of
divine providence.
Because I can just imagine, youknow, Jesus the night before his
crucifixion at the Garden ofGethsemane saying, Oh God, I
just want to be happy.
I just want to be happy.
SPEAKER_04 (33:52):
Yeah, I think that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_06 (33:52):
You know, and and and saying, I trust in your
providence, you let me be happy.
No.
You had to let go.
So it's a complex, it's aprovidence that seeks our
ultimate good, right, but notnecessarily our approximate
good.
SPEAKER_11 (34:09):
Yeah.
No, I think that's that's right.
I of course this is veryconsistent with what we find in
the Declaration, right?
Uh we hold these truths to beself-evident, all men created
equal, and and we are pursuinguh uh the pursuit of peace and
happiness and and those kinds ofI'm trying to remember the exact
word words right now.
SPEAKER_06 (34:28):
But that's interesting because I I gave a
whole sermon on the fact that uhthe the writers of the
Constitution got got somewhatwrong.
First of all, it's notself-evident, uh because they
were in a Christian bubble.
But then the the the other thingis that that uh uh the pursuit
of of happiness is is really anerror.
(34:50):
Uh it's the pursuit uh thescriptures say pursuit
righteousness.
It doesn't say pursuithappiness.
Now the pursuit of righteousnesswill bring you happiness.
But the pursuit of happiness inand of itself is the problem we
have right now.
That everybody is pursuinghappiness, and everybody's
saying saying, you don't tell mehow to pursue it or don't tell
(35:11):
me what happiness is.
SPEAKER_12 (35:12):
Yeah.
And it never ceases to amaze methat in the original writings of
Jefferson it was life, liberty,and the pursuit of property.
unknown (35:22):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_12 (35:23):
Right.
Really?
And he got convinced to changethat, yeah.
SPEAKER_06 (35:25):
The original writing was that I think that was
because it was Rousseau, wasn'tit?
Or or or I can't remember, buthe was copying of one of the
philosophers.
SPEAKER_12 (35:35):
And then they convinced him to change it.
SPEAKER_06 (35:37):
Yeah, yeah.
But but that that the to me, theproblem we have right now.
SPEAKER_12 (35:42):
Is the pursuit of happiness overseeding everything
else.
SPEAKER_06 (35:45):
That's right.
And the individuality, myhappiness and not your
happiness, and I you don't tellher to tell me.
SPEAKER_11 (35:54):
If I pursue happiness for myself, then that
might interfere with yourpursuit of happiness.
And therefore, we got a littlebattle going on at that point.
SPEAKER_12 (36:04):
A long time ago they used to say that your rights
ended where mine began.
People stopped saying that.
Now it's my rights overseeeverybody else's.
SPEAKER_06 (36:14):
Well, the problem the problem I I just have is
that we have gone to the extremeof individualism that there is
no common objective reality.
Notice these days, your realityis yours, my reality is mine.
We have no no common basis onwhich to exist to see, because
we don't see any objectivetruth.
(36:35):
Everything is subjective.
And so if you have everything asobjective, you can turn out to
be I want to be a girl, I wantto be a dolphin.
There's but there's a there's atremendous uh I want to be
Superman.
I want to be Superman, yeah.
You know.
SPEAKER_14 (36:50):
Bottom line, okay.
But if if you really think aboutit at the edges of time,
especially as you reach into thequantum field, everything is in
place.
So it kind of can be true whenwe think about our current
understanding of science and howmuch everything is changing, or
(37:11):
electrons, everything is so wedon't we I mean fundamentally at
a quantum level, we haveabsolutely no idea what's going
on.
So we die under the pursuit ofhyper-rationalism and found that
okay, great, we can measuregravity on this planet, we can
measure certain forces in thecool.
(37:32):
But we can't even solve athree-body problem.
On the surface, right?
(37:52):
One plus one equals two.
That's beautiful.
Right?
Wonderful.
We can all agree on that, right?
But when you really startdigging into it, everything is
just kind of up in the air andcompletely fine, and it's sort
of where we find ourselvescurrently from the heavy
mechanization of the universe.
SPEAKER_06 (38:12):
But but you know, Rudy, that to me, I I it's it it
just goes to prove that reasonby itself does not solve the
problem.
The problem when you have reasonis that reason only is a method,
but it has to start from apoint, a starting point.
And that starting point cannotbe proven.
(38:33):
That is why the founders of thecountry of the country said, we
hold these truths to beself-evident.
They had to have a place tostand.
And and then they could reason,but you can't you can't reason
unless you have a faith b faithstarting point.
We hold these truths to beself-evident.
SPEAKER_11 (38:53):
And and that's what you said earlier that these
things are not self-evident toanyone and everyone through
history.
They are self-evident to thosewho have been living in in the
Judeo-Christian world for 2,000years at that point and the and
beyond and and such.
Um I'm not sure about our time.
(39:14):
Uh, let's let's take a break.
SPEAKER_06 (39:15):
I am sure.
I am sure about our time.
Yeah, so you're the you're theofficial timekeeper.
I am the official timekeeper.
SPEAKER_11 (39:21):
And that is objective reality.
That is objective reality.
SPEAKER_06 (39:26):
And and darn well you should.
This is 1070 KNTH, and we'll beright back.
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SPEAKER_13 (40:31):
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SPEAKER_05 (41:02):
The truth is here.
From Conroe to Aldane, fromUmball to Cyprus Fairbanks, and
all along the North Beltway.
Chris DeGaulle, Mike Eller,Scott Jennings, Hugh Hewitt,
Larry Elder, and Jay Stecula areright here.
(41:27):
FL theater.
SPEAKER_11 (42:21):
I'm trying to remember exactly where I found
this quote, but it's really aquestion, it's a rhetorical
question, and it's begging theanswer no.
SPEAKER_12 (42:29):
No.
SPEAKER_11 (42:30):
Can it what I was just saying?
Well, just listen.
Listen, listen to the questionfirst before you say no.
Um can it be that Providence hasnot connected the permanent
felicity of a nation with itsvirtue?
So what do you think about that?
You're gonna have to say itagain slowly.
(42:54):
That Providence has notconnected the permanent felicity
of a nation with its virtue.
I I think the answer to that isno.
Providence clearly has made aconnection between the fact that
the good of a nation and thevirtue of its people is connect
(43:16):
deeply connected.
SPEAKER_12 (43:17):
David, that is something that has it, my
thinking, I think, has changedon that issue.
I've always really wonderedabout the world, the w the way
God made the world, where ittakes, and we've talked about
this before, but where it takesonly one person to burn down a
building and it takes hundredsof people to rebuild it, that it
(43:39):
seemed that everything wasskewed towards the ease of evil.
But, you know, there's an oldsaying about, and you're gonna
have to help me because I don'tremember it exactly, but it's
something like that the thewheels of justice grind slowly,
but they grind exceedingly fine,something like that.
(44:00):
That ultimately, okay, the wayGod made the world is that evil
will swallow itself, that evilwill make that because of the
nature of evil, it will slowlyeat its own, okay?
It will slowly it will slowlysuccumb to good, that there is
in fact a side of our existencethat leans towards goodness
(44:28):
winning out.
It may take time.
We may not see it, we may noteven be privileged to see it in
our own lifetime.
SPEAKER_11 (44:33):
It is it just the good, though, that wins out?
In other words, is God not atwork in that good?
SPEAKER_12 (44:39):
I'm and God is also possibly in that evil, too.
But it is but it takes a lotlonger.
It still takes a hundred peopleto rebuild a building that one
person destroyed.
Okay, but they will rebuild it.
There is goodness.
It just might take a long timefor it to show itself.
SPEAKER_11 (44:59):
Father, i is he all wet here or is he onto
something?
Well, no, no.
SPEAKER_06 (45:02):
I I think he's on to something, but but there is an
exception, though.
And and of course that is our uhthe exception in the Christian
understanding, because uhbecause Jesus' body was
destroyed.
And uh it didn't take a longtime to recreate him as the
firstborn of the new creation.
SPEAKER_12 (45:22):
Yeah, but that was in your religion that was God
acting.
SPEAKER_06 (45:25):
Yes, right.
SPEAKER_12 (45:26):
So it's still God acting towards good.
SPEAKER_06 (45:28):
That that is correct, yeah.
That is correct.
SPEAKER_11 (45:31):
And and it's not to say that there were not good
people at that time of Jesus,but that the people who had the
power were and and Jesus iscrucified under a Roman on a
Roman cross under a Romancharge.
SPEAKER_06 (45:48):
It's just that of evil, the reason evil evil
cannot stand.
Evil cannot stand because umevil is nothing.
I mean, it's an attack on being.
Now I always like to to Mattjust give the example.
If I if I grab a person's armand it's a perfectly good arm,
(46:09):
that's a good arm.
If I make a cut in it, it's anevil.
But the evil does not exist.
In other words, the e the evilthe the arm can exist without
the cut.
The cut cannot exist without thearm.
SPEAKER_12 (46:26):
Okay, and now you want to translate that?
SPEAKER_06 (46:28):
What that means is that the good can exist by
itself, but the evil is actuallyan attack upon the good.
Yeah.
So ultimately, it requires evildepends on the existence of good
to be able to exist.
SPEAKER_12 (46:43):
And so ultimately it it it's and would we would would
we know what good is withoutbeing able to contrast it with
the evil?
SPEAKER_06 (46:51):
Yes, I I think we could.
Because good God is good.
Anything that exists is good.
SPEAKER_12 (46:58):
And God saw that it was good.
That's right.
But don't we have to have someform of bad to understand or to
no to to value the good?
Maybe that's where I'm heading.
That could be.
In other words, uh when we beganthe show tonight, Rudy made a
comment about uh providence, andwe tend not to acknowledge it.
(47:19):
And I was going to say thatthat's the effect of blessings,
of reciting a blessing.
We recite a blessing before weeat.
All religions that I know of dothat.
It's an acknowledgement ofprovidence.
Yes.
SPEAKER_11 (47:33):
That God has set the table for us and that God has uh
put us on a planet that has isis a very full pantry.
SPEAKER_12 (47:42):
And and we are partaking in God's possessions
and God's abundance.
SPEAKER_11 (47:47):
Right, right.
SPEAKER_12 (47:48):
We're sharing in that it's an acknowledgement of
providence, I think.
SPEAKER_11 (47:52):
Our time is just about up, but let's talk a
little bit about human freewill.
How does human free will thenlive within that?
Yeah.
Next.
Rudy, I'm gonna come to come toyou in a second.
Uh but how does human free willfit into all of this?
And if if God is superintendingand sustaining the world, then
(48:17):
what is the role of our ownfreeness?
Are we artificially free?
Are we really free?
Are we just part-time free?
What is it?
What do you what do you how doyou see it?
SPEAKER_14 (48:29):
I I would I would describe it St.
Thomas Aquinas.
He explains our human free willas something that is not
destroyed by God, but enabled byGod.
So God is the first cause of allthings, right?
And he's the thing of all thingsin being.
(48:52):
While humans, we could argue,are a secondary cause, right?
A secondary what?
We are a secondary cause.
So we exist because we were freeto life by our creator.
And so we don't exist.
And and this is kind of uh thethe kind of dichotomy I think
(49:15):
that the rabbi was kind of wastrying to elucidate a little bit
is is can you really say thatthere's free will when we are
secondary causes, right?
We are dependent on a primarycause.
And and I think it's importantto understand that God exists
outside of time, outside ofcreation, is something that we
(49:38):
as humans, materially in thisday and age, can't even truly
comprehend.
We can think about it, but atthe end of the day, it's an act
of faith.
Right?
It's something that's superrational, I would I would argue.
And it's just something thatcan't be understood to kind of
(50:04):
it doesn't make us hope it doesallow us to cooperate with that
problem, and that's what we needto do.
So there is really well.
Because even though I mean it'sdifficult to understand because
we don't truly as humans createanything, right?
(50:24):
I mean Father War makes thisjoke uh all the time where man
goes up to uh, oh look, I madeall this, and I made this, and
my you know John says, Okay,well now go go go and get your
own jerk to make things with.
And um uh David, when I was uhwhen I did it in the New York
(50:46):
Theological Library, I forget,and I I hate that I always
forget.
Um there's a great scientist outof Wright University.
He does he does a lot ofmolecular biology.
SPEAKER_11 (50:56):
James Tour is his name, James Dr.
SPEAKER_14 (50:59):
James Tour, fantastic, fantastic, young um
super smart guy, and he talksabout how science today claims
that you know we can referenceitself and we can program this.
And he says, okay, great.
But we are already starting withfine material, right?
We are already starting withsomething already created, and
(51:22):
that's what we accused can't do.
Right.
So I can actually really wecould I could go right now and
and like bottom, or Rabbi wassaying, I can go and burn a
building, right?
But I also think that good, andand we talked about this before,
yeah.
Uh heaven is an acquired hell isan acquired case.
(51:46):
Right?
It's the two actions thatcomplete that continually carve
character that lead us towardsgood or towards bad, and then we
kind of become desensitized toit.
SPEAKER_11 (51:57):
So yeah, yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah, well said, well said,Rudy.
Stewart, I know you you'releaning into the mic.
SPEAKER_12 (52:04):
Yes, I'm leaning in, waiting for you to call on me.
SPEAKER_11 (52:07):
Go ahead.
Yes, you have to raise yourhand.
SPEAKER_12 (52:09):
I just I think that the next time a person who
believes in free will, that thenext time they're with someone
who sneezes, they need toremember to say asparagus.
SPEAKER_11 (52:21):
Yeah.
Why why is why is that?
SPEAKER_12 (52:23):
Because free will.
They're exercising free will.
SPEAKER_11 (52:26):
Oh.
SPEAKER_12 (52:28):
Because it's their free will to say asparagus.
Why do they have to say Godbless you, labert, whatever
they're going to say?
Why they don't have to, they cansay anything they want.
SPEAKER_11 (52:37):
So there'd be a lot of people.
SPEAKER_12 (52:37):
And the truth is, they can say anything they want.
SPEAKER_11 (52:40):
They can.
SPEAKER_12 (52:40):
And we have absolute, complete, and total
free will to do anything that wechoose to do.
And the only thing that thatleads us to choose good, in my
opinion, is the providence, isreligion that expresses that
providence and the values andethics and morals that God
created.
So Father Murray, what's wrongwith what he just said?
SPEAKER_06 (53:03):
Oh, nothing.
It's just that uh if you don'tchoose what is the good that God
has shown us, you end updestroying.
SPEAKER_12 (53:11):
And destroyed.
SPEAKER_06 (53:12):
Destroying and destroyed.
That's how you one of the waysyou can t really tell if
something is good or evil is isit disp is it developing the
creation.
Is it constructive ordestructive?
That's very simple.
Very simple.
SPEAKER_11 (53:27):
So and and and that's not always described as
good or evil.
SPEAKER_06 (53:32):
No, no.
SPEAKER_11 (53:33):
But but it can it can certainly describe that.
I would I would just add veryquickly, I'm not sure that we
have complete and total andabsolute free will.
I think there are limits tothat.
But that's for a number of.
SPEAKER_12 (53:46):
If you wanted to, you could get on to 59 right now
and ride the top of a car like alike a riding a wave.
SPEAKER_11 (53:54):
Yeah.
Okay, right now I want you tochoose to speak Chinese, please.
SPEAKER_12 (54:00):
I I have limitations to my abilities.
That's not.
But if I wanted to, I couldlearn it and then speak it.
No, you couldn't.
I couldn't learn Chinese.
No, you're probably not at myage.
Not at your age.
Never actually.
Okay.
SPEAKER_06 (54:14):
We are freely choosing to cooperate with uh
the time limits that we have.
Yes.
And Rudy, you are on next week.
You're show director next week.
Yes, you are.
You have been listening to theshow of faith.
Please, during this week, we askyou to keep us in our prayers
because you are going to be inhours.
SPEAKER_05 (54:34):
Find it at AM1070BN.com.
Download our app.
Stream it 24 7 K N D H A K twoSeventy Seven D E F M.
There's something happening here.
What it is ain't exactly clear.
There's a man with a gun overthere.
Telling me I got to beware.
I think it's time we stop.
Children, what's that sound?
(00:22):
Everybody look what's goingdown.
Nobody's right if everybody'swrong.
(00:44):
Young people speak in theirminds.
I get so much resistance fromthe heart of the time we stop.
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's goingdown.
SPEAKER_12 (00:59):
Welcome to a show of faith, where professor, priest,
millennial, and rabbi discusstheology, philosophy, morality,
and ethics, and anything else ofinterest in religion.
If you have any response to ourtopics or any comments regarding
what we say, we'd love to hearfrom you.
Email us at ashow of faith1070at gmail.com.
You can hear our shows again andagain by listening pretty much
(01:20):
everywhere podcasts are heard.
Our priest is Father MarioArroyo, retired pastor of St.
Cyril of Alexandria, the 10,000block of Westheimer.
Hello.
Our professor David Capes is ourProtestant minister.
He's the director of academicprogramming for the Lanier
Theological Library.
SPEAKER_11 (01:35):
Great to be back with you guys.
SPEAKER_12 (01:38):
Always glad to have you back.
Rudy Kong is our millennial.
He's a systems engineer,master's degree in theology from
the University of St.
Thomas, and I'm Stuart Federal.
Hey, retired rabbi ofCongregation Shar Shalom in the
Clear Lake area of Houston,Texas.
Miranda's our board operator,and together tonight with
Valerie, helps us soundfantastic.
SPEAKER_03 (01:56):
Yay!
SPEAKER_11 (01:57):
Yay.
Way to go.
Hey, I'm glad to be back withyou guys.
SPEAKER_12 (02:07):
Well, it is very difficult, but we braved through
this.
SPEAKER_11 (02:10):
Somehow.
Somehow.
Somehow you did it.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_12 (02:13):
Actually, we didn't have a problem, did we?
No, we'll never do, but let himthink what he wants.
SPEAKER_11 (02:18):
That's the way it is.
Rudy, hope you're doing welldown there in Guatemala.
Tonight we're going to talkabout uh a subject, an idea that
uh is something from the past,and yet it's it's with us still.
But we no longer kind of in themodern world think these ways,
and I think we should.
So here's here's the idea.
Let me let me read uh to youfrom the Declaration of
(02:43):
Independence, and it's a conceptcalled providence.
And this is how Thomas Jeffersonended uh the Declaration.
And for the purpose of thisdeclaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection ofdivine providence, we mutually
(03:03):
pledge to each other our lives,our fortunes, and our sacred
honors.
Our sacred honor.
Now, we we often hear that lastpart.
We pledge to each other ourlives, our fortunes, our sacred
honor.
And but very often we leave offthat part of the sentence, which
is prior that says we have afirm reliance on the protection
(03:25):
of divine providence.
SPEAKER_12 (03:27):
Yes, they cut the God part out.
SPEAKER_11 (03:29):
That's very often what happens.
Uh, and that's what has happenedin modern.
So tonight I thought we wouldtalk about the whole idea of
providence.
And it's it's an idea that it'sa word that we don't use very
often, you know, in in modernterms.
We'll often talk about God or orthe a title for God.
(03:50):
But when you go back to read ourfounding fathers, our four
fathers and three mothers, whenyou go back to read those
documents, you discover thatthey often talked about
providence.
And that was their way of givinga nod to the fact that God does,
in fact, govern the world andthe universe.
(04:11):
Without, at the same time,erasing our uh ability to make
decisions, to have agencyourselves.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_12 (04:21):
Because that's the other side of the coin.
If God controls everything, thenthere's no free will.
If there's no free will, we'renot responsible for our
behavior.
Blame God.
God is the one who ordained it,providentially.
SPEAKER_11 (04:34):
Yeah.
And I think that's the waysometimes it's used or misused.
Yeah, it it that um so so uh Ihope that's that's a kind of a
clear enough introduction.
Let me read another passage fromour founding fathers, this time
from Samuel Adams.
This was not the beer maker, butthe uh the the patriot and the
(04:57):
and this is what he said.
I thought it was wonderful.
This was during the revolutionitself.
He said, there are instances of,I would say, an almost
astonishing providence in ourfavor.
Our success has staggered ourenemies and almost given faith
to infidels so that we may trulysay it is not our own arm which
(05:23):
has saved us.
The hand of heaven appears tohave led us on.
That's an even a more cleardeclaration of the fact that in
in that particular moment, thesemen, who were sons and daughters
of the Enlightenment, right?
These people who were sons anddaughters of the Enlightenment,
(05:45):
said that Providence was in ourfavor and that people uh people
were staggered by how the factthat these this little army of
rebels was victorious over thepowerful and wealthy and
well-funded uh British Army.
SPEAKER_12 (06:05):
I can't remember the details, but there's an article
I read a long time ago thatspoke directly to this.
That there's so many things thatoccurred in the Revolutionary
War that really seemed like Godwas that God wanted the United
States to succeed, to come intoexistence.
SPEAKER_11 (06:23):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_12 (06:24):
And I wish I could remember half of them.
I wish I remembered some ofthem, but it gives credibility
actually to what he said.
SPEAKER_11 (06:33):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, he wasn't the onlyone to to to write about this,
and and George Washington wasalso a big fan of talking about
providence.
So I thought we would just sortof banner that around tonight to
talk about God working in theworld.
We we don't actually think aboutthat very much in in our way of
(06:53):
thinking.
We we look at the world as beingoperated by mechanical sources
and powers and material things,and we don't really give credit
to God, the invisible hand in inour creation.
Let me give a dev definition,and then we can we can move from
there.
Um the idea of providence hasbeen around in Christianity.
(07:19):
I don't know about Judaism.
I don't know if they use theterm.
100,000 years.
So it's been around, yeah.
I mean, you you read Habakkuk,you read you you read Isaiah,
you read, you read a lot ofthings there, and it makes you
understand that that God is atwork at that point.
Um the idea of providence hasbeen around for a long time, and
it especially with Augustine andsome of the others.
(07:40):
It comes from the Latin wordProvidentia, which means
foresight or divine guidance.
That's the kind of the idea ofit.
It's not necessarily that thingsare determined.
It's not necessarily that thingsare fixed and that fate is
working.
Right, yeah.
In fact, providence is thebelief that the world is
(08:05):
governed not by chance, not byfate, but by a purposeful divine
will, that God is at work in andthrough history.
And so that's what I want totalk a little bit about tonight,
and to for us to sort of resetin a kind an agenda that I think
(08:26):
that sometimes people have, andthinking that it's just all
about free will, it's all abouthumans, it's all about this
happened because this nationrose up against that nation and
et cetera, and and and don't seethe the hand of God in through
and behind.
Doesn't mean that these thingsdon't happen through the
instrumentality of human beingsand the agency of human beings
(08:49):
very often, but that to say thatthat's the only power, the only
influence at work, I think is togo way too far.
SPEAKER_12 (08:58):
And you have plenty of instances.
Why did Assyria take over thenorthern kingdom?
God's providence.
SPEAKER_11 (09:04):
Right.
SPEAKER_12 (09:05):
God used them to punish the northern kingdom.
Why did the Babylonians takeover the southern kingdom?
Same idea.
You get that repeatedly throughthe biblical writer.
SPEAKER_11 (09:15):
Right.
And I I it it's interestingbecause I you know, I was
reading uh I think it was Judgesor Josh, it isn't judges
recently.
Right.
And then God raised up thisother power, right?
SPEAKER_12 (09:32):
In other words, God enters into what we now call
history.
Right.
Because it's it's I don't knowthat they had a idea that oh
look, Samson just did something.
That's he made history.
Yeah.
They just went through life, andnow we know it's history.
So God has a hand in history.
SPEAKER_11 (09:51):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_12 (09:51):
Is how he understood the events of history.
SPEAKER_11 (09:54):
Yeah.
So what do what do Catholics dois there a a doctrine of
providence?
Oh, yeah, very definitely.
I mean, is that part of yourideas?
SPEAKER_06 (10:02):
Very definitely.
And all this time I was thinkingof uh uh there's uh prayer and I
can I was trying to look it up,but it's I can't get a hold of
it.
But um there's an opening prayerthat has always impressed me in
the Catholic liturgy.
And it says uh something likeGracious Lord, your hands are
powerfully yet gently guide themoments of our day.
(10:24):
And that has always struck me.
That's the two the two wordspowerfully yet gently guides the
moments of our day.
And that's uh divine providence.
Divine providence is a very,very strong power.
It it's a very gentle power.
And it reminds me of the powerof water.
(10:44):
Um, if you look at a um at acanyon and you have a little
river running through it at thebottom of a canyon, it looks so
nice and peaceful.
And yet that little river carvedthat canyon.
SPEAKER_11 (10:57):
Yeah and a rock.
SPEAKER_06 (10:59):
That's right.
And that's why that's the way II like to uh understand divine
providence.
It's the the power andgentleness, but it's very
powerful.
And we don't see it because wethink that uh something in order
to have power has to be harsh.
And yet the gentleness of God uhguides the moments of our day.
(11:20):
Notice it doesn't overpower usand make us, it guides the
moments of our days.
And so I yeah, I'm very, very,very much a believer in that.
I've seen it in my own life.
You know, um when I look back,see the problem with not the
problem with I I don't know whatit's like to call it.
But when I look back at my ownlife, the fact that I've ended
(11:45):
up here, you know, the fact thatHouston.
Well not only in Houston, butyou know, the fact that I came
to Houston because of a a realproblem psychological that I was
having.
The problem the fact that I wasfired from a janitorial job and
and and I wound up gettinganother janitorial job at the
(12:05):
seminary, the fact that I thethe fact that I was going
through a conversion at the sametime that I got a janitorial job
at the seminary, and the factthat right then is how I
received the moment the the callto the priesthood.
I mean I I I look back and nowcan it all be interpreted as
well, you know, it could havehappened that way anyway you
(12:26):
can't.
But but I start looking and youlook at a life and you go it
doesn't seem like random.
You know, and and so for meprovidence is is a very
important, very importantconcept.
And you can see that providenceone of the things I think I I
(12:48):
tell people regularly is one ofthe reasons I really do believe
that the Catholic Church uh hasbeen guided by God's hand is
because you can't have that manyscrewed-up people in history uh
guiding a church and it hassurvived of a million people for
(13:08):
two thousand years.
And we if it would have beenleft up to us, we would have
screwed it over a hundred.
You would have broken it down along time ago.
So I don't know.
I you know, you can you can havethe problem with it with it is
that you can always chuck it upto chance.
But uh there's too muchcoincidence for it to be chance.
SPEAKER_12 (13:31):
And you know what they say about coincidence?
That's when God operatesincognito.
unknown (13:36):
I like that.
I like that.
SPEAKER_11 (13:39):
Rudy, what I I know we've got to go to break here in
just a second, but let's let'sgive you the last couple of
minutes of of this particularsegment.
Um this is this is language thatwe have largely abandoned.
Uh we hear it, we read it a lotin history, but over the last
couple hundred years we we havebeen less uh vocal about it.
(14:03):
But this idea that not just inour lives, but in in the big
swath of history, that God is issomehow at work.
And we don't always know it atthe time.
Sometimes we do see it,sometimes we do feel it, we we
we recognize it.
But at other times uh we seem tobe m uh uh blissfully unaware of
(14:28):
it, I suppose, in a way.
So so what are your thoughts onon this whole notion of
providence?
SPEAKER_14 (14:34):
Bl blissfully unaware, I think, is uh Well, I
think excuse me, Rudy.
SPEAKER_06 (14:39):
Uh you are too important to us to start talking
about this.
Oh, there is thirty secondsleft.
SPEAKER_11 (14:46):
Is that all we have left?
That's all we have left.
Okay, well see, I am not the thetimekeeper.
SPEAKER_06 (14:51):
I want Rudy to have his full time to be able to
talk.
SPEAKER_11 (14:54):
All right, let's do it.
Let's do it.
SPEAKER_14 (14:55):
God's providence.
SPEAKER_06 (14:56):
Yes.
SPEAKER_11 (14:56):
In the providence.
SPEAKER_06 (14:57):
Not only God's providence, it's Mario's
intelligence.
This is 1070 KNTH, and we'll beright back.
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SPEAKER_05 (17:07):
Scott Jennings sees a clear message from the
president.
SPEAKER_07 (17:10):
Here's the quote from the president.
If Hamas rejects the deal, thenas you know, maybe you have our
full backing to do what you haveto do.
The ultimate result must be theelimination of any danger posed
in the region, and the danger iscaused by Hamas.
SPEAKER_05 (17:26):
Absolute moral clarity from the president.
Weekdays at one, right before QQed at two, on AM 1070 and FM one
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SPEAKER_11 (18:21):
I don't hear that either.
I'm squinting, but the pain isso powerful.
SPEAKER_12 (18:29):
Welcome back to a show of faith on Antins Seven of
the Ant.
SPEAKER_06 (18:32):
Okay, we go back to Rudy then.
SPEAKER_12 (18:34):
Rudy.
SPEAKER_14 (18:36):
Yeah.
So we're talking about theProvidence is God continuous
governance of creation.
That's sort of how I interpretthat.
(19:35):
We discovered this.
I think that we discoveredsomething gravity for all the
turn.
SPEAKER_11 (19:45):
Yes, we discovered this.
We discovered gravity.
SPEAKER_14 (19:49):
Right.
We discovered gravity.
We discovered quantum mechanics.
I think hopefully because wethink we're so good at
observation that we've been ableto put things together, right?
Like gravity.
SPEAKER_06 (22:27):
No, I what I normally a little image that I
made of what a judgment would belike.
You know, that uh when you whenyou die you you will probably go
in front of a mirror.
But that mirror will not reflectyour um physical shape.
It will show you the outcome ofall of the decisions that you
(22:51):
have made because each of thosedecisions has covered your
character.
What's interesting is that theword character comes from the
word character.
And so every decision you makeis a character on the show
(23:16):
before.
And uh I think that on the data,you are going to see the outcome
of all the decisions that youmade.
And then you'll see who youreally are.
(24:06):
You will say yes.
In this life, you say yes, andthen maybe some people may say
no, I don't want to I wanna beyou, I wanna be you want to be
(24:31):
God will take a line from yourfather and he will say you get
to be a human being created inyour own image like that.
You know what the name of ahuman being created by a human
being is FrankensteinFrankenstein.
You get to be a spiritualFrankenstein with the rest of
(24:54):
eternity, and that is calledhell.
SPEAKER_11 (24:57):
Hmm, interesting, interesting.
Wonderful.
Hey, thanks.
I I know we gotta go to a breakhere.
Uh thanks for that.
I I I really appreciate Rudyyour thoughts on that because
that helped me think throughsome things that I need to think
through for me and also now forthe rest of the show.
We're gonna be back to more talkmore about Providence here.
SPEAKER_06 (25:17):
After we come back from the break, which is a
providential thing.
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In one horrific act of violence, a voice of freedom
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(27:16):
Rest in peace to an Americanhero.
Charlie Kirk.
SPEAKER_11 (28:26):
It's a way of speaking about history.
It's a way of speaking aboutwhat is the reality of the
world.
And in fact, uh what Rudy wastalking about a moment ago,
there's an aspect of providencethat describes the idea that God
is at work in sustainingcreation now.
Not just a matter of creating itin the first place, but also
(28:49):
sustaining that creation.
Well, here's a statement made byThomas Jefferson in his first
inaugural address in 1801.
Let us then with courage andconfidence pursue our own
federal and Republicanprinciples, acknowledging and
adoring an overrulingprovidence, which by all its
(29:14):
dispensations proves that itdelights in the happiness of man
here and his greater happinesshereafter.
So he's he's talking here, he'stalking recognizing that said we
are to move forward, we are tomove forward with this
government.
It was 1801, right?
(29:35):
He was the third, I think, thirdpresident of the United States.
We're to move forward with thisgovernment, pursuing these
principles, but we acknowledgeand we adore this overruling
providence.
Now, providence is alwayscapitalized.
It's almost as if it's the namefor God or a a substitute for
God.
What do you what do you call it?
(29:55):
Circumlocution or something likethat.
It's a substitute for that.
And d recognizing that Goddelights in the the the
contentment and happiness ofhuman beings here, but also in
the world to come.
Um this whole idea of providenceand history, uh Father Mario?
SPEAKER_06 (30:18):
No, I I want you to finish.
SPEAKER_11 (30:19):
Yeah, yeah.
The the whole idea of ofprovidence here, you know, the
idea that history is not justone darn thing after another.
You've heard that statement.
History is just one thing afteranother thing, and they're
related.
SPEAKER_12 (30:35):
Well it doesn't say much.
SPEAKER_11 (30:37):
But but it but it but that if that's all it is,
what what we're what we'resaying is that that's not all it
is.
Um there are a lot of darnthings that happen and terrible
things that happen, but there'salso wonderful things that
happen along the way.
So this whole notion ofprovidence is that God is
(30:57):
actively sustaining the world,keeping it together, but he's
also now directing and guidingthe world.
And our that does not erase ourhuman need and our human ability
to choose and make choices, tochoose good, to choose evil,
(31:18):
even.
Um but it but all of all of ourchoices are within that
framework of God's overoverruling of the world.
Father?
SPEAKER_06 (31:30):
Well, I I I just wanted to to caution something
because you said you said thatGod wants our our our happiness
in this world.
SPEAKER_11 (31:40):
Well that was Thomas Jefferson.
SPEAKER_06 (31:43):
Because you know, I I've been enthralled lately with
the moment uh that when Jesuscomes down from the mountain of
the Transfiguration and he tellsPeter, you know, you are Peter
and upon this rock, that kind ofstuff.
And then uh as soon as hefinishes that, he says, Now I
(32:04):
must go to Jerusalem where Iwill be um arrested, killed,
tortured, and I will becrucified and I'll rise in the
third day.
Of course they they understoodrising in the rising in the
future.
And and and then uh when Jesusfinishes saying that, Peter says
(32:24):
something extremely normal.
Uh he says, May that not happento you, Master.
Now Jesus' response should havebeen to thank him.
Because that's normal.
I mean, if I told you after thisradio program I was gonna go to
Target and I was gonna bekidnapped and tortured, you you
(32:44):
would say, that's right.
God forbid.
God forbid, or may that nothappen to you.
That is normal.
Peter was saying somethingnormal.
Yet instead of being thanked,Jesus says, get behind me, you
Satan.
Now the re the but what it whatstrikes me very interesting is
what he says right after that.
(33:06):
He says, You are thinking likeman does and not like God.
Which tells me that sometimesnormal human thinking is not
God's thinking.
Uh and and so explicitly saidthat.
SPEAKER_12 (33:21):
My way is not your way.
SPEAKER_06 (33:23):
No, no.
He said, You are thinking likeman does.
SPEAKER_11 (33:28):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Your your my ways are not yourways, my thoughts are not your
thoughts.
SPEAKER_06 (33:33):
That's right.
SPEAKER_11 (33:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06 (33:34):
But sometimes it's just, you know, because w see, I
don't want us to have a kind ofa Pollyanna understanding of
divine providence.
Because I can just imagine, youknow, Jesus the night before his
crucifixion at the Garden ofGethsemane saying, Oh God, I
just want to be happy.
I just want to be happy.
SPEAKER_04 (33:52):
Yeah, I think that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_06 (33:52):
You know, and and and saying, I trust in your
providence, you let me be happy.
No.
You had to let go.
So it's a complex, it's aprovidence that seeks our
ultimate good, right, but notnecessarily our approximate
good.
SPEAKER_11 (34:09):
Yeah.
No, I think that's that's right.
I of course this is veryconsistent with what we find in
the Declaration, right?
Uh we hold these truths to beself-evident, all men created
equal, and and we are pursuinguh uh the pursuit of peace and
happiness and and those kinds ofI'm trying to remember the exact
word words right now.
SPEAKER_06 (34:28):
But that's interesting because I I gave a
whole sermon on the fact that uhthe the writers of the
Constitution got got somewhatwrong.
First of all, it's notself-evident, uh because they
were in a Christian bubble.
But then the the the other thingis that that uh uh the pursuit
of of happiness is is really anerror.
(34:50):
Uh it's the pursuit uh thescriptures say pursuit
righteousness.
It doesn't say pursuithappiness.
Now the pursuit of righteousnesswill bring you happiness.
But the pursuit of happiness inand of itself is the problem we
have right now.
That everybody is pursuinghappiness, and everybody's
saying saying, you don't tell mehow to pursue it or don't tell
(35:11):
me what happiness is.
SPEAKER_12 (35:12):
Yeah.
And it never ceases to amaze methat in the original writings of
Jefferson it was life, liberty,and the pursuit of property.
unknown (35:22):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_12 (35:23):
Right.
Really?
And he got convinced to changethat, yeah.
SPEAKER_06 (35:25):
The original writing was that I think that was
because it was Rousseau, wasn'tit?
Or or or I can't remember, buthe was copying of one of the
philosophers.
SPEAKER_12 (35:35):
And then they convinced him to change it.
SPEAKER_06 (35:37):
Yeah, yeah.
But but that that the to me, theproblem we have right now.
SPEAKER_12 (35:42):
Is the pursuit of happiness overseeding everything
else.
SPEAKER_06 (35:45):
That's right.
And the individuality, myhappiness and not your
happiness, and I you don't tellher to tell me.
SPEAKER_11 (35:54):
If I pursue happiness for myself, then that
might interfere with yourpursuit of happiness.
And therefore, we got a littlebattle going on at that point.
SPEAKER_12 (36:04):
A long time ago they used to say that your rights
ended where mine began.
People stopped saying that.
Now it's my rights overseeeverybody else's.
SPEAKER_06 (36:14):
Well, the problem the problem I I just have is
that we have gone to the extremeof individualism that there is
no common objective reality.
Notice these days, your realityis yours, my reality is mine.
We have no no common basis onwhich to exist to see, because
we don't see any objectivetruth.
(36:35):
Everything is subjective.
And so if you have everything asobjective, you can turn out to
be I want to be a girl, I wantto be a dolphin.
There's but there's a there's atremendous uh I want to be
Superman.
I want to be Superman, yeah.
You know.
SPEAKER_14 (36:50):
Bottom line, okay.
But if if you really think aboutit at the edges of time,
especially as you reach into thequantum field, everything is in
place.
So it kind of can be true whenwe think about our current
understanding of science and howmuch everything is changing, or
(37:11):
electrons, everything is so wedon't we I mean fundamentally at
a quantum level, we haveabsolutely no idea what's going
on.
So we die under the pursuit ofhyper-rationalism and found that
okay, great, we can measuregravity on this planet, we can
measure certain forces in thecool.
(37:32):
But we can't even solve athree-body problem.
On the surface, right?
(37:52):
One plus one equals two.
That's beautiful.
Right?
Wonderful.
We can all agree on that, right?
But when you really startdigging into it, everything is
just kind of up in the air andcompletely fine, and it's sort
of where we find ourselvescurrently from the heavy
mechanization of the universe.
SPEAKER_06 (38:12):
But but you know, Rudy, that to me, I I it's it it
just goes to prove that reasonby itself does not solve the
problem.
The problem when you have reasonis that reason only is a method,
but it has to start from apoint, a starting point.
And that starting point cannotbe proven.
(38:33):
That is why the founders of thecountry of the country said, we
hold these truths to beself-evident.
They had to have a place tostand.
And and then they could reason,but you can't you can't reason
unless you have a faith b faithstarting point.
We hold these truths to beself-evident.
SPEAKER_11 (38:53):
And and that's what you said earlier that these
things are not self-evident toanyone and everyone through
history.
They are self-evident to thosewho have been living in in the
Judeo-Christian world for 2,000years at that point and the and
beyond and and such.
Um I'm not sure about our time.
(39:14):
Uh, let's let's take a break.
SPEAKER_06 (39:15):
I am sure.
I am sure about our time.
Yeah, so you're the you're theofficial timekeeper.
I am the official timekeeper.
SPEAKER_11 (39:21):
And that is objective reality.
That is objective reality.
SPEAKER_06 (39:26):
And and darn well you should.
This is 1070 KNTH, and we'll beright back.
SPEAKER_08 (39:31):
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SPEAKER_13 (40:31):
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SPEAKER_05 (41:02):
The truth is here.
From Conroe to Aldane, fromUmball to Cyprus Fairbanks, and
all along the North Beltway.
Chris DeGaulle, Mike Eller,Scott Jennings, Hugh Hewitt,
Larry Elder, and Jay Stecula areright here.
(41:27):
FL theater.
SPEAKER_11 (42:21):
I'm trying to remember exactly where I found
this quote, but it's really aquestion, it's a rhetorical
question, and it's begging theanswer no.
SPEAKER_12 (42:29):
No.
SPEAKER_11 (42:30):
Can it what I was just saying?
Well, just listen.
Listen, listen to the questionfirst before you say no.
Um can it be that Providence hasnot connected the permanent
felicity of a nation with itsvirtue?
So what do you think about that?
You're gonna have to say itagain slowly.
(42:54):
That Providence has notconnected the permanent felicity
of a nation with its virtue.
I I think the answer to that isno.
Providence clearly has made aconnection between the fact that
the good of a nation and thevirtue of its people is connect
(43:16):
deeply connected.
SPEAKER_12 (43:17):
David, that is something that has it, my
thinking, I think, has changedon that issue.
I've always really wonderedabout the world, the w the way
God made the world, where ittakes, and we've talked about
this before, but where it takesonly one person to burn down a
building and it takes hundredsof people to rebuild it, that it
(43:39):
seemed that everything wasskewed towards the ease of evil.
But, you know, there's an oldsaying about, and you're gonna
have to help me because I don'tremember it exactly, but it's
something like that the thewheels of justice grind slowly,
but they grind exceedingly fine,something like that.
(44:00):
That ultimately, okay, the wayGod made the world is that evil
will swallow itself, that evilwill make that because of the
nature of evil, it will slowlyeat its own, okay?
It will slowly it will slowlysuccumb to good, that there is
in fact a side of our existencethat leans towards goodness
(44:28):
winning out.
It may take time.
We may not see it, we may noteven be privileged to see it in
our own lifetime.
SPEAKER_11 (44:33):
It is it just the good, though, that wins out?
In other words, is God not atwork in that good?
SPEAKER_12 (44:39):
I'm and God is also possibly in that evil, too.
But it is but it takes a lotlonger.
It still takes a hundred peopleto rebuild a building that one
person destroyed.
Okay, but they will rebuild it.
There is goodness.
It just might take a long timefor it to show itself.
SPEAKER_11 (44:59):
Father, i is he all wet here or is he onto
something?
Well, no, no.
SPEAKER_06 (45:02):
I I think he's on to something, but but there is an
exception, though.
And and of course that is our uhthe exception in the Christian
understanding, because uhbecause Jesus' body was
destroyed.
And uh it didn't take a longtime to recreate him as the
firstborn of the new creation.
SPEAKER_12 (45:22):
Yeah, but that was in your religion that was God
acting.
SPEAKER_06 (45:25):
Yes, right.
SPEAKER_12 (45:26):
So it's still God acting towards good.
SPEAKER_06 (45:28):
That that is correct, yeah.
That is correct.
SPEAKER_11 (45:31):
And and it's not to say that there were not good
people at that time of Jesus,but that the people who had the
power were and and Jesus iscrucified under a Roman on a
Roman cross under a Romancharge.
SPEAKER_06 (45:48):
It's just that of evil, the reason evil evil
cannot stand.
Evil cannot stand because umevil is nothing.
I mean, it's an attack on being.
Now I always like to to Mattjust give the example.
If I if I grab a person's armand it's a perfectly good arm,
(46:09):
that's a good arm.
If I make a cut in it, it's anevil.
But the evil does not exist.
In other words, the e the evilthe the arm can exist without
the cut.
The cut cannot exist without thearm.
SPEAKER_12 (46:26):
Okay, and now you want to translate that?
SPEAKER_06 (46:28):
What that means is that the good can exist by
itself, but the evil is actuallyan attack upon the good.
Yeah.
So ultimately, it requires evildepends on the existence of good
to be able to exist.
SPEAKER_12 (46:43):
And so ultimately it it it's and would we would would
we know what good is withoutbeing able to contrast it with
the evil?
SPEAKER_06 (46:51):
Yes, I I think we could.
Because good God is good.
Anything that exists is good.
SPEAKER_12 (46:58):
And God saw that it was good.
That's right.
But don't we have to have someform of bad to understand or to
no to to value the good?
Maybe that's where I'm heading.
That could be.
In other words, uh when we beganthe show tonight, Rudy made a
comment about uh providence, andwe tend not to acknowledge it.
(47:19):
And I was going to say thatthat's the effect of blessings,
of reciting a blessing.
We recite a blessing before weeat.
All religions that I know of dothat.
It's an acknowledgement ofprovidence.
Yes.
SPEAKER_11 (47:33):
That God has set the table for us and that God has uh
put us on a planet that has isis a very full pantry.
SPEAKER_12 (47:42):
And and we are partaking in God's possessions
and God's abundance.
SPEAKER_11 (47:47):
Right, right.
SPEAKER_12 (47:48):
We're sharing in that it's an acknowledgement of
providence, I think.
SPEAKER_11 (47:52):
Our time is just about up, but let's talk a
little bit about human freewill.
How does human free will thenlive within that?
Yeah.
Next.
Rudy, I'm gonna come to come toyou in a second.
Uh but how does human free willfit into all of this?
And if if God is superintendingand sustaining the world, then
(48:17):
what is the role of our ownfreeness?
Are we artificially free?
Are we really free?
Are we just part-time free?
What is it?
What do you what do you how doyou see it?
SPEAKER_14 (48:29):
I I would I would describe it St.
Thomas Aquinas.
He explains our human free willas something that is not
destroyed by God, but enabled byGod.
So God is the first cause of allthings, right?
And he's the thing of all thingsin being.
(48:52):
While humans, we could argue,are a secondary cause, right?
A secondary what?
We are a secondary cause.
So we exist because we were freeto life by our creator.
And so we don't exist.
And and this is kind of uh thethe kind of dichotomy I think
(49:15):
that the rabbi was kind of wastrying to elucidate a little bit
is is can you really say thatthere's free will when we are
secondary causes, right?
We are dependent on a primarycause.
And and I think it's importantto understand that God exists
outside of time, outside ofcreation, is something that we
(49:38):
as humans, materially in thisday and age, can't even truly
comprehend.
We can think about it, but atthe end of the day, it's an act
of faith.
Right?
It's something that's superrational, I would I would argue.
And it's just something thatcan't be understood to kind of
(50:04):
it doesn't make us hope it doesallow us to cooperate with that
problem, and that's what we needto do.
So there is really well.
Because even though I mean it'sdifficult to understand because
we don't truly as humans createanything, right?
(50:24):
I mean Father War makes thisjoke uh all the time where man
goes up to uh, oh look, I madeall this, and I made this, and
my you know John says, Okay,well now go go go and get your
own jerk to make things with.
And um uh David, when I was uhwhen I did it in the New York
(50:46):
Theological Library, I forget,and I I hate that I always
forget.
Um there's a great scientist outof Wright University.
He does he does a lot ofmolecular biology.
SPEAKER_11 (50:56):
James Tour is his name, James Dr.
SPEAKER_14 (50:59):
James Tour, fantastic, fantastic, young um
super smart guy, and he talksabout how science today claims
that you know we can referenceitself and we can program this.
And he says, okay, great.
But we are already starting withfine material, right?
We are already starting withsomething already created, and
(51:22):
that's what we accused can't do.
Right.
So I can actually really wecould I could go right now and
and like bottom, or Rabbi wassaying, I can go and burn a
building, right?
But I also think that good, andand we talked about this before,
yeah.
Uh heaven is an acquired hell isan acquired case.
(51:46):
Right?
It's the two actions thatcomplete that continually carve
character that lead us towardsgood or towards bad, and then we
kind of become desensitized toit.
SPEAKER_11 (51:57):
So yeah, yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah, well said, well said,Rudy.
Stewart, I know you you'releaning into the mic.
SPEAKER_12 (52:04):
Yes, I'm leaning in, waiting for you to call on me.
SPEAKER_11 (52:07):
Go ahead.
Yes, you have to raise yourhand.
SPEAKER_12 (52:09):
I just I think that the next time a person who
believes in free will, that thenext time they're with someone
who sneezes, they need toremember to say asparagus.
SPEAKER_11 (52:21):
Yeah.
Why why is why is that?
SPEAKER_12 (52:23):
Because free will.
They're exercising free will.
SPEAKER_11 (52:26):
Oh.
SPEAKER_12 (52:28):
Because it's their free will to say asparagus.
Why do they have to say Godbless you, labert, whatever
they're going to say?
Why they don't have to, they cansay anything they want.
SPEAKER_11 (52:37):
So there'd be a lot of people.
SPEAKER_12 (52:37):
And the truth is, they can say anything they want.
SPEAKER_11 (52:40):
They can.
SPEAKER_12 (52:40):
And we have absolute, complete, and total
free will to do anything that wechoose to do.
And the only thing that thatleads us to choose good, in my
opinion, is the providence, isreligion that expresses that
providence and the values andethics and morals that God
created.
So Father Murray, what's wrongwith what he just said?
SPEAKER_06 (53:03):
Oh, nothing.
It's just that uh if you don'tchoose what is the good that God
has shown us, you end updestroying.
SPEAKER_12 (53:11):
And destroyed.
SPEAKER_06 (53:12):
Destroying and destroyed.
That's how you one of the waysyou can t really tell if
something is good or evil is isit disp is it developing the
creation.
Is it constructive ordestructive?
That's very simple.
Very simple.
SPEAKER_11 (53:27):
So and and and that's not always described as
good or evil.
SPEAKER_06 (53:32):
No, no.
SPEAKER_11 (53:33):
But but it can it can certainly describe that.
I would I would just add veryquickly, I'm not sure that we
have complete and total andabsolute free will.
I think there are limits tothat.
But that's for a number of.
SPEAKER_12 (53:46):
If you wanted to, you could get on to 59 right now
and ride the top of a car like alike a riding a wave.
SPEAKER_11 (53:54):
Yeah.
Okay, right now I want you tochoose to speak Chinese, please.
SPEAKER_12 (54:00):
I I have limitations to my abilities.
That's not.
But if I wanted to, I couldlearn it and then speak it.
No, you couldn't.
I couldn't learn Chinese.
No, you're probably not at myage.
Not at your age.
Never actually.
Okay.
SPEAKER_06 (54:14):
We are freely choosing to cooperate with uh
the time limits that we have.
Yes.
And Rudy, you are on next week.
You're show director next week.
Yes, you are.
You have been listening to theshow of faith.
Please, during this week, we askyou to keep us in our prayers
because you are going to be inhours.
SPEAKER_05 (54:34):
Find it at AM1070BN.com.
Download our app.
Stream it 24 7 K N D H A K twoSeventy Seven D E F M.
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