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The questions that could change our life forever?

1: What is purpose of man’s Existence?

2: Can you prove the Existence of God?

1: What is purpose of man’s Existence?

The first thing the speaker asked the group was what they thought their mission or purpose in life was. Someone replied that we were all made for different reasons, and that each person was made for a different reason. Someone else said that he thinks he was made to help other people. Someone said that his job is to help and heal people since he is in the medical field. Someone said that his goal is to grow, do well, have children, and make more people. In response, the lecturer said that having children is important because without them, the world would end. The last person to speak said that he isn’t sure why he is here, and the lecturer said that maybe he hasn’t thought about it enough. The lecturer went on to say that the question “Why am I here?” should be asked. Is a question that every smart person, any thinking person, always asks? Everything in life depends on the answers, and some people may find their purpose and follow it, only to find out they were wrong and it was a dead end. The lecture gave the example of Uduak Akpan, a young man who sold hard drugs and was recently sentenced to death in Akwaibom for raping and killing a girl who wanted to work for him. You can read the full story here.

The speaker also said that this young man used to be a 7-year-old boy who may have thought he had found his life’s purpose when he started selling hard drugs. But look what happened! So, he had the wrong idea about what he wanted to do with his life. We can say that he was misled.

The second question from the lecture was, “If someone told you that you won the lottery, wouldn’t you try to find out if it’s true?”

Someone said that he would first check to see if and when he had entered a lottery. The lecturer said that was amazing and that everyone should do the same thing to find out if it’s true, if they really did enter a lottery. The lecturer then asked, “What if the person who told you you won the lottery was someone you trust and respect?” If someone with a lot of respect and status, like the vice chancellor or dean, came looking for you and called you out of class to tell you that they just heard that you won or inherited a billion dollars, you would probably take them seriously and do everything you could to find out more about this inheritance you won and claim it. The lecture said that there is a belief system, faith, or creed that says everyone in the class has won a lottery, has a billion dollars, or even more than a billion dollars, has a life that will never end in heaven, and that if they accept this claim, they will automatically get all of this.

This seemed to surprise the people there, but the lecturer went on to say that this set of beliefs or faith is called Christianity, and it says that everyone is called to eternal life in heaven, a life of happiness and joy that never ends, and it is up to each person to claim it. The lecturer adds that, just as you agreed that it would be reasonable to look into the billion-dollar inheritance, no matter how crazy it seemed, you should also find out if it’s true that you entered a lottery. In the same way, it would make sense to look into what Christianity and many other religions say.

The lecture asked the students if they knew that religion has been around since the beginning of time and has always been a part of the history of the human race. He said that since the beginning of time, people have always wanted to worship God. The lecturer asked one of the people in the room if they had ever seen this happen. For example, if they hadn’t seen that their ancestors in different villages worshiped one kind of god or another (Alusi). The lecturer then said that this is something that has always been true about men, that it has been seen in ancient times, among Egyptians and Romans, that all men have a tendency to worship a deity, and that there has never been a society where spontaneous worship of God has not happened. In fact, in most countries, like the Soviet Union, the government has to use harsh laws to stop this natural tendency of man. The lecturer then said that this natural desire to worship some kind of deity, like God, is something that all men have always had. Many philosophers have come to the conclusion that if every desire in man has some kind of natural fulfillment in reality, for example, if a person feels hungry, there is food, and if a person feels thirsty, there is drink. It therefore means that this natural desire for God must also have a natural fulfillment in reality

 In his book “Mere Christianity,” the great author C.S. Lewis makes this point. He says it like this:

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A dolphin wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, “Hope”)

The lecturer said that this is one way philosophers have also come to the conclusion that there must be a God, since people have always worshipped different gods to show their desire for God.

2: Can you prove the Existence of Go

 Is there a question that could change our life forever?

            The lecturer then asked the audience if they thought God existed and if God’s existence could be proven. Many of the participants emphasized that, even though they believe in God, there is no scientific way to prove that God exists and there is no proof, and that it’s fair that no one can prove or even give evidence for that belief. The lecture emphasized that it is true that the existence of God cannot be proven by a mathematical formula or a scientific principle of chemistry, since God is not a chemical that you can mix together to test a hypothesis. However, there are logical proofs that God exists, and St. Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs for the existence of God were given as examples. He told the class that they had to read up on and understand the five ways that St. Thomas tried to prove that God exists, since we could only talk about one of them, which is called the “Contingent argument of God’s existence.” This is how the proof works:

Everything we see around us—the faculty building, cars, the university, the tree, etc.—is contingent, which means that it started to exist at some point in time and wasn’t there before. Also, everything we see in the world has a beginning and an end. Now, if everything in the world had a beginning that means there was a time when they were not there. If that is true, then there was a time when there was nothing. If we go all the way back, it would be true that there was a time when there was nothing. But since nothing comes from nothing, there would still be nothing now. Because of this, there must be something that has always been there, never started, and has always been there from which other things came into being. That something or someone must be eternal because it has always existed. Since it is the cause of all existence, it must also be the cause of its own existence, since nothing caused it to exist. Since it is the only thing that has never had a cause, it is the beginning and the end, or the alpha and omega. God is what we call the thing that has its own beginning and is the end of everything. Since it has no beginning, it also has no end.

Other reasonable proof of existence of God by Dr. Peter Kreeft can be watched here.

At this point, the 25 minutes were up, and the lecturer said that was the end of class for this week. He said that next week, we would talk more about the nature of this God and the different schools of thought about what this God is. For example, some faiths say He is made of stone, some say He is from Mecca and Medina, and some say that this God is not just one person, but three divine beings that make up One God. Are these true? Is there proof? Do the people who say these things have proof to back up their claims? Can these proofs be checked, or are they just making stuff up? In the next class, you’ll find out.

Lecture on Christian Doctrine delivered at ESUCOM

19^th August 2022

By Engr Iyizoba Chinwuba

Mothers are dominating at the Olympics, and their children are only encouraging them to reach greater success. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica and Allyson Felix of the United States are just two women who work double duty as track and field stars and devoted mothers to their children.

In a progressive culture that consistently demonizes motherhood as a setback or as less than advantageous, they both serve as a wonderful testament to the beauty and purpose found in motherhood.

Fraser-Pryce, a 34-year-old sprinter and “Mommy Rocket” won silver on Saturday in the 100-meter final with a time of 10.74 seconds. Above all else, Fraser-Pryce prioritizes her 3-year-old son, Zyon, who often travels around the world with her to meets.

Fraser-Pryce reminisced on Facebook, “All my focus heading into training for my 2017 season was on getting healthy and putting myself in the best possible fitness to successfully defend my title in London 2017, but . . . here I am thinking about being the greatest mother I can be.”

American Allyson Felix also finds immense joy in her daughter as a track and field star. The 35-year-old has won nine medals across four Olympics, the most of any female athlete in U.S. track and field. Wednesday morning, she secured a spot in the 400-meter final. Felix is also scheduled to compete in the 1600-meter relay and 1600-meter mixed relay.

Giving birth to a child as an elite athlete is not easy, and it was made even more difficult because Felix was diagnosed with severe preeclampsia and had to deliver her daughter, Camryn, two months early via Cesarean section. Camryn is now a strong and healthy 2-year-old.

Felix attested to the beauty and purpose found in motherhood on Tuesday after she qualified for the 400-meter dash, saying, “It’s changed everything. It’s given me a different drive. I’ve had so many challenges because of it and so I think it’s even more meaningful now to be on this stage as a mom.”

During her pregnancy, Felix wrote a May 2019 New York Time op-ed accusing her longtime sponsor, Nike, of penalizing her and other pregnant athletes, and said her “natural desire for a family” resulted in the “kiss of death” from the company. Though the athletics brand made changes regarding its policies for pregnant and parenting athletes, Felix left to sign with Gap’s Athleta.

Fraser-Pryce and Felix both set compelling examples as career women with children, but Olympic hopeful Brianna McNeal provides a sad example of an athlete who decided to prioritize expediency over what’s right.

The 29-year-old, who won gold in the 100-meter hurdles in the 2016 Rio Olympics, experienced a series of setbacks and poor choices that barred her from competing at this year’s Tokyo Olympics. McNeal was provisionally suspended in January and consequently given a five-year ban two months ago for skipping a January 2020 drug test. McNeal said that she missed the drug test because she was on bed rest recovering from an abortion when the official knocked on her door.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed McNeal’s appeal and upheld its decision on July 2, barring her from competing at the games. She rebuked the appeal, explaining that she was “under physical and mental trauma” the day of the drug test.

She lamented, “Right now I feel excommunicated from the sport itself and stigmatized, and to me it is unfair. I just don’t believe that this warranted a suspension at all, much less a five-year suspension, for just a technicality, an honest mistake during a very emotional time.”

Yet the ban followed a track record of McNeal missing these tests. Four years ago, she received a year-long ban for missing three tests in a 12-month period. Gabbi Cunningham, who finished fourth in qualifiers, replaced McNeal.

Though perhaps inadvertently, Fraser-Pryce and Felix exemplify pro-life values that transcend their vocation. Instead of terminating their pregnancies to extend the trajectory of their track careers, they bravely faced the challenge head on, all while benefiting from the fulfillment of motherhood.

Articles from spectator. org

This 5 mins video demonstrates that when we help we are helping ourselves.

catholicnewsagency.com
October 22, 2020
CNA).- The three teenage girls who killed Sr. Maria Laura Mainetti 20 years ago attested afterward that, while they were stabbing the 60-year-old religious sister to death, she told them she forgave them.

“The sister cried out. She said she would not report us. That she forgave us,” Milena De Giambattista, Ambra Gianasso, and Veronica Pietrobelli told police when they confessed to killing the woman as part of a Satanic ritual.

In May, Pope Francis declared Venerable Maria Laura Mainetti a martyr, killed in “hatred of the faith” in Chiavenna, Italy. She will be beatified on June 6, 2021, the 21st anniversary of her murder.

Born in a small town in northern Italy, Mainetti entered the Congregation of the Sisters of the Cross at age 18. In 1984 she moved to the convent in Chiavenna, where she became superior.

Mainetti was known in the small town for her social and charitable commitment to dispossessed youth and poor people. According to a person who knew her, Mainetti had “an unconditional love for the weak. A life that was a real witness of love for Christ.”

“She never said no to anyone: she always opened the door ready to listen,” the person added.

The sister displayed this quality on the seemingly ordinary Tuesday night when the teens drew her out of the convent with a call claiming that a girl was pregnant by rape and needed to speak with her. They brought the sister to an isolated and dark street, near a cliff called “Paradise,” which originated from an ancient soapstone quarry.

According to local legend, a 160-feet tall and nearly 500-foot deep opening in the side of the cliff leads to the “inferno,” and was the work of the devil, who created the fissure to escape to hell while fleeing the Virgin Mary.

The three teens, dressed in black, then stabbed Mainetti 19 times with a kitchen knife and beat her, while shouting abuse. They had, according to Italian media reports, intended to stab her 18 times, six times each, to form by their violence the number 666.

“I deceived her by drawing her into a trap and then I killed her, and while we were doing this she forgave us,” Milena De Giambattista wrote to Sr. Mainetti’s religious community some years after the act.

“I can have of her only a memory of love. And in addition to this, it also allowed me to believe in something that is neither God nor Satan, but which was a simple woman who defeated evil,” Milena wrote.

“Now in her I find comfort and the grace to endure everything. I always pray and I am sure she will help me become a better person.”

Milena’s letter is included in an Italian-language biography of Mainetti written by Sr. Beniamina Mariani in 2005.

Sr. Mainetti was known to the girls, who did not have any prior history of violence or crime. They confessed that they had originally planned to kill the parish priest, but decided that, because he was larger, it would prove too difficult. Investigators said that the girls’ notebooks were filled with Satanic writings and they had made a blood oath some months earlier.

The three served sentences in different juvenile prisons. After their release, between six and seven years later, at least two of them spent time in community recovery centers. According to media reports, the women changed their names, and now have jobs and families.

After her release from prison in 2006, Milena was a guest for several years of the Exodus communities in the area of Verona — residences for the prevention and treatment of drug addiction, founded by Fr. Antonio Mazzi.

Mazzi once said, as recounted by Amedeo Mainetti, the murdered nun’s brother, that Milena “is fully aware of what she did and at the same time repentant and convinced that she can be reborn and recover better and better.”

Speaking to Il Giorno Milano newspaper in June this year, Mazzi said that Milena had been an active participant in the communities, though she never spoke about the murder and they never “fully faced the fact” with her.

The priest also noted that Milena “never declared herself a believer and neither the opposite.”

“She did not want to give testimony for the sister. However, she radically changed her life, and with her actions she clearly showed that she was repentant and that she understood that she had made a great mistake,” he said. “Today she has her own life and her own job.”

In a 2008 interview in the magazine Panorama, Veronica asked the public to forget her.

“Prison, psychologists, and the recovery community have allowed me to become the person I otherwise would never have been,” she said.

“It was decided to kill at age 16 while sitting for six hours over a beer in a small village bar,” she recalled. “Everything we said, thought and did was worthless. What was I terrified of? Of Sr. Maria Laura’s gaze? Of blood? I don’t know, because it was dark and I didn’t look at her face, just as I didn’t look at the blood. At that moment and only then, I was afraid of everything, even of Ambra and Milena.”

In her biography of the slain religious sister, Mariani wrote that when she was among young people, Mainetti felt “at ease and loved to entertain them both in scheduled meetings and in casual ones.”

Someone who knew her said in an interview for the book that “only God can know how much she sacrificed herself for young people! Meetings, talks, school camps, world youth days, catechesis, individual accompaniment.”

The biography reproduced what Mainetti wrote in her journal on the day of her perpetual profession in 1964: “Give me your feelings, Jesus, those of the Beatitudes: the poor who trusts, abandons himself/the child who feels loved by him/the affliction that is participation in that of Christ and is salvation/Mercy, Benevolence, Purity of body and heart, Humility. To serve Christ is to reign: Here I am… The joy of my service every instant in conformity with Your Divine Will.”

From this life, “a spring gushes out, a gush of evangelical life,” Sr. Kitty Hiriat Urruty, the superior of her congregation, wrote at the time of Mainetti’s martyrdom.

“This spring speaks to us of our consecration, of our life offered to the Trinity, of our desire of identification with Jesus Christ, of our choice of the poorest, of the wounded in life. And this leads to the origins of our Congregation,” the sister said.

“She showed that our charism is alive and very current,” she continued. “In this style of love and gift, she gave herself with both hands, without calculation, just like someone who knows that all she has is a gift of love, to be shared and made to bear fruit.”

Here’s a story that shows how love conquers even the hardest hearts.

Something interesting happened on my way to Oshodi this morning. At the motor park, this rough mean-looking conductor was screaming for passengers, his vernacular oscillating between Yoruba and Pidgin English. ‘Oshodi! Oshodi!’ he shouted angrily as I, along with some other passengers, struggled for seats.

There was this beautiful young lady who waited patiently until the bus was almost filled. Then she pleaded to sit by the conductor until somebody came down, when she would have a proper seat.

The bus conductor didn’t even look at her pretty face; he hissed and shouted at the driver to move, while asking the girl why she didn’t rush like the other passengers. The girl started pleading in Yoruba interspersed with English before saying, ‘I know you are a good man, never mind the fact that you have been shouting’, (that elicited laughter). ‘Let me sit by your side, please’, she added.

Finally, with much frowning of face the conductor relented and she sat beside him. It was a tight squeeze but she didn’t complain. Instead, she started praising the conductor who in turn started teasing her, speaking (and sometimes spitting by mistake) into her face but the girl never looked away as she kept smiling.

He asked her where she worked and she replied that she was a student at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) studying accounting. The conductor teased her in Yoruba about why her boyfriend didn’t drop her at her destination but the young lady laughed it off and continued to gist with him in Yoruba.

When she reached her destination, the conductor alighted from the bus for her to come down. She did and paid her transport fare. Then the conductor told her to give him a peck on the cheek for being so ‘gentlemanly’, although he was really not serious about it.

Then it happened! The lady jumped forward and gave him a peck on the cheek! She then waved bye and ran down to her street.

The driver and other people began to hail the conductor who started joking, saying he knew he was irresistible etc. and others were taunting him. But not long after, the conductor put his head down and became uncharacteristically quiet.

The driver soon asked the guy why he wasn’t calling out bus-stops anymore, wondering whether the pretty girl had cast a spell on him. At that point, the conductor said something in Yoruba that I didn’t quite understand and then his voice became emotional and believe it or not, he started to cry. Others were now consoling him in Yoruba.

When I asked what the problem was, the lady beside me explained that the conductor said he just realised he would never be able to get a girl like that in his life. He was weeping because he knew no girl of her class might ever do to him what that girl just did, to touch a dirty person like himself; that the girl is nice and well brought-up and that if he had money he would have chased after her.

So the passengers were consoling him in Yoruba that he would go higher in life and be able to marry a girl like that and that he should not cry because it was not the end of the road for him. That really touched me.

For a moment in that conductor’s life, his facade of a street thug fell away and he was a vulnerable emotional aspiring young man, just like everybody else.

If you wish to bring out the best in others: love and affection is the only way. The girl changed the danfo “agbero” to a human being, simply by treating him with love an affection.

Original story by Segun Adeniyi Thisday Newspaper

There was a kid running at the neighborhood pool the other day. The pool attendant asked him to walk, as pool attendants have done since pools existed. The boy’s dad — a big-chested, serious kind of guy — came over to the attendant and told him that, as the child’s father, he’s the only one who gets to tell his kid what to do. If the attendant had something to say, it should be directed at him, not to his kid. He’ll decide if his kid needs direction.

I would have rolled my eyes, but the attendant kept his cool and carefully replied that it was his job to make sure people follow the pool rules, and “no running” is pretty much the universal pool rule. The dad pushed back and added some aggressive posturing to intimidate the pool guy. He didn’t see anything wrong with what his kid was doing, so, as far as he was concerned, the pool guy needed to back off. The kid was free to run at the pool because Dad said so, so fuck the pool rules. This is America! Nobody tells my kid what to do except me.

Uh, okay.

There’s a strange fear spreading amongst reasonable grownups. My sister’s family had some friends over. One of the adults gave one of my sister’s kids some polite direction about sharing, or something basic like that. You know, stuff people tell kids. Then the grownup realized the grave error she had made, and apologized to my sister for shamefully overstepping.

“Are you kidding?” my sister said. “I absolutely want you to tell my kids if they’re doing something you don’t think they should be doing! In fact, do more of it! They need to learn to hear things from people other than me.”

If I’m the only one who can tell my kids what to do, I’ve failed them by giving them completely unrealistic expectations of the world. Also, I can’t ever die or leave their side, because my kids won’t be able to take care of themselves. Following Big-Chested Dad at the pool’s logic, a lifeguard can’t lifeguard, teachers can’t teach, coaches can’t coach and, later in life, managers can’t manage. You see where this is going, right?

If I’m the only one who can tell my kids what to do, I’ve failed them.

The New York Times recently called this style “snowplow parenting” — affluent parents who resemble “machines chugging ahead, clearing any obstacles in their child’s path to success, so they don’t have to encounter failure, frustration, or lost opportunities.”

We all know that mom who’s always at the school, escalating everything to make sure her kid gets an A, is chosen for student council, or gets placed in the gifted program.

I’m striving to avoid that. My middle schooler and his project partner recently failed to turn an assignment in on time, after many reminders of the deadline. The other kid’s mom came to my house and wouldn’t leave until I talked with her for nearly an hour about the injustice. She was heartbroken about the disappointment her kid must be feeling at the failure, and wanted to fix it somehow, or try to convince the teacher to reverse his (entirely fair) decision.

I don’t mean to brag, but my high schooler fails at quite a few things. None of them have been too epic, but there’s still time. I recently told him it’s my job to let him fail while he’s still at home with me, because he needs to learn how to lose his shit and then pick it up and move forward. In my experience, that’s the most important of life skills. I’ll be damned if any kid of mine is going to fall to pieces his first semester in college when he doesn’t ace an exam.

This is an open notice to people who know my kids: Go ahead and tell them what to do. It’s really, really okay. Tell them not to put their feet up on your coffee table. Tell them to stop running, not to play with that knife, or not to touch your things. Tell them not to eat all of your potato chips, and not to take that drink onto your freshly cleaned carpet. Whatever the rules are at your place, tell my kid to fall in line. I have a selfish motive.

susan.speer

Written by
susan.speer

Courtesy of https://forge.medium.com/stop-making-everything-perfect-for-your-kid-bfba8ccc70a7

In 1950 documentary style film ‘Daybreak in Udi’ won an Academy Award (Oscar) for best feature documentary , BAFTA Film Award [Winner] (1950)Best Documentary Film and the UN Award [Nominee] (1950).

This 47-minute documentary, financed by HRH’s government “Day Break in UDI” (1949) highlights the effort of a small community to build a maternity center amidst the opposition of some village men. The British colonial officer in charge of the Udi and Awgu, Enugu district was asked to help in the project. He helped and provided materials and motivation for the community. But in the end, it the villagers willingness to bring change and improve their community that triumphed. Filmed in Nigerian village of Udi in 1949, it is the first Nigerian movie to win an Oscar .

Most of the it was later edited into a 1953 two-segment documentary called “Savage World” by the same crew of film-makers listed on this film.

Two years ago, principal Sarah Schecter, Ph.D, found out the father of three of her students needed a kidney.
Nate Jones is the father of Aaron, Sydney, and William, students at The Oakridge School in Arlington, Texas.
In spite of not knowing the kids’ father personally, Schecter began to feel like God wanted her to donate her kidney to him. “I know this sounds weird, because I’m not the type of person who hears the voice of God, but I just felt called to give him my kidney. I did not want to. It was not on my list of things to do. So, I just kept thinking that someone else would give him a kidney and that it would work out. … But it kept being on my heart, that I was the person to do it.”
Over the Christmas break in 2018, Schecter talked with her family about what was on her heart. They responded by encouraging her…. Continue reading >https://t.co/SFKomksuWW

The Church of England has stated that sex belongs only within heterosexual marriage, and that sex in gay or straight civil partnerships “falls short of God’s purpose for human beings”… Continue reading >https://t.co/GFABBXrfmC

Here’s a video I found interesting about freedom of speech, a growing concern in Europe and America where freedom of thought is about to be annihilated, rendered meaningless and incoherent.