MLIA of the Dia

Welcome to the MLIA of the Dia (my life is average of the day): the featurette where I post a really Average post from My Life is average. Enjoy

Today, I was really anxious to meet this guy that I had been talking to through an online teen site. I've never seen a picture of him but I trusted that he was a decent guy. We wanted to meet up since we found out we lived in the same area. We chose a meeting spot. Right before I was about to bike ride over there, I saw my brother on the computer on the same site that I use. I asked him, "Hey Matt, you use that site?" He replied, "Yeah, this girl and I are gonna meet up now." I froze in my tracks and asked him, "Are you guys meeting up by the park by any chance?" He smiled and said, "Yeah, how did you know?" Then, his smile disappeared as he started to realize the girl that he was supposed to meet up with, and he started laughing. We went to the park together anyway, just for the fun of it. I mean, how often do you accidentally set yourself up with your brother? MLIA.

Epic Fail on Catholic.com's Forum

I was perusing forum.catholic.com when I came to a post about the debate between James White and Tim Staples and I just wanted to respond to this person on a blog post. Here we go.

Originally Posted by Gatecrasher Briefly, puragtory is unnecessary and a slap in the face to the cross-work of Christ. The Bible says to "put on" the Lord Jesus Christ, as He will be the one to give us "the robe of righteousness", otherwise known as the wedding garment that was to be supplied by the Host (Matt 22). If we come in wearing our own filthy garments, we will be thrown out, as Christ explained. He is therefore to be called, "The Lord OUR righteousness" (Jer 23:6). This is foreshadowed in Exodus 28:36-38 by the plate of pure gold (typifying the righteousness of Christ) which was put on Aaron's "hat" engraved with "Holiness to the Lord" so that, "Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things [which are offered by the people] so that they may be accepted." God sees the "iniquity even of the holy things", but we are safe within the robe of Christ's righteousness, showing the pristine obedience He rendered of more value than all the obediences and works of men put together. "I will make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine ONLY." (Ps 71:16). "Doctor" of the RCC, Ludwig Ott explains that, "the temporal punishments for sins are atoned for in the purifying fire by the so-called suffering of atonement (satispassio), that is, by the willing bearing of the expiatory punishments imposed by God." (Fundamentals of C Dogma", p. 485). We are immediately offended by this doctrine because sin is said to purged ----NOT by the solitary granduer of the work of Christ---but by the offender's OWN SUFFERING (i.e. "suffering of atonement"). It is not then, by the suffering of Christ, but by the individual, and hence, Bible believing Christians cannot be friends with Roman Catholic theology. Count on it. Jesus is our "purgatory", since it was He who by Himself, "PURGED our sins" (Heb 1:3).

Incorrect.

"The central idea of your post is that since purgatory involves suffering, it must some how infringe on the sufferings of Christ and imply they weren't sufficient."

Actually, that's not the central idea of his post. the central idea of his post is that purgatory is about suffering and not just suffering on it's own, suffering for our sins, despite the sacrifice Christ has made on the cross.

"Wrong! Remember: Purgatory is simply the last stage of sanctification."

I can't think of anything opposite to what the bible says about sanctification. Also purgatory is not taught to be only part of sanctification as you seem to think, but also as a large part of glorification.

"Sanctification in this life involves pain, for "For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. . . . [And] For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant" (Hebrews 12:6, 11)"

This is not describing justification which is what purgatory is about. Purgatory is about the IMPERFECT work of Christ to sanctify the person, and so they must go through this fiery suffering called purgatory where their sins are purged by their suffering not by the finished work of Christ on the cross. The work of Christ is finished and complete, no further suffering is required because Jesus work on the cross is his finished work on the cross.

"yet no one says that suffering infringes on Christ's sufferings. In the same way, the suffering during the final sanctification in no way infringes on Christ's sufferings or implies they were insufficient."

That's because this verse is discussing sanctification not justification or glorification which are part of Christ's finished work on the cross.

"Quite the contrary! The fact is that the suffering we experience in sanctification in this life is something we receive because of Christ's sacrifice for us. His sufferings paid the price for us to be sanctified..."

no, Christ paid the price for us to be justified and saved perfectly so that we may one day be glorified. You've completely missed out on what the Bible says about our savior as the one perfect and infallible savior of his elect and his completed work on the cross of calvery.

"and his sufferings paid the price for the whole of our sanctification -- both the initial and final parts. Thus it is because of Christ's sacrifice that we receive the final sanctification in the first place! If he had not suffered, we would not be given the final sanctification (or the glorification to which it leads), but would go straight to hell.

if he had not suffered, He would not have saved us through his finished work of justification. and all of us would already be dead.

"Thus purgatory does not imply Christ's sufferings were insufficient; rather it is because of Christ's sufferings that we are given the final sanctification of purgatory in the first place!"

You've not demonstrated this point, instead you've only spouted off heretical lies based on your misunderstanding of holy scripture and Jesus' finished work of Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification on the cross. It's because of Christ's suffering that we don't need purgatory at all. Jesus finished work on the cross is our purgatory and because we are in him, we are completely justified, we are being sanctified and upon death, that work is completed, and we will be glorified in him in the last day.

God Bless

Book Review: C O D E - Charles Petzold - chapter 1

I generally don't read things from Microsoft press simply because I don't believe that the methods and ideas about programming that they hold is a good way to program. So I was a bit hesitant to buy this book at barnes and noble. I was expecting a really technical book that would be hard to follow unless you held a computer science degree or something which misrepresented ideas and would illicit my criticism.... instead I opened up to page one and the entire chapter was about me as a 10 year old and my best friend who lives across the street. I thought this was quite odd for a book that was about programming but I realized that there was a method to this madness. This chapter laid the groundwork for the problem of communication and how messages must be simply and portably coded in order to transmit them with primitive equipment.... in the case of your ten-year-old-self: FLASHLIGHTS!!!!!!!!! He continues then by examining the problems with this method of communication. How do you communicate a message quickly, efficently, and understandibly? you start by drawing letters in the air with it but your friend can't quite understand because the letters you're writing are backwards, and there's no way to seperate the strokes of one letter from the strokes of another. Then you remember how on tv sailor's communicate by blinking lights and you start by doing a numeric code... A=1, B=2, C=3.... only to find to your complete dismay that just the simple phrase "how are you?" would require 131 blinks of light... next he discusses morse code and the whole concept of how a code is a method of communication... but he does something really cool with this, he then applies the concept of codes as communication to language (a personal favorite topic of mine) and illustrates how language is a type of code. Each word in our language is a symbol which represents a concept or idea. and how we construct thoughts from these symbols is a code that shows how these symbols relate to one another, but in reality, the vocabulary and the grammar are quite arbitrary... there's no reason why we should associate "cat" with those furry four legged creatures that require litter boxes and meow all the time. There's no reason why we should call these things cats except that everyone else calls them cats. Next the book looks in depth at morse code and how it works and makes sense. He shows that the code is essentially reduced to a set of two possibilities... dot... and dash..... I was hooked. I kept reading the book for pleasure more than learning and after only a few chapters said to myself "I wish I had this book when I was 12!". I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes codes and secrets (National Treasure fans who are into computers will find this a delightful read!) and the book is just an overall well written book.