Embarking on an exploration of the afterlife isn't just an academic exercise—it's a quest that tugs at the heartstrings, especially when life's fragility is underscored by the loss of loved ones. Join us as we traverse the landscapes of faith. Through personal stories and the shared wisdom of diverse belief systems, we uncover the compelling 'why' behind our universal hope for life beyond death.
Rudy's reflections on the 'motives of credibility' that reinforce our faith in an afterlife cut through the skepticism of scientific reductionism. Our conversation unwraps the mystical and near-death experiences that defy empirical boundaries, celebrating the intricate design of the universe as a testament to purposeful creation. We delve into the depths of human emotion, finding in a mother's love and our existential quests a stirring call to consider a life beyond the physical—a life infused with meaning and spiritual longing.
As we approach Passion Sunday, we connect these musings to the fabric of our own lives, pondering the role of a spiritual God in the grand tapestry of existence. Intimate accounts of faith and the call to priesthood illuminate our yearning for eternal connection, reminding us of the profound influence that belief in an afterlife has on our daily lives. Finally, we chat about the importance of living with hope—of engaging fully with the present while embracing the anticipation of a promised future—don't miss it!
Embarking on an exploration of the afterlife isn't just an academic exercise—it's a quest that tugs at the heartstrings, especially when life's fragility is underscored by the loss of loved ones. Join us as we traverse the landscapes of faith. Through personal stories and the shared wisdom of diverse belief systems, we uncover the compelling 'why' behind our universal hope for life beyond death.
Rudy's reflections on the 'motives of credibility' that reinforce our faith in an afterlife cut through the skepticism of scientific reductionism. Our conversation unwraps the mystical and near-death experiences that defy empirical boundaries, celebrating the intricate design of the universe as a testament to purposeful creation. We delve into the depths of human emotion, finding in a mother's love and our existential quests a stirring call to consider a life beyond the physical—a life infused with meaning and spiritual longing.
As we approach Passion Sunday, we connect these musings to the fabric of our own lives, pondering the role of a spiritual God in the grand tapestry of existence. Intimate accounts of faith and the call to priesthood illuminate our yearning for eternal connection, reminding us of the profound influence that belief in an afterlife has on our daily lives. Finally, we chat about the importance of living with hope—of engaging fully with the present while embracing the anticipation of a promised future—don't miss it!
There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there telling me what I got to beware, stop. What's that sound? Never mind. Look what's going down. There's battle lines being drawn and nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Young people speaking their minds are getting so much resistance from behind Anytime we stop. Hey, what's that sound? Everybody. Look what's going down.
Rabbi Stuart:Welcome to a show of faith where professor, priest, millennial and rabbi discuss theology and philosophy and other elements of interest to people of religion. If you have any response to our topics or any comments regarding what we say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at ashowoffaithathotmailcom. That's ashowoffaithathotmailcom. You can hear our shows again and again by listening. Pretty much everywhere podcasts are heard. Our professor is David Capes. He's a Baptist minister and the director of the Luneo Theological Library, but he's not here. Where is he Doing his work? We are real priests, real ministers, real rabbi.
Rabbi Stuart:Somewhere in the world, though? Yes, well, yes, he's definitely wait. Are you saying he's in this world? No, he's out of this world. Right? Our priest is Father Mario Arroyo, pastor of Saint Cyril of Alexandria in the 10,000 block of West Timer. Good to be here. Our millennial is Rudy Kone. He's our millennial. He's a systems engineer and has his master's degree in theology from the University of St Thomas. Howdy, howdy, hi, I'm Rabbi Stuart, federal Rabbi Emeritus of congregation Chara Hush alone in the Clearlake area of Houston, texas. Jim Robinson is our producer and engineer. He's the author of the book I Am With you Always, matthew 2820, a Daily Devotional, and Corey and Miranda are board operators tonight at Miranda, and together, jim and Miranda and Corey help us sound fantastic.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Did you know we were voted number one radio show at this time slow.
Rabbi Stuart:Absolutely, because we are, we are, we are, we're the number one show.
Fr Mario Arroyo:We're the number one show. I want you, but you do have to remember who took the vote. Who took? The vote the three of us here at the station yes, we all voted for ourselves.
Rabbi Stuart:And that's as we should, because we are the best show at this time slow on a Sunday night.
Fr Mario Arroyo:I have some good friends that will vote us too.
Rabbi Stuart:As do I.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Anytime you want to widen the pool, I'll just set up a very, very limited polling.
Rabbi Stuart:Yes, okay. So tonight I am the show operator, show director and my topic for look last week we talked about Week before last, was it week before last?
Fr Mario Arroyo:Week before last we talked about atheism.
Rabbi Stuart:We talked about atheism. Last week we talked about God. Yes, Reasons for believing in God Right Now. To be very blunt, this last week I had two funerals to attend not to, not to Officiate, Officiate, but to attend People I will miss one tragic. Never ceases to amaze me what the military does not do for its people, soldiers. But at any rate, be that as it may, it got me thinking. We were talking about why we believe in God.
Rabbi Stuart:We were talking about that we believe yes, that we believe, and why we believe. So it's an element of all of our faiths the existence of an afterlife. So my question tonight is why, not the who, how, what, where, whatever, but the why do you believe in the afterlife? But before we begin talking about that, I think we need to make sure to go over definitions. Okay, resurrection is not the same thing as reincarnation. No, resurrection, reincarnation may be a part of an afterlife, but it's not the only elements of an afterlife. And I think, before we talk about why we believe in all of this stuff is what is there to believe in about the afterlife? Well, and also, I think.
Fr Mario Arroyo:I think you have to at least acknowledge the Hindu and the Buddhist understandings, Understandings of afterlife.
Rabbi Stuart:And they have an afterlife. They well, they have a. Once a person dies.
Fr Mario Arroyo:There's something that continues on, that's why I think it's important that I would want to start by acknowledging the fact that what we're doing is talking about a Judeo Christian understanding.
Rabbi Stuart:Right, but there is in fact in other, outside of Western faiths, a believe in an afterlife.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Okay, Can I start? Please, let me start by just giving you kind of a Hindu Buddhist. Okay, understand and get that out of the way Right. Okay, in Hinduism, and to some degree in Buddhism, but in Hinduism the whole notion of reincarnation is actually a test. Not a test, but a condition that is temporary. In other words, the more you are closer to the one, the more you will climb up the, the, the step.
Rabbi Stuart:What is temporary?
Fr Mario Arroyo:In other words, you keep being reborn and reborn and reborn.
Rabbi Stuart:So it's the rebirthing that's eventually will stop.
Fr Mario Arroyo:That's, it will stop. But you have to get closer to the one to be able to get rid of your body. The whole point of Hindu Hinduism, of reincarnation, is to get rid of your matter. Okay.
Rabbi Stuart:By learning or doing something in each rebirthing.
Fr Mario Arroyo:That's right, that's right, okay. Matter in Hindu understanding is kind of imagine that you take your your hand and you put you wet it, and then you put it in flour Okay, cooking flour Right, it sticks to you, yes. And then you walk to an aspect of the divine, and that's us.
Rabbi Stuart:Our matter is actually an illusion of that must be gotten rid of that must be gotten rid of.
Fr Mario Arroyo:In other words, you have to wipe out matter in order for you to join the one. Now, the one the afterlife and Hinduism is very different. A very simple explanation. Imagine that you have an eyedropper and you fill the eyedropper with water and you're at a boat and the ocean, and then you take that eyedropper and you put it over the ocean and slowly you begin to squeeze the eyedropper until there's a little drop right before it drops. You can see the little drop on the tip of the tip. Okay, so I ask you, is the, is the? Is the little drop there? And you would say, yes, of course I can see it.
Rabbi Stuart:Yes.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Okay Now, if I keep on squeezing it drops into the ocean. Is that little drop there?
Rabbi Stuart:Yes.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Where.
Rabbi Stuart:Immersed in the rest of the ocean.
Fr Mario Arroyo:That's exactly how the Hindus understand afterlife after the reincarnation.
Rabbi Stuart:So, once you're done with the repeated reincarnations, you then become. You join the one, the one, Okay.
Fr Mario Arroyo:But the whole notion is that individuality is actually an illusion. It's called Maya. It's an illusion that you have that you're an individual. You're part of an infected piece of the divine that happens to be coated with matter.
Rabbi Stuart:Now, as I understand it, buddhism came out of Hinduism. What did Buddhism change?
Fr Mario Arroyo:in that concept. Buddhism does not believe in a personal God.
Rabbi Stuart:No, no. But what about the soul and the afterlife, the soul and the afterlife, reincarnations, etc.
Fr Mario Arroyo:They know that they will escape the reincarnation, but they do not hold that there's any kind of individual afterlife or personal God. In Hinduism there is a personal God, multiple, yeah, multiple personal gods.
Rabbi Stuart:Actually, it's ultimately one but it's that's too complicated. Reincarnation. I'm sorry, it's the incarnation of that one. Yes, that's right, multiple.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Multiple personalities, Bodhisattva yeah, In Buddhism that is wiped out. There is no personal understanding of God. It's just to get beyond the world of pain, Because in Buddhism life is suffering. The first noble truth is life is suffering and to get rid of suffering you need to get rid of desire. So we're not talking about that.
Rabbi Stuart:But each they do have a concept of the afterlife for the soul, but they are distinct from what we would call the Western. That's correct.
Fr Mario Arroyo:That's correct. So now we talked about, now we put those aside and let's talk about the understanding of Judeo-Christians, right.
Rabbi Stuart:So there we wanna go ahead, continue with your.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Well, I don't. No, we don't.
Rabbi Stuart:How would you define reincarnation? How would you define resurrection? How would you define the afterlife? Well, it's quickly. I mean not deep depth whatever. I'm not asking you who gets to go there, or are the streets really?
Fr Mario Arroyo:painted with gold. Look, reincarnation. You have to decide if you're gonna do reincarnation from the Hindu Buddhist perspective, but there are Christians who believe in Christian.
Rabbi Stuart:And there are elements of Judaism who also believe in recycling the soul.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Yes, that would be that you come back and you help until you learn everything that you need to learn.
Rabbi Stuart:Or you fulfill whatever function it is to come back in and you go back to God, right?
Fr Mario Arroyo:Okay, the Catholic Church. I'm gonna speak for Catholics, of course, and Catholic most Christians.
Rabbi Stuart:And Dave was not here to speak for.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Well, I think I can speak for general Christians I'm sure you could but there's no understanding of reincarnation. We believe in resurrection when you die. We believe that the Spirit returns to God, but that ultimately we are reunited with our bodies.
Rabbi Stuart:Okay, but when we're Start over? Okay, when we are reunited with our bodies. Where is that in the chronological order? So, as soon as you die, you get reunited with your?
Fr Mario Arroyo:body. We do not know. We don't think so, because Jesus talked about the meeting of God when you die, and then he talked about the final coming.
Rabbi Stuart:So there is a resurrection at the end of days, or closer to the end of days. Whatever that means yes, whatever that means Okay, but before that there's a meeting with God, and that is how we would define heaven. That's how we would define first judgment. Okay.
Fr Mario Arroyo:And then judgment, and then heaven.
Rabbi Stuart:Judgment is Okay. Wait, judgment, then heaven, and then this, the final coming, okay, which is much more, Much more closer, much closer my English was bad to a Jewish way of looking things. The different orders, different patterns, different chronologies, different whatever, but they're still in afterlife, is my point. That is correct, okay. However, we wanna define it Rudy?
Fr Mario Arroyo:did I leave anything out, rudy?
Rudy Köng:I think maybe also included in Islam, right, there's also a belief of.
Rabbi Stuart:Absolutely afterlife, with punishment, et cetera.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Well, yeah, but the afterlife in Islam is very carnal, like the 72 Virgins.
Rabbi Stuart:No, yeah, completely Very physical. Very physical Okay.
Fr Mario Arroyo:And the afterlife for women is very different.
Rabbi Stuart:Well, I think our limited, even Western, mentality has an idea of not necessarily carnality but physicality.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Yeah, yes, you were gonna say something, rudy.
Rudy Köng:Well, no, I think what you were saying before, though, is that there's a lot of different derivations, and I think a lot of the other types of afterlife are quite materialistic, and, rabbi, you can speak, of course, for the Jewish side, but from the Catholic side, I think it's kind of we hope in this kind of perfect, creative space, if you will right, but, fundamentally, there's really nothing we can know about it. I mean, there's a couple things that we can pull from the New. Testament, even the Hebrew Bible.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Yeah, the only. I would say that, from the Catholic perspective, the only way, the only thing we know about the state of being in the afterlife is from Jesus himself. You know Jesus. We understand he resurrected. He made a point. He kept on saying touch me so that you see that I'm not a ghost. He had something to eat, and so we believe in the resurrection of the body. However, the body that we have is not the same kind of body that we have, because Jesus himself was able to.
Rabbi Stuart:The body that we have is not the same as the body we have.
Fr Mario Arroyo:No, the body we have is not the same thing that one we will have we will get. Yes, that's right, because it's a glorified body.
Rabbi Stuart:Okay, just being clear on our words, okay.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Rudy, you want to say something.
Rudy Köng:No, I just thought it was interesting too, because, like in Daniel and Isaiah, we also find, for example, in Daniel it says any of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall wake. Yeah, so there's this sort of and I say it. It says also your dead shall live, their bodies shall rise.
Rabbi Stuart:Oh yeah, isaiah 26 is explicitly clear, isaiah 26. Your dead body, with my dead body, will rise, and it comes again later. I think in the same chapter, the same base.
Rudy Köng:It's extremely clear, right, yeah, but so that's what I'm saying, what you say, Father, you go ahead, Rabbi.
Rabbi Stuart:Say that again, rudy, go ahead, don't Well you go ahead, rabbi, I thought you were. No, no, we're about to go to a break.
Fr Mario Arroyo:So this is 1070K and T-H. This is a good time to go to a break. Yes, 1070K and T-H, and we will be right back.
Speaker 2:T-h-h News traffic, sports and weather you get from AM radio stations. It's time to make your voice heard. We need Congress to pass the AM radio for every Vehicle. Act to keep AM radio in cars when Internet and cell services are out. Am could be your only lifeline Text. Am to 52886 and tell Congress to pass this critical legislation now.
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Rabbi Stuart:The answer Welcome back to a show of faith on AM 1070 answer and our beat goes on.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Even though the hair is gone, the beat goes on.
Rabbi Stuart:I still have my head of hair, as I did when I was a kid. It's only the one in the mirror who lost his hair.
Rudy Köng:Let me ask you, paul and Mario, you and Rabbi, such dashing men in your younger ages? So, when the younger ages wisdom has taken over, don't worry.
Rabbi Stuart:Right, it's wisdom that pushes out the follicles. Yeah.
Fr Mario Arroyo:What are you going?
Rudy Köng:to ask, Rudy. So do you think that when the final judgment happens and we're reunited with the body, you think that you're going to have your full set of hair?
Fr Mario Arroyo:Jesus did say. We were saying this during break, I always remind you. Jesus did say that even the hairs on our head are counted. I expect my back. I expect my back. I expect the figure I had when I was 27 years old back, you know. So we'll see, right, we'll see. We'll see what happens.
Rabbi Stuart:Okay, so the question is now got rid of, all the vocabulary and everything else. The question now, which is a real issue to me tonight, is why do you believe in an afterlife? If there is any rational, logical reason is what brings you to the belief?
Rudy Köng:Do you want to go first, rudy? Okay, yeah. Yeah, Rudy, you can't just say I agree with you, Father, no no, no, I know, because I think Father Martin and I probably go about it in a different way. Blast for me.
Rabbi Stuart:I'm sorry. I'm sorry, go ahead.
Rudy Köng:I kind of quite enjoy the sort of mystical, metaphysical aspect of I would call Catholic tradition and in my mind there's just a lot of different accounts, both secular and religious accounts in my mind, of people experiencing it. And I'm not saying that this is proof right, but you asked one of the reasons that I believe.
Fr Mario Arroyo:They're called motives of credibility.
Rudy Köng:Motives of credibility, yes, okay, so one of my, I guess, main motives of credibility is a lot of these experiences that people have, which include NBEs, near-death experiences and mystical experiences that saints and other people have written down. I find that the experience that they have well, you know, we could kind of there's a lot to sort of unpack there, I would say but a lot of the experiences that they have just really talk about these particular feelings of extreme joy and peace and wonder and happiness, and when somebody who's just had a heart attack and they've been pronounced dead, you know, for the last 10 minutes, it comes back experiencing something so radically peaceful, so radically loving, that completely alters who they are as a human being and we can argue that.
Rudy Köng:You know, maybe it's the brain, maybe it's wave functions, maybe it's the deprivation of oxygen, although there's a lot of.
Rabbi Stuart:Yeah, because scientists will always come up with reasons to explain away what we might call miracles.
Rudy Köng:Yeah. And there's this book that I love, and it's called Brain Wars. I don't know if anybody has a chance to read it, but one of the quotes there it says human misery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, and I just find that it kind of applies also to this entire concept of the afterlife and sort of what happens after death too, and so to me it's just and of course, one of the other things, one of the other motives is I just find way too much order, too much design for there to be something created or something to exist.
Rudy Köng:That's just purposeless.
Rudy Köng:It's just like, okay, we grew up, there was just like amalgamation of sort of thermodynamic things that happened and then somehow bacteria and these kind of single-celled organisms started developing until you have a human. But why? Oh, it's just because that's just because there's no sort of logic there. I mean, when you take the breath of human emotions right, specifically love like a mother has to a child, these things are transcendent. These things impact each generation at a genetic level and that sort of genetic pathway that we see is the more good that you do to a child, the more good that that child will do, and so on and so on.
Rudy Köng:And I think that's, at least to me, it's one of the greatest motives that I see for something that exists in this world that's transcendent. And if I can think of a word, it's kind of one of the things that Ant-Glom did. Also, can you think of something that is good beyond all other? Good, right, and it's sort of like a thought exercise. But I just find that a world without a world, that where this is as good as it gets, is just, I mean, something so nihilist that why would anybody of us really want to be alive.
Rudy Köng:You know, it's just no point. It's just completely, utterly devoid of any meaning, and I just find that a point really. So I think I talked too much. No, no, no.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Actually we have about a minute left, so we want to say anything right about that.
Rudy Köng:Well, yeah, I think that, unfortunately and I wanted to give this example of this, I'll just mention it real quick but there's been a lot of cases, and again I go back to this Brain Wars book but the amount of science, like actual scientific observation, that has occurred over people having not just out-of-body experiences but what we could consider like the mind versus the brain, right, and to me maybe there's some connection that I could make between the mind and the soul and kind of how that is how that is just metaphysically, but to me there's just no doubt Like there's something else out there, and I could name you tens of examples right now of people that are still living, that have seen things, that are experiencing things that are just incredible.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Got to go to a break. Got to go to a break. This is 1070K NTH and we'll be right back.
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Speaker 10:When you start your day, forget about the mainstream media, for the truth, everything you need to know is right here on the Morning Answer, starting at 5 am with the Hugh Hewitt Show, chuck Diller will have the AM 1070 520 Oldie, along with traffic and weather throughout the morning. At 8 am it's the Mike Gallagher Show. Mike gives you the analysis of the latest news and how it affects you. The Morning Answer Weekdays at 5 am on AM 1070 and FM 103.3. The Answer Bye-bye love.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye, love, good Bye-bye, sweet caress, hello loneliness. I think I'm gonna die Bye-bye. Bye-bye love, bye-bye sweet caress. Hello emptiness. I think I'm gonna die. Bye-bye my love, goodbye. I'm through with what we've been with someone new. She sure looks happy, I sure am blue and with a love that we could be still good.
Rabbi Stuart:Goodbye to romance that might have been Okay we're back, welcome back to a show of faith, although we could keep on singing. Yes, but for the sake of our listeners, we want them to keep listening.
Fr Mario Arroyo:No, I often remind people in Houston that Rabbi and I sing to provide you an opportunity for penance, especially today for Christians, it is Passion Sunday, and so it is that we speak.
Rabbi Stuart:We read All right, we'll get back real quick to the. But what is Passion Sunday?
Fr Mario Arroyo:Passion Sunday is when all the church Roman Catholic churches throughout the entire world are reading the long reading of the Passion of Christ, according to St John.
Rabbi Stuart:John's version. John's version, that's right. So what makes it Passion Sunday is merely the reading of it, or is this?
Fr Mario Arroyo:part of the historical chronological? No, it's part of the liturgical year.
Rabbi Stuart:Liturgical okay.
Fr Mario Arroyo:It's part of the liturgical year, because a week from today, A week from today is Easter Sunday, Right, See the Passion Sunday. And it's done on a Sunday so that all Catholics are obligated to go to Mass On all Sundays. So you hear the Passion and then the following weekend you hear the resurrection. Good Friday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday are not only Switch names on me.
Rabbi Stuart:Okay, they are required to go today, which is Passion.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Sunday Sunday, it's Sunday. They're required any Sunday, any Sunday. So, they're going to get the Passion on the Passion Sunday, okay, and then next Sunday is Easter. But Good Friday, holy Thursday and Good Friday are not days of obligation.
Rabbi Stuart:Meaning they don't have to be at service. That's right, but they do come yeah oh yeah, but not as many. Right.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Okay, rabbi Okay all right.
Rabbi Stuart:So, rudy, I want to pick up on some things that you said Okay, because they fit in nicely with my personal belief in and afterlife. However you want to define it, with all of its different chronologies and whatever, okay, we and I will tell you that it is predicated. Predicated, that's what I said. Predicated on the existence of God, of course. If God does not exist, then maybe my reasons fall apart.
Fr Mario Arroyo:If God does not exist, then let's get drunk.
Rabbi Stuart:Right, okay, we understand God, as you said, rudy, to be spiritual in nature, and there are numerous religions throughout the world, throughout history, who talk about incarnations of deity. Okay, but, by and large, our understanding of God is that God is spiritual and in heaven, so to speak, and however you want to word it. Okay, my point, though, is that if we understand God to exist and we understand God to be spiritual, from my perspective and why I believe in an afterlife is that it makes no sense to me that a God who is spiritual would only create a physical world. Matter, yeah, matter, but it's physical world. Why would God who is spiritual? It doesn't make sense to me that God who is spiritual makes a purely and only material world. Yes, that there has to be something also in existence which is spiritual, and, that being the case, what connects us to each other, to God, to each other? Okay, there's a spirit. I hate the word spirituality, a spiritualness, because I don't want to conflict with the secular. Ooh, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual. That's not what I'm talking about.
Rudy Köng:It's a good word, Rabbi. Say it again it's abused a lot in the current age.
Fr Mario Arroyo:It's a good word, but it's abused a lot. It's a horrible abuse.
Rabbi Stuart:That's why I'm trying to avoid it. But there is still a nature of humans that is spiritual in nature, and there are plenty of analogies. Ok, our memory of people who have gone still connects us to them. To me, that is a spiritual connection, not merely chemicals in the brain. There is a spiritual nature that we have that, I believe, lives on after our bodies die, as promised, explicitly promised, as we were discussing earlier, rudy, with Isaiah 26.
Rabbi Stuart:Your dead body and my dead body will rise, ok, but before that occurs, the Bible also tells us that when the human body dies, the spirit lives on and goes back to God who gave it. Because God provides the spirit, the earth provides the flesh and blood. Ok, come, let us make man in our image. That is God speaking to the earth, as he did only a few verses before, a couple of times let earth bring forth herbs and whatever, and then later let earth bring forth animals. So, and then God says earth, you provide the flesh and blood, I'm going to provide the soul.
Rabbi Stuart:But then in Ecclesiastes, 12, 7, 12, 9, I get my 7s and 9s mixed up 12, 7, I'm pretty sure. It says that the dust returns to dust, where it came from and the spirit or soul goes back to God who gave it. Ok, so we have promises in the Bible of an afterlife, and to me it only makes sense that a God who is spiritual didn't stop with the creation of this world, of a material world, that there is also an afterlife that follows this life. For me there is one more, but I want to see what you're going to say now.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Well, your question is why do I believe?
Rabbi Stuart:Yes, personally.
Fr Mario Arroyo:It's very interesting for me anyway, that when I'm asked, sometimes I'm asked, why did you become a priest? And I have one word answer death. Ok, that's the only answer that I have. Here's mine. When I was younger, about 20 years old. I think you've heard me say this before.
Rabbi Stuart:I have.
Fr Mario Arroyo:But when I was about 20 years old, I went through a period of my life where I was heavily tempted to commit suicide. Yes, and the absurdity of life without the absurdity of life in the presence of death is one of the things that I found that the world being so reasonable that to have the creation of a world with a God that would make us with desires, the desire to live and the desire to love, the desire to be with people that we love for eternity, never to be separated, that to me is so absurd without life, without the resurrection, without life after death, that to me it's actually atheists, philosophers, that helped me to understand the need for an afterlife, because the sheer absurdity of life without an afterlife?
Rabbi Stuart:OK, but in what way does it remove the absurdity? It?
Fr Mario Arroyo:doesn't. The absurdity is, if there is no afterlife. If there is an afterlife, then there is hope for us to be. I really look forward to being with everybody that I love in the afterlife. I really look forward to that and I understand that that's going to be the way it is, because Jesus makes a statement when he says Father, those that you have given me I want with me in my kingdom. And that to me, says Jesus as a human being, had his friends, his close friends, continue. He wants them to continue. He would want the same thing for all of us to have the resurrection. And so for me, I remember thinking that if I committed suicide, that not only I would die, but in a sense only in a sense the universe would die, because my perception of the universe gives the universe a certain amount of life in me and the moment I stop existing it does too.
Rabbi Stuart:It does too. There's a concept in the Talmud and it's, by the way, also in the Quran which says that saving one life saves the whole universe. Killing one life kills the whole universe.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Words to that effect, but it's in both the Talmud and the Quran, Because if you think about it, all this existence, we can talk about it, but it actually. The existence exists in a sense because we perceive it.
Rabbi Stuart:So are you a solipsist?
Fr Mario Arroyo:No, no because if you didn't perceive it, nobody perceived existence. There's nobody to say it exists, right, right, which I think is one reason why God created us.
Rabbi Stuart:Yes, simply to have an entity that would appreciate God and his inner existence. Yeah, I think God wanted to create beauty and truth and goodness, and artist wants their art appreciated.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Yes, Right and he wanted to share that with us.
Rabbi Stuart:Mario, we only got a couple more minutes, but I wanted to add one more thing that I think it's not the idea of God. Also, creating the spiritual world is the main thing with me, but there's one other element that I also sort of helps me, convinces me, and that is the idea of justice. As you were talking about this world, in many ways it doesn't have. It Stinks, yes, ok, and there's a lot of injustices that take place and a lot of tragedy in a lot of people's lives. Yes, ok, and witness that again this week, ok, but to me, if God is just when yes, I know, miranda, watch my language. When bad stuff happens, ok, like the bumper sticker, bad stuff happens, ok, bullpucky, but thank you, that too OK. When it happens, all right, there's got to be a, a, a the universe.
Fr Mario Arroyo:A recompense. The universe has too many unsolved shreds.
Rabbi Stuart:And therefore it almost requires. If God is just Again predicated on the existence of God, if God is just as we perceive God, okay, as spiritual, and just then there also has to be something more than this existence.
Fr Mario Arroyo:It doesn't make sense. And what doesn't make sense is the fact that we need to go to a break.
Rabbi Stuart:Well, that makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense Because you want to stay on the air.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Yes, thank you, Okay this is Ken 70KNTH and we'll be right back.
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Fr Mario Arroyo:Ah, turn, turn, turn the birds.
Speaker 1:Turn everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season turn, turn turn. And they're time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plan, a time to reel, a time to kill, a time to heal, a time to have a time to heal.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Welcome back To a show of faith. You know something, rabbi and Rudy these days the name Lance is not used very often.
Rabbi Stuart:Uh-oh, ok, why is the name Lance?
Fr Mario Arroyo:not used. No, actually in the medieval times they used Lance a lot.
Rudy Köng:Wow, I just thought I'd throw a little levity there.
Rabbi Stuart:Yes, thank you. I'm gonna have to try to remember. I had two of them this week. No, I just bad jokes, bad jokes for everyone, to call them.
Fr Mario Arroyo:I have to remember them get anybody tell me what oblivious is, because I have no idea.
Rabbi Stuart:Okay okay, let's go. Yeah, good, All right enough. Thank you, mario. You're welcome for your contribution. Thank you so well. I said we could do this whole conversation in ten minutes. No, I don't think we can't.
Fr Mario Arroyo:I don't think we can do the conversation in ten minutes, because you know that the issue really comes out. Here's the next part. The next part is is Any one concept of the afterlife better than here's my reason. I'm in what way?
Rabbi Stuart:well, here's it, and you mean concept of what it's like, or you know concept.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Here's my part of my point when I read the New Testament from and this is for you to the Old Testament, right.
Rabbi Stuart:Whatever right, our scriptures.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Yeah, our scriptures when.
Fr Mario Arroyo:I read, when I read, when I read the New Testament and Jesus the the one, the one part that just constantly hits me is when Jesus says I have come, that you may have life and have it in its fullness. Now, when he says that, I Asked myself what does he mean? Why would he say that? And I realize inside of me that I don't have life in its fullness Because my aspirations and my hopes and my dreams are Much greater than is what able to be obtained in this world. And so to me, when Jesus said I have come, that you may have the fullness of life, I said, gosh, that Dovetails with what I'm feeling. I'm feeling like I need More than this world can promise me, which means, which means that the resurrection, there is an afterlife, that he has come. And then when Jesus says I have come to prepare, I'm going to prepare a place for you so that where I am, you may also be okay.
Fr Mario Arroyo:So for us as Christians, you know that. That's why our we do not deny the the this world. I Once heard a Christian say it this way that I thought thought was very good. A Christian does not live for the after, christian does not live for the future. Christian lives from the future and, and that is incredibly for me- so how would you distinguish the two?
Fr Mario Arroyo:From the future. It's kind of I always live. Give this example If you're invited to a reception and you're expecting a dinner and you're eating finger food, the appetizers, and all of a sudden in the reception people start saying, hey, there is no dinner. You have just come into contact with the knowledge of the future, it changes your attitude to the app After this. Okay, okay. So for us, the knowledge of the resurrection Means that we don't ignore this life. We just take that light, the knowledge, and then adjust our lives to deal and engage with this, with this reality, in the light of what we know about the future. In light of what we know about the future.
Rabbi Stuart:But it's not a matter of living for the future now bring that back to your quotation of the New Testament in other words, I Will continue.
Fr Mario Arroyo:I continue to experience this life as a tease. You know, when we were in high school, we'd call the girl the tease. Yeah, okay, I experience this life as a tease. I'm always wanting more happiness than I can ever find anywhere around here. Okay, and so when I, when I Jesus, speaks, that I say okay. So what you're saying to me, put up with this right now, be engaged right now, but live in hope, in Hope of what has happened, what is going to be given to you? Hope or knowledge?
Rabbi Stuart:No, well knowledge. The reason, I know it is hope. Talked about this a few weeks ago. Yes, there's a difference between hope and knowledge.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Yeah, well, yeah, is it? There is hope that, because Paul says Sometimes you have to hope in things that are not seen. You can hope you're seeing your daughter and stuff, but you know you're not. You're hoping, but it hasn't come through yet and so your knowledge, the knowledge and the hope are very interrelated.
Rabbi Stuart:They're interrelated. They're not the same. They're not the same. In other words, I can hope for some things that do not exist. I can hope for a two-sided triangle.
Speaker 1:Not gonna happen.
Fr Mario Arroyo:No, those are, those are my definition. They're not. You can't, you cannot hope for a two-sided.
Rabbi Stuart:That's my point is, you can hope for something's not gonna happen.
Fr Mario Arroyo:That's what's called a metaphysical impossibility that exactly my point.
Rabbi Stuart:You can hope for something that will not happen, yes, okay, but if you really believe it's going to happen, it be. It takes a status of knowledge as opposed to just hope. I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow, okay, but I know that if it rains, especially because it's end of March, then it's God giving something to drink to the plants and animals. Yeah, okay, I know that God cares about the plants and the animals. Yes, okay, to me, there's just a qualitative difference between hoping and knowledge. Okay, I can live with that. Okay, to respond to what you said, again, from my perspective, especially as a Jew, if God is just there's an afterlife, I can't worry about the afterlife.
Rabbi Stuart:Judaism has always believed, as a matter of fact, I think it's either the encyclopedia Judaica or the Jewish encyclopedia. But if you take a look there Of Jewish views of the afterlife or something like that, the first sentence, whichever encyclopedia it is, is Jews have always believed in an afterlife. Okay, but it's, it's. It's more than a belief, it's, it's, it's logical, it makes sense, it is. You know, as we all discussed in the past, when 55 minutes give or take, okay, which, but that means that my religion has to be on the here and now To do whatever I can, as God wants me to do, to make this world a better place for everybody. That is correct, okay, and I think that's what you were saying.
Fr Mario Arroyo:That's exactly what I was okay. All right, okay, rudy, jump in.
Rudy Köng:I was just gonna add that I think a lot, of, a lot of sort of these new atheists types, they kind of talk about the quantum level and how our energy goes back to the universe and the one and and I just find that it's sort of just a fancier Buddhism in some sense. It's just kind of these whole Indian Buddhism. For that sense too it's it's, it's a it's kind of re, not reincarnation, for a sort of dissemination into, into Into creation, as if it's this kind of independent Eternal thing and this is all there is to it, right, but it's just I don't know. I just find that a lot of all of these kind of new age scientists out there just Really like really don't engage the subject of afterlife at all and when you really dig into Scientific events and we even got an email From, I'm not sure from, from Tom Alvin, but he says that since really brought up NDE, there's a show on the biography channel years ago called I survived beyond and back.
Rudy Köng:Each episode cover three people who have been clinically dead but will revive. Their stories were amazing. It's something so much of kind of what I was talking about and and even in sort of the recent history, if you, if we look at somebody like Father Beal, right be a petrachini you just find these experiences that are just so, so just incredible and and I think a lot of people do a disservice to and I'm not saying that you should just outright believe in them or that they're even necessary To believe, right, but I think that they exist for a reason and a lot of these mystical events Happened for a reason was for conversion, jesus, and don't miracles, to convert Really, don't you?
Rabbi Stuart:isn't it one miracles to convert right, but isn't it also interesting that that experience, the near-death experience, is All over the world? It's not, yeah, it's not just found like it, like in, like in Oklahoma or something, okay, it's found literally all over the world.
Rudy Köng:It's not just like Bible bumpers, you know, like white people that are just by. It's everywhere. It's everywhere, all over the world, as Exactly as a more universal experience.
Rabbi Stuart:Okay, it gives validity to its accuracy, or maybe I shouldn't say accuracy, but to its legitimate. It gives legitimacy, okay, but the but. On the other hand, it is Exceptionally few of the people who have a near-death experience or any any similar mystical kind of experience when, instead of seeing heaven, they see hell. It's like they automatically assume they're going to heaven. I just find that to be humorous. Yeah, the other possibility they don't even think about.
Rudy Köng:No, no. And I'll just say this one last thing I mean have 30 seconds and I for one like to take Pascal's wager, and I think it's Faper to believe or at least live a life like there is an afterlife and that Fundamental space gives you a better quality of life.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Ah, okay, right, so we will not. Be well, we will have a best of next week. Best of next week best because we have so many great shows that. Love it you will love it next week because it's a best of yes so Happy holy week for all of you Christians.
Rabbi Stuart:Happy and blessed Easter season.
Fr Mario Arroyo:Thank you very much. So Please, during this week, keep us in your prayers, because you are going to be ours.
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