A Show of Faith
Millennial, Priest, Minister, and Rabbi walk into a radio station...
A Show of Faith
October 5, 2025 Providence, Plain and Unseen
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.
There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there. Telling me I got to beware. I think it's time we stop. Children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Young people speak in their minds. I get so much resistance from the heart of the time we stop. Hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.
SPEAKER_12:Welcome to a show of faith, where professor, priest, millennial, and rabbi discuss theology, philosophy, morality, and ethics, and anything else of interest in religion. If you have any response to our topics or any comments regarding what we say, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at ashow of faith1070 at gmail.com. You can hear our shows again and again by listening pretty much everywhere podcasts are heard. Our priest is Father Mario Arroyo, retired pastor of St. Cyril of Alexandria, the 10,000 block of Westheimer. Hello. Our professor David Capes is our Protestant minister. He's the director of academic programming for the Lanier Theological Library.
SPEAKER_11:Great to be back with you guys.
SPEAKER_12: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 of Congregation Shar Shalom in the Clear Lake area of Houston, Texas. Miranda's our board operator, and together tonight with Valerie, helps us sound fantastic.
SPEAKER_03:Yay!
SPEAKER_11:Yay. Way to go. Hey, I'm glad to be back with you guys.
SPEAKER_12:Well, it is very difficult, but we braved through this.
SPEAKER_11:Somehow. Somehow. Somehow you did it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_12:Actually, we didn't have a problem, did we? No, we'll never do, but let him think what he wants.
SPEAKER_11:That's the way it is. Rudy, hope you're doing well down there in Guatemala. Tonight we're going to talk about 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 the modern world think these ways, and I think we should. So here's here's the idea. Let me let me read uh to you from the Declaration of Independence, and it's a concept called providence. And this is how Thomas Jefferson ended uh the Declaration. And for the purpose of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors. Our sacred honor. Now, we we often hear that last part. We pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor. And but very often we leave off that part of the sentence, which is prior that says we have a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.
SPEAKER_12:Yes, they cut the God part out.
SPEAKER_11:That's very often what happens. Uh, and that's what has happened in modern. So tonight I thought we would talk about the whole idea of providence. And it's it's an idea that it's a word that we don't use very often, you know, in in modern terms. We'll often talk about God or or the a title for God. But when you go back to read our founding fathers, our four fathers and three mothers, when you go back to read those documents, you discover that they often talked about providence. And that was their way of giving a nod to the fact that God does, in fact, govern the world and the universe. Without, at the same time, erasing our uh ability to make decisions, to have agency ourselves. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_12:Because that's the other side of the coin. If God controls everything, then there's no free will. If there's no free will, we're not responsible for our behavior. Blame God. God is the one who ordained it, providentially.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. And I think that's the way sometimes it's used or misused. Yeah, it it that um so so uh I hope that's that's a kind of a clear enough introduction. Let me read another passage from our founding fathers, this time from Samuel Adams. This was not the beer maker, but the uh the the patriot and the and this is what he said. I thought it was wonderful. This was during the revolution itself. He said, there are instances of, I would say, an almost astonishing providence in our favor. Our success has staggered our enemies and almost given faith to infidels so that we may truly say it is not our own arm which has saved us. The hand of heaven appears to have led us on. That's an even a more clear declaration of the fact that in in that particular moment, these men, who were sons and daughters of the Enlightenment, right? These people who were sons and daughters of the Enlightenment, said that Providence was in our favor and that people uh people were staggered by how the fact that these this little army of rebels was victorious over the powerful and wealthy and well-funded uh British Army.
SPEAKER_12:I can't remember the details, but there's an article I read a long time ago that spoke directly to this. That there's so many things that occurred in the Revolutionary War that really seemed like God was that God wanted the United States to succeed, to come into existence.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah.
SPEAKER_12:And I wish I could remember half of them. I wish I remembered some of them, but it gives credibility actually to what he said.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. Well, I mean, he wasn't the only one to to to write about this, and and George Washington was also a big fan of talking about providence. So I thought we would just sort of banner that around tonight to talk about God working in the world. We we don't actually think about that very much in in our way of thinking. We we look at the world as being operated by mechanical sources and powers and material things, and we don't really give credit to God, the invisible hand in in our creation. Let me give a dev definition, and then we can we can move from there. Um the idea of providence has been around in Christianity. I don't know about Judaism. I don't know if they use the term. 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 of things there, and it makes you understand that that God is at work at that point. Um the idea of providence has been around for a long time, and it especially with Augustine and some of the others. It comes from the Latin word Providentia, which means foresight or divine guidance. That's the kind of the idea of it. It's not necessarily that things are determined. It's not necessarily that things are fixed and that fate is working. Right, yeah. In fact, providence is the belief that the world is governed not by chance, not by fate, but by a purposeful divine will, that God is at work in and through history. And so that's what I want to talk a little bit about tonight, and to for us to sort of reset in a kind an agenda that I think that sometimes people have, and thinking that it's just all about free will, it's all about humans, it's all about this happened because this nation rose up against that nation and et cetera, and and and don't see the the hand of God in through and behind. Doesn't mean that these things don't happen through the instrumentality of human beings and the agency of human beings very often, but that to say that that's the only power, the only influence at work, I think is to go way too far.
SPEAKER_12:And you have plenty of instances. Why did Assyria take over the northern kingdom? God's providence.
SPEAKER_11:Right.
SPEAKER_12:God used them to punish the northern kingdom. Why did the Babylonians take over the southern kingdom? Same idea. You get that repeatedly through the biblical writer.
SPEAKER_11:Right. And I I it it's interesting because I you know, I was reading uh I think it was Judges or Josh, it isn't judges recently. Right. And then God raised up this other power, right?
SPEAKER_12:In other words, God enters into what we now call history. Right. Because it's it's I don't know that they had a idea that oh look, Samson just did something. That's he made history. Yeah. They just went through life, and now we know it's history. So God has a hand in history.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah.
SPEAKER_12:Is how he understood the events of history.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. So what do what do Catholics do is there a a doctrine of providence? Oh, yeah, very definitely. I mean, is that part of your ideas?
SPEAKER_06:Very definitely. And all this time I was thinking of 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 prayer that has always impressed me in the Catholic liturgy. And it says uh something like Gracious Lord, your hands are powerfully yet gently guide the moments of our day. And that has always struck me. That's the two the two words powerfully 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 power of water. Um, if you look at a um at a canyon and you have a little river running through it at the bottom of a canyon, it looks so nice and peaceful. And yet that little river carved that canyon.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah and a rock.
SPEAKER_06:That's right. And that's why that's the way I I like to uh understand divine providence. It's the the power and gentleness, but it's very powerful. And we don't see it because we think that uh something in order to have power has to be harsh. And yet the gentleness of God uh guides the moments of our day. Notice it doesn't overpower us and 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 what it's like to call it. But when I look back at my own life, the fact that I've ended up here, you know, the fact that Houston. Well not only in Houston, but you know, the fact that I came to Houston because of a a real problem psychological that I was having. The problem the fact that I was fired from a janitorial job and and and I wound up getting another janitorial job at the seminary, the fact that I the the fact that I was going through a conversion at the same time that I got a janitorial job at the seminary, and the fact that right then is how I received the moment the the call to the priesthood. I mean I I I look back and now can it all be interpreted as well, you know, it could have happened that way anyway you can't. But but I start looking and you look at a life and you go it doesn't seem like random. You know, and and so for me providence is is a very important, very important concept. And you can see that providence one of the things I think I I tell people regularly is one of the reasons I really do believe that the Catholic Church uh has been guided by God's hand is because you can't have that many screwed-up people in history uh guiding a church and it has survived of a million people for two thousand years. And we if it would have been left up to us, we would have screwed it over a hundred. You would have broken it down a long time ago. So I don't know. I you know, you can you can have the problem with it with it is that you can always chuck it up to chance. But uh there's too much coincidence for it to be chance.
SPEAKER_12:And you know what they say about coincidence? That's when God operates incognito.
unknown:I like that. I like that.
SPEAKER_11:Rudy, what I I know we've got to go to break here in just a second, but let's let's give you the last couple of minutes of of this particular segment. Um this is this is language that we have largely abandoned. Uh we hear it, we read it a lot in history, but over the last couple hundred years we we have been less uh vocal about it. But this idea that not just in our lives, but in in the big swath of history, that God is is somehow at work. And we don't always know it at the time. Sometimes we do see it, sometimes we do feel it, we we we recognize it. But at other times uh we seem to be m uh uh blissfully unaware of it, I suppose, in a way. So so what are your thoughts on on this whole notion of providence?
SPEAKER_14:Bl blissfully unaware, I think, is uh Well, I think excuse me, Rudy.
SPEAKER_06:Uh you are too important to us to start talking about this. Oh, there is thirty seconds left.
SPEAKER_11:Is that all we have left? That's all we have left. Okay, well see, I am not the the timekeeper.
SPEAKER_06:I want Rudy to have his full time to be able to talk.
SPEAKER_11:All right, let's do it. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_14:God's providence.
SPEAKER_06:Yes.
SPEAKER_11:In the providence.
SPEAKER_06:Not only God's providence, it's Mario's intelligence. This is 1070 KNTH, and we'll be right back.
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SPEAKER_11:I don't hear that either. I'm squinting, but the pain is so powerful.
SPEAKER_12:Welcome back to a show of faith on Antins Seven of the Ant.
SPEAKER_06:Okay, we go back to Rudy then.
SPEAKER_12:Rudy.
SPEAKER_14:Yeah. So we're talking about the Providence is God continuous governance of creation. That's sort of how I interpret that. We discovered this. I think that we discovered something gravity for all the turn.
SPEAKER_11:Yes, we discovered this. We discovered gravity.
SPEAKER_14:Right. We discovered gravity. We discovered quantum mechanics. I think hopefully because we think we're so good at observation that we've been able to put things together, right? Like gravity.
SPEAKER_06:No, I what I normally a little image that I made of what a judgment would be like. You know, that uh when you when you die you you will probably go in front of a mirror. But that mirror will not reflect your um physical shape. It will show you the outcome of all of the decisions that you have made because each of those decisions has covered your character. What's interesting is that the word character comes from the word character. And so every decision you make is a character on the show before. And uh I think that on the data, you are going to see the outcome of all the decisions that you made. And then you'll see who you really are. You will say yes. In this life, you say yes, and then maybe some people may say no, I don't want to I wanna be you, I wanna be you want to be God will take a line from your father and he will say you get to be a human being created in your own image like that. You know what the name of a human being created by a human being is Frankenstein Frankenstein. You get to be a spiritual Frankenstein with the rest of eternity, and that is called hell.
SPEAKER_11:Hmm, interesting, interesting. Wonderful. Hey, thanks. I I know we gotta go to a break here. Uh thanks for that. I I I really appreciate Rudy your thoughts on that because that helped me think through some things that I need to think through for me and also now for the rest of the show. We're gonna be back to more talk more about Providence here.
SPEAKER_06:After we come back from the break, which is a providential thing.
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SPEAKER_11:It's a way of speaking about history. It's a way of speaking about what is the reality of the world. And in fact, uh what Rudy was talking about a moment ago, there's an aspect of providence that describes the idea that God is at work in sustaining creation now. Not just a matter of creating it in the first place, but also sustaining that creation. Well, here's a statement made by Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address in 1801. Let us then with courage and confidence pursue our own federal and Republican principles, acknowledging and adoring an overruling providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter. So he's he's talking here, he's talking recognizing that said we are to move forward, we are to move forward with this government. It was 1801, right? He was the third, I think, third president of the United States. We're to move forward with this government, pursuing these principles, but we acknowledge and we adore this overruling providence. Now, providence is always capitalized. It's almost as if it's the name for God or a a substitute for God. What do you what do you call it? Circumlocution or something like that. It's a substitute for that. And d recognizing that God delights in the the the contentment and happiness of human beings here, but also in the world to come. Um this whole idea of providence and history, uh Father Mario?
SPEAKER_06:No, I I want you to finish.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, yeah. The the whole idea of of providence here, you know, the idea that history is not just one darn thing after another. You've heard that statement. History is just one thing after another thing, and they're related.
SPEAKER_12:Well it doesn't say much.
SPEAKER_11:But but it but it but that if that's all it is, what what we're what we're saying is that that's not all it is. Um there are a lot of darn things that happen and terrible things that happen, but there's also wonderful things that happen along the way. So this whole notion of providence is that God is actively sustaining the world, keeping it together, but he's also now directing and guiding the world. And our that does not erase our human need and our human ability to choose and make choices, to choose good, to choose evil, even. Um but it but all of all of our choices are within that framework of God's over overruling of the world. Father?
SPEAKER_06:Well, I I I just wanted to to caution something because you said you said that God wants our our our happiness in this world.
SPEAKER_11:Well that was Thomas Jefferson.
SPEAKER_06:Because you know, I I've been enthralled lately with the moment uh that when Jesus comes down from the mountain of the Transfiguration and he tells Peter, you know, you are Peter and upon this rock, that kind of stuff. And then uh as soon as he finishes that, he says, Now I must go to Jerusalem where I will be um arrested, killed, tortured, and I will be crucified and I'll rise in the third day. Of course they they understood rising in the rising in the future. And and and then uh when Jesus finishes saying that, Peter says something extremely normal. Uh he says, May that not happen to you, Master. Now Jesus' response should have been to thank him. Because that's normal. I mean, if I told you after this radio program I was gonna go to Target and I was gonna be kidnapped and tortured, you you would say, that's right. God forbid. God forbid, or may that not happen to you. That is normal. Peter was saying something normal. Yet instead of being thanked, Jesus says, get behind me, you Satan. Now the re the but what it what strikes me very interesting is what he says right after that. He says, You are thinking like man does and not like God. Which tells me that sometimes normal human thinking is not God's thinking. Uh and and so explicitly said that.
SPEAKER_12:My way is not your way.
SPEAKER_06:No, no. He said, You are thinking like man does.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, oh yeah. Your your my ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.
SPEAKER_06:That's right.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:But sometimes it's just, you know, because w see, I don't want us to have a kind of a Pollyanna understanding of divine providence. Because I can just imagine, you know, Jesus the night before his crucifixion at the Garden of Gethsemane saying, Oh God, I just want to be happy. I just want to be happy.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I think that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_06: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 a providence that seeks our ultimate good, right, but not necessarily our approximate good.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. No, I think that's that's right. I of course this is very consistent with what we find in the Declaration, right? Uh we hold these truths to be self-evident, all men created equal, and and we are pursuing uh uh the pursuit of peace and happiness and and those kinds of I'm trying to remember the exact word words right now.
SPEAKER_06:But that's interesting because I I gave a whole sermon on the fact that uh the the writers of the Constitution got got somewhat wrong. First of all, it's not self-evident, uh because they were in a Christian bubble. But then the the the other thing is that that uh uh the pursuit of of happiness is is really an error. Uh it's the pursuit uh the scriptures say pursuit righteousness. It doesn't say pursuit happiness. Now the pursuit of righteousness will bring you happiness. But the pursuit of happiness in and of itself is the problem we have right now. That everybody is pursuing happiness, and everybody's saying saying, you don't tell me how to pursue it or don't tell me what happiness is.
SPEAKER_12:Yeah. And it never ceases to amaze me that in the original writings of Jefferson it was life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_12:Right. Really? And he got convinced to change that, yeah.
SPEAKER_06:The original writing was that I think that was because it was Rousseau, wasn't it? Or or or I can't remember, but he was copying of one of the philosophers.
SPEAKER_12:And then they convinced him to change it.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, yeah. But but that that the to me, the problem we have right now.
SPEAKER_12:Is the pursuit of happiness overseeding everything else.
SPEAKER_06:That's right. And the individuality, my happiness and not your happiness, and I you don't tell her to tell me.
SPEAKER_11:If I pursue happiness for myself, then that might interfere with your pursuit of happiness. And therefore, we got a little battle going on at that point.
SPEAKER_12:A long time ago they used to say that your rights ended where mine began. People stopped saying that. Now it's my rights oversee everybody else's.
SPEAKER_06:Well, the problem the problem I I just have is that we have gone to the extreme of individualism that there is no common objective reality. Notice these days, your reality is yours, my reality is mine. We have no no common basis on which to exist to see, because we don't see any objective truth. Everything is subjective. And so if you have everything as objective, you can turn out to be I want to be a girl, I want to be a dolphin. There's but there's a there's a tremendous uh I want to be Superman. I want to be Superman, yeah. You know.
SPEAKER_14:Bottom line, okay. But if if you really think about it at the edges of time, especially as you reach into the quantum field, everything is in place. So it kind of can be true when we think about our current understanding of science and how much everything is changing, or electrons, everything is so we don't we I mean fundamentally at a quantum level, we have absolutely no idea what's going on. So we die under the pursuit of hyper-rationalism and found that okay, great, we can measure gravity on this planet, we can measure certain forces in the cool. But we can't even solve a three-body problem. On the surface, right? One plus one equals two. That's beautiful. Right? Wonderful. We can all agree on that, right? But when you really start digging into it, everything is just kind of up in the air and completely fine, and it's sort of where we find ourselves currently from the heavy mechanization of the universe.
SPEAKER_06:But but you know, Rudy, that to me, I I it's it it just goes to prove that reason by itself does not solve the problem. The problem when you have reason is that reason only is a method, but it has to start from a point, a starting point. And that starting point cannot be proven. That is why the founders of the country of the country said, we hold these truths to be self-evident. They had to have a place to stand. And and then they could reason, but you can't you can't reason unless you have a faith b faith starting point. We hold these truths to be self-evident.
SPEAKER_11:And and that's what you said earlier that these things are not self-evident to anyone and everyone through history. They are self-evident to those who have been living in in the Judeo-Christian world for 2,000 years at that point and the and beyond and and such. Um I'm not sure about our time. Uh, let's let's take a break.
SPEAKER_06:I am sure. I am sure about our time. Yeah, so you're the you're the official timekeeper. I am the official timekeeper.
SPEAKER_11:And that is objective reality. That is objective reality.
SPEAKER_06:And and darn well you should. This is 1070 KNTH, and we'll be right back.
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SPEAKER_11:I'm trying to remember exactly where I found this quote, but it's really a question, it's a rhetorical question, and it's begging the answer no.
SPEAKER_12:No.
SPEAKER_11:Can it what I was just saying? Well, just listen. Listen, listen to the question first before you say no. Um can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? So what do you think about that? You're gonna have to say it again slowly. That Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue. I I think the answer to that is no. Providence clearly has made a connection between the fact that the good of a nation and the virtue of its people is connect deeply connected.
SPEAKER_12:David, that is something that has it, my thinking, I think, has changed on that issue. I've always really wondered about the world, the w the way God made the world, where it takes, and we've talked about this before, but where it takes only one person to burn down a building and it takes hundreds of people to rebuild it, that it seemed that everything was skewed towards the ease of evil. But, you know, there's an old saying about, and you're gonna have to help me because I don't remember it exactly, but it's something like that the the wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine, something like that. That ultimately, okay, the way God made the world is that evil will swallow itself, that evil will make that because of the nature of evil, it will slowly eat its own, okay? It will slowly it will slowly succumb to good, that there is in fact a side of our existence that leans towards goodness winning out. It may take time. We may not see it, we may not even be privileged to see it in our own lifetime.
SPEAKER_11:It is it just the good, though, that wins out? In other words, is God not at work in that good?
SPEAKER_12:I'm and God is also possibly in that evil, too. But it is but it takes a lot longer. It still takes a hundred people to rebuild a building that one person destroyed. Okay, but they will rebuild it. There is goodness. It just might take a long time for it to show itself.
SPEAKER_11:Father, i is he all wet here or is he onto something? Well, no, no.
SPEAKER_06:I I think he's on to something, but but there is an exception, though. And and of course that is our uh the exception in the Christian understanding, because uh because Jesus' body was destroyed. And uh it didn't take a long time to recreate him as the firstborn of the new creation.
SPEAKER_12:Yeah, but that was in your religion that was God acting.
SPEAKER_06:Yes, right.
SPEAKER_12:So it's still God acting towards good.
SPEAKER_06:That that is correct, yeah. That is correct.
SPEAKER_11: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 is crucified under a Roman on a Roman cross under a Roman charge.
SPEAKER_06:It's just that of evil, the reason evil evil cannot stand. Evil cannot stand because um evil is nothing. I mean, it's an attack on being. Now I always like to to Matt just give the example. If I if I grab a person's arm and it's a perfectly good arm, that's a good arm. If I make a cut in it, it's an evil. But the evil does not exist. In other words, the e the evil the the arm can exist without the cut. The cut cannot exist without the arm.
SPEAKER_12:Okay, and now you want to translate that?
SPEAKER_06:What that means is that the good can exist by itself, but the evil is actually an attack upon the good. Yeah. So ultimately, it requires evil depends on the existence of good to be able to exist.
SPEAKER_12:And so ultimately it it it's and would we would would we know what good is without being able to contrast it with the evil?
SPEAKER_06:Yes, I I think we could. Because good God is good. Anything that exists is good.
SPEAKER_12:And God saw that it was good. That's right. But don't we have to have some form 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 began the show tonight, Rudy made a comment about uh providence, and we tend not to acknowledge it. And I was going to say that that's the effect of blessings, of reciting a blessing. We recite a blessing before we eat. All religions that I know of do that. It's an acknowledgement of providence. Yes.
SPEAKER_11:That God has set the table for us and that God has uh put us on a planet that has is is a very full pantry.
SPEAKER_12:And and we are partaking in God's possessions and God's abundance.
SPEAKER_11:Right, right.
SPEAKER_12:We're sharing in that it's an acknowledgement of providence, I think.
SPEAKER_11:Our time is just about up, but let's talk a little bit about human free will. How does human free will then live within that? Yeah. Next. Rudy, I'm gonna come to come to you in a second. Uh but how does human free will fit into all of this? And if if God is superintending and sustaining the world, then what is the role of our own freeness? Are we artificially free? Are we really free? Are we just part-time free? What is it? What do you what do you how do you see it?
SPEAKER_14:I I would I would describe it St. Thomas Aquinas. He explains our human free will as something that is not destroyed by God, but enabled by God. So God is the first cause of all things, right? And he's the thing of all things in being. While humans, we could argue, are a secondary cause, right? A secondary what? We are a secondary cause. So we exist because we were free to life by our creator. And so we don't exist. And and this is kind of uh the the kind of dichotomy I think that the rabbi was kind of was trying to elucidate a little bit is is can you really say that there's free will when we are secondary causes, right? We are dependent on a primary cause. And and I think it's important to understand that God exists outside of time, outside of creation, is something that we as humans, materially in this day and age, can't even truly comprehend. We can think about it, but at the end of the day, it's an act of faith. Right? It's something that's super rational, I would I would argue. And it's just something that can't be understood to kind of it doesn't make us hope it does allow us to cooperate with that problem, and that's what we need to do. So there is really well. Because even though I mean it's difficult to understand because we don't truly as humans create anything, right? I mean Father War makes this joke uh all the time where man goes up to uh, oh look, I made all 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 uh when I did it in the New York Theological Library, I forget, and I I hate that I always forget. Um there's a great scientist out of Wright University. He does he does a lot of molecular biology.
SPEAKER_11:James Tour is his name, James Dr.
SPEAKER_14:James Tour, fantastic, fantastic, young um super smart guy, and he talks about how science today claims that you know we can reference itself and we can program this. And he says, okay, great. But we are already starting with fine material, right? We are already starting with something already created, and that's what we accused can't do. Right. So I can actually really we could I could go right now and and like bottom, or Rabbi was saying, I can go and burn a building, right? But I also think that good, and and we talked about this before, yeah. Uh heaven is an acquired hell is an acquired case. Right? It's the two actions that complete that continually carve character that lead us towards good or towards bad, and then we kind of become desensitized to it.
SPEAKER_11:So yeah, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, well said, well said, Rudy. Stewart, I know you you're leaning into the mic.
SPEAKER_12:Yes, I'm leaning in, waiting for you to call on me.
SPEAKER_11:Go ahead. Yes, you have to raise your hand.
SPEAKER_12:I just I think that the next time a person who believes in free will, that the next time they're with someone who sneezes, they need to remember to say asparagus.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. Why why is why is that?
SPEAKER_12:Because free will. They're exercising free will.
SPEAKER_11:Oh.
SPEAKER_12:Because it's their free will to say asparagus. Why do they have to say God bless you, labert, whatever they're going to say? Why they don't have to, they can say anything they want.
SPEAKER_11:So there'd be a lot of people.
SPEAKER_12:And the truth is, they can say anything they want.
SPEAKER_11:They can.
SPEAKER_12:And we have absolute, complete, and total free will to do anything that we choose to do. And the only thing that that leads us to choose good, in my opinion, is the providence, is religion that expresses that providence and the values and ethics and morals that God created. So Father Murray, what's wrong with what he just said?
SPEAKER_06:Oh, nothing. It's just that uh if you don't choose what is the good that God has shown us, you end up destroying.
SPEAKER_12:And destroyed.
SPEAKER_06:Destroying and destroyed. That's how you one of the ways you can t really tell if something is good or evil is is it disp is it developing the creation. Is it constructive or destructive? That's very simple. Very simple.
SPEAKER_11:So and and and that's not always described as good or evil.
SPEAKER_06:No, no.
SPEAKER_11:But but it can it can certainly describe that. I would I would just add very quickly, I'm not sure that we have complete and total and absolute free will. I think there are limits to that. But that's for a number of.
SPEAKER_12:If you wanted to, you could get on to 59 right now and ride the top of a car like a like a riding a wave.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. Okay, right now I want you to choose to speak Chinese, please.
SPEAKER_12:I I have limitations to my abilities. That's not. But if I wanted to, I could learn it and then speak it. No, you couldn't. I couldn't learn Chinese. No, you're probably not at my age. Not at your age. Never actually. Okay.
SPEAKER_06: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 the show of faith. Please, during this week, we ask you to keep us in our prayers because you are going to be in hours.
SPEAKER_05:Find it at AM1070BN.com. Download our app. Stream it 24 7 K N D H A K two Seventy Seven D E F M.