How would you feel if you asked someone you trusted to do something for you only to discover that they did not?

I was having an email discussion with Mark Thimesch and he disclosed what led him to the Catholic Church.  I really enjoyed reading it.  I hope you do also.

Evening De Maria!

I agree with your statement about not "playing the protestant's game" and I saw PBJ taking the real subject matter completely off track in order for him to build up a straw man and then burn it down, which is typical of protestants when they debate Catholics. It's really amazing to me how much of a difference exists between two people who can read the Bible and come away with two different and opposing readings.

But again, this comes from the fact that most protestants practice sola scriptura and are very selective of what parts of the Bible they actually read. I haven't met too many protestants who have read the Bible in its entirety. 

My "reversion" back to the Catholic Church actually resulted in me going through a similar experience as Jason Stellman, only I wasn't on trial.

The answer actually came to me after an incident at my job when working out in Arizona. It was strange too because I had JUST STARTED reading the Bible for the first time in my life and had studied and encountered about fifteen other religious affiliations during my first five years while there in Arizona.

The incident goes like this...

Our laboratory supervisor had just gone on a three week vacation and left our assistant supervisor in charge. As it so happened, the assistant supervisor's Mother had passed away in Nebraska, so he had to leave. He then put the Lead Tech in charge, which it so happened that his Father died the next day and he had to take leave. Since there was no other authorized person within the lab, they designated a Pathologist to oversee the lab. Problem was, the pathologist never came by the lab and worked on the other side of the hospital.

This resulted in almost everyone within the laboratory to start violating many of the safety and dress codes that help make the lab safe for everyone. People were bringing food into the lab (BIG NO NO!), smoking inside the lab, wearing street clothes instead of following the appropriate dress code. But there were five people (out of 37) who never violated any of the codes. All of them were Philipino and all of them were Catholic.

Now, I didn't think much of this until about the sixth day when things got really out of hand and I started seeing changes in many of the people's behavior. As the saying goes;"When the cats away, the mice will play." I never violated much of the codes except one - I wore blue jeans to work one day. It was that very day that one of the Philipino's, Joe, came up to me and asked me; "Markie. All this time you haven't violated any of the rules. Why today? What is so special about today?" I looked at Joe and said; "Well....why not? Everyone else is doing it."

The response he gave me actually answered the very question about God and religion. "Markie. How would you feel if you asked someone you trusted to do something for you only to discover that they did not do what you had asked of them but told you they did. How would you feel if you were to discover this act of deception?"  I looked at Joe for about a minute and he never had to say a second word. I drove home on my break and changed my clothes to meet the dress code. When I came back from break, Joe and the other Phillipinos were very happy to see I had changed. Needless to say, not one of the Phillipino Catholics violated any of the codes the entire time an authority figure was absent.

This episode answered a question for me that I had in my head for quite some time, that being; "If the natural world has laws that govern, regulate, dictate, and control how things behave, and if man makes laws that are meant to govern, control, and regulate our behavior so that our health, safety, and well being can be preserved, then why wouldn't a God also such laws for the spiritual world?" This is when things clicked and I knew right then and there that there MUST be one God, one religion, one Faith and not a hundred billion others. And since this is the case, the oldest Church which claims His teachings must be true, if their teachings show that they had never changed since their inception by Jesus Christ.

However, this episode also instilled in me a realization about the whole concept of protestantism, atheism, agnosticism, that being: when we as humans can't "sense" (i.e. see, hear, touch) an authoritative figure we seem to take on, or make our own authority, doing whatever we want to do because we think there is no harm if we don't get caught and that such rules and laws are not what we would agree with in the first place. This to me is overwhelmingly evident within protestantism because of their belief in sola scriptura. What better way to love God and praise God, when we can make God into the image WE WANT Him to be, and thus follow His laws that we CHOSE to like.

That's what led me to the Catholic Church.

Okay, long email, sorry. But thank you for your reply!

God Bless! and keep up the outstanding work!

mark thimesch