That led to a chain reaction of sorts, with him presenting me with one meme or argument against religion after another, most of them very ignorant, some of them even plain silly. The only effect of all this was that I was actually feeling a bit more confident in believing again.
Breaking the shackles of evolutionary propaganda
by Nathan van Ree ; 7 August 2017 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/breaking-the-shackles
I have been in similar situations twice before, and am in a probably similar one now.
When I went to boarding school, I was nearly Evangelical in some ways, very much more High Church in others. Young Earth Creationist - and not too anti-Catholic.
At the boarding school I had problems and got more and more problems getting girls. Not that it was a boys' school, far from it, but my tending to romantic love, hoping for a romance with engagement and marrying when possible after both get 18 (yes, back then I fell in love with girls same age, or no more than 5 years difference the one time the difference was biggest - not on school, my first girl friend, I bungled it), that was not quite the policy of a school with official policy no sex or romance and under hand policy "go ahead, but don't get caught" meaning they were presumably using condoms, perhaps abortions. So I was not getting girls.
Nor were most boys very congenial company. One Christian who later fell away, one who went through with Lutheran "confirmation" (Swedish Church can't provide that, since having neither episcopal nor sacerdotal orders) but very soon got disinterested in Christianity, and the rest of co-boarders in each of the two houses where I was were either:
- harrassers;
- on and off company, mostly indifferent;
- company actively trying to bring me away from the faith, though friendly.
The harrassers were also attacking very much the faith, when not attacking my personality by calling me homosexual.
The on and off company was either very superficial, or, at times when a bit more interested also showing off some arguments against the faith. Notably against Young Earth Creationism.
This means I spent four years defending the faith as best as I could. At the end of the process, I was Catholic. OK, not yet received into Novus Ordo sect, but going for it. Or going for the Catholic Church and taking Novus Ordo sect for it.
The thing is, I was doing pretty well - and it was in the process of finding arguments (as well as in my passion for history, including Church history) that I discovered that the Catholic Church NOT being founded on a supposed apostasy or semi-apostasy or syncretisation in the time of Constantine, or even as I had more actually thought, getting slightly corrupted by power and needing a Reformation, but remaining the true faith very purely over time was the best explanation for God meeting His requirement as per Matthew 28 last verses or of God preserving the Bible in a Bible believing Church.
I was looking at the Orthodox Church too, perhaps at the time preferring Catholicism on somewhat too superficial grounds, which has if so been corrected by the time I return (much later) from Orthodoxy to Catholicism.
But while I was preparing to be received - and I was received by a priest who was certainly clearly Catholic in outlook, who had been ordained in older rite, who remembered it all and who accepted externals of the Novus Ordo, not the mentality, of obedience, so one can argue I was really received in the Catholic Church because of my and his intention, and because in 1988 there was no alternative Pope known to me - I was continuing arguing and doing very well.
I was taking time off, more and more, from Young Earth Creationism - after all, I had decided Catholics not believing the position were still Catholics, still perfectly Christians.
Things happened, I could not sort my life out in Catholics of the now mainstream type, I searched out a Traditional opposition, things happened there too, and instead of sorting up my life I got stranded away from them, in a village. There I did not do much for the faith, except pray and oppose abortion. And promote a return to younger marriage ages - by courting a girl who was 14-15. Things happened, and after I had been in mental hospital for two short spells, I defended myself against a policeman when he tried to put me there third time over - NB, not in "defense" of the girl, not on an occasion when I had been trying to see her, but months after the latest such event.
In prison, things happened. I think some of them were arranged, like being put together with one, two, then three or even four Muslims, and I ended up getting defended from them (after saying I believe the Quran is not the word of God, but of Satan) by people then transferring me to mental hospital. NB, the Muslims were threatening a while and it was one of them who alerted the guards, so their game may have been to arrange such a transfer. In that mental hospital, one of my remaining joys was reading. And I read most of Little House series, and I read a Swedish translation of City of God, by St Augustine of Hippo. When I came out, I was very clearly Young Earth Creationist.
I had a reason to start using internet less than a year after getting out, and I was of course defending Catholicism in a Traditional way and Young Earth Creationism. And same thing happened : as I defended the faith, I discovered a new thing about it. I was confronted with Distant Starlight Paradox, and within 24 hours I was Geocentric. I think this position is the best defense, the ones promoted by CMI are comparatively exotic. Less sensible than some of their other work.
And now I am living homeless (hoping to get sth published) defending the faith over internet, and am seeing certain efforts which once again seem to be concerted to bring me away from the faith. Not wishing good luck, though, not even ironically.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Parmentier
St. John Eudes
19.VIII.2017
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