When Pope St. John Paul II was alive, he wrote an encyclical called Evangelium Vitae, which means “The Gospel of Life.” In it he warned of the culture of death that was beginning to take shape, and he warned of the dangers of accepting abortion and euthanasia, and other things, that if continued to be promoted and accepted would lead to a deterioration of the respect for the sanctity of life in all it’s stages. He warned that mankind would lose the awareness of God’s presence in a world that no longer respected life, and he warned that we would lose the sense of the presence of God and man, losing our sense of shared purpose and identity. We are all created in the image of God and carry that identity in our bodies and souls. When we forget God, we can do damage to the image of God within us and our fellow man. We separate ourselves from God, and no longer sense His nearness in our lives, and we end up turning a blind eye to the injustice, sin and atrocities in our world. We false...
We have either held a grudge ourselves or have witnessed other people holding a grudge or unforgiveness towards other people. If we have ever felt that someone was holding a grudge against us, we know the unpleasant feeling of wanting to be released from their hostility towards us. When we repent of our sins and come to faith in Christ, God in a very real sense releases us from his hostility and the enmity that we once experienced towards Him, and may have not even realize it. In 2 Corinthians 5:19 it says “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” What this means is that before accepting God’s salvation and forgiveness, we were indebted to God every time we sinned. Our sins were being counted and accumulated right until the point of our death and would be judged by God in a place called Hell for all eternity. Because we rejected God’s offer of salvatio...