1. Meeting the Living God by William J. O’Malley, S.J.
The First Question:
How Can We Be Sure of Anything?
The Meaning of You
What Will Make Humans Happy?

2. What Will Make Humans Happy?
What are human beings made for? What is our nature?
What brings human beings success, happiness, and fulfillment in life?
The Propaganda/Value Systems offer substitutes as the means to living a successful, happy, and fulfilled life
Learning
Loving
Growing
Unique and specific for each individual person

3. What Will Make Humans Happy?
What brings human beings success, happiness, and fulfillment in life?
Anything that meets the requirements of all three dimensions of the human person
Rational  Learning  Mind
The ability to understand and ask the question “Why?” about the world
Social  Loving  Body (Heart)
The ability to love and form relationships with others which meet the need for affection and understanding
Self-transcending  Growing  Spirit (Soul)
The ability to deepen our capacity to understand and love and become more human (through silent reflection)

4. What Will Make Humans Happy?
What brings human beings success, happiness, and fulfillment in life?
Whatever brings us joy, conviction, exhilaration, peace, and a sense that we are “at home” in our lives
Whatever does not make us miserable, grouchy, and hateful

5. What Will Make Humans Happy?
What does it mean to be human? What is human nature?
The desire to have experiences that promote learning, loving, and growing
The ability to understand and to love and our need to transcend ourselves
Growing in body, mind, and spirit
Anything that meets the requirements of all three dimensions of the human person
Uncertainty (the need to make decisions based on evidence that is less than certain)
The freedom to go against what everybody knows, says, and does

6. Meeting the Living God by William J. O’Malley, S.J.
The First Question:
How Can We Be Sure of Anything?
The Meaning of You
What Will Make You Happy?

7. What Will Make You Happy?
The Individual, Unique Human Being
Shares the same essential human nature with every other human being
Learning
Loving
Growing
Possesses a unique soul, specific biological information, and distinctive social circumstances
Characteristics, values, attitudes, beliefs
Art, sports, science
Height, weight
Gender, ethnicity, race
Parents, siblings
Neighborhood, social and economic background

8. What Will Make You Happy?
The Individual, Unique Human Being
Success, happiness, and fulfillment in life (learning, loving, and growing) is unique and specific for each individual person
The period of adolescence is designed for figuring out what will make us successful, happy, and fulfilled in life and enable us to evolve into a self-possessed person (a personally validated self)
From a Catholic worldview, my deepest desires for myself are also God’s deepest desires for me

9. What Will Make You Happy?
The Individual, Unique Human Being
Freedom to change attitude and overcome the limitations of our biological, psychological, or situational fate (true heroism)
Freedom to go against what everybody knows, says, and does

10. What Will Make You Happy?
The Individual, Unique Human Being
Unacceptable for a human to claim that “I was only following orders”
No longer exercising one’s freedom
No longer thinking for one’s self
The costs of genuine freedom
Reasoning for one’s self
Taking responsibility for one’s actions

11. Meeting the Living God by William J. O’Malley, S.J.
The First Question:
How Can We Be Sure of Anything?
The Meaning of You
The Scope of Your Meaning

12. The Scope of Your Meaning
A “Pivotal” Section
Crucial
The core of the book: There exists a greater, richer reality outside of ourselves which calls us to greatness
We can know about this greater reality by examining our individual, unique human nature and the world around us
Shifting directions
A transition to the other two questions examined in the book: Does God exist?, and if so, What is God like?

13. The Scope of Your Meaning
The Individual, Unique Human Being
Desire to be in control of one’s life
Avoid the pain of letting go and being taken in by someone
Fear of being vulnerable and trusting other people
Hate being tricked, duped, or deceived by others
Set up natural defense mechanisms against being loved
Avoid getting hurt by being alone

14. The Scope of Your Meaning
The World of Helen Keller
Before the Moment at the Pump
Dark, little world
Vicious, crazy, out of control
Isolated, alone
People are just bodies
Enemies all around
No communication, no sounds, no sights
Appears safe, but always threatening
Fear of the outside
After the Moment at the Pump
Bright, great world
A new reality
She has seen the light
Other people exist
She is no longer alone
Communicate with symbolic language
Safety and security
Freedom, liberation

15. The Scope of Your Meaning
The World of Helen Keller
Annie Sullivan
Helen Keller’s Moses or Jesus
The great liberator willing to bring Helen Keller from slavery to freedom (a new reality)
What did Sullivan do?
Wrestled, fought, punched, clawed with Keller
Taught Keller table manners
Taught Keller language
Cracked open Keller’s safe little self-centered world and let the great world come flooding in

16. The Scope of Your Meaning
The World of Helen Keller
The Moment at the Pump
Helen Keller made a connection between the physical world and symbolic language
Discovered that things have names
Helen Keller discovers that there is a whole world (a greater, richer reality) beyond her darkness
Satisfied with her limited reality because she had no clue what she was missing
Conversion to a whole new way of perceiving the world around her –> there exists a greater, richer reality outside of myself which calls me to greatness

17. The Scope of Your Meaning
Humans have always suspected that a greater, richer reality existed outside of ourselves
The “aliveness” of the natural world
Create physical symbols (idols) to represent the “power” surrounding them
An element of doubt and suspicion about the existence of a “Mind Behind It All”
But, just once more in your life consider the possibility that there just might be someone “out there” worth seeking