I'd like to thank John Kettner, our WUD Deist Contact from Thomas Paine's town of Bordentown, New Jersey, for the realization that we do receive sacraments from God through Nature. Here's a great succinct piece he wrote about this.
Catholicism defines sacrament as "outward signs of inward grace, instituted by Christ for our sanctification." And one of the Catholic definitions of sanctification is, "the love of God [that] is infused by the Holy Spirit" during baptism.
The Greek definition of the word grace as used in the New Testament is, "the state of kindness and favor towards someone often with a focus on a benefit given to the object."
Of course, unlike Christians, Deists don't believe in three gods or three gods in one; the father, son and holy ghost/spirit. We only believe in one God, the Supreme Intelligence.
The sacraments in the various "revealed" religions require the performing of some act and/or recitation of some words in the form of a prayer or religious utterance. For example, the sacrament of communion requires believers to eat a wafer or piece of bread and usually to drink some wine and to utter something which acknowledges that the wafer or bread and the wine are believed to be by the recipient the body and blood of Jesus. (This is what the Deist George Washington refused to do even though he had to be a member of the established church for social reasons.) This is done in remembrance of what the Bible says Jesus did in the Passover celebration known as "the last supper." Some Christian sects, such as Roman Catholics, employ their magical thinking and actually believe in transubstantiation, or that the wafer and blood actually turn into the body of blood of Jesus after the believer ingests them.
If we look at sanctification or sacrament as something that edifies the person receiving it or embracing it then we do receive sacraments from Nature and Nature's God all the time! The song bird, the sun glistening on freshly fallen snow, a star filled night, looking at the sonogram of your unborn child or looking at your newborn child for the very first time, etc. are all sacraments God generously bestows upon us. They are all "kindness and favor" God through Nature gives to us. And we don't need to memorize religious texts or perform any man-made rituals or violate our God-given reason to receive and deeply appreciate them!
God and Deism are profoundly awesome!
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