Just wanted to let you know we posted your article entitled “My Homoerotic Relationship with Jesus” on COAS.

http://seminarianblog.com/2008/02/25/my-homoerotic-relationship-with-jesus/

We’d love to have you over there if you want to check it out or be there for the discussion. Thanks again!

I can’t help but think you will be responsible before God for the way you are leading your wife and children….the fact is you are supposed to be leading them in righteousness, not rebellion.

“righteousness” is not a word that has a lot of meaning to me anymore. I am a flawed human being, and although I will do the very best that I can, I will continue to be flawed. So I don’t lead my wife in “righteousness”.

In fact, I don’t tell my wife what to believe at all! If there is one thing I have taught my wife, it is that in this country, you are liable to nobody for what you believe or don’t believe about God. You don’t have to answer to your culture, your background, your society, your family, your pastor, your friiends, not even your spouse - you believe whatever it is that allows you to be intellectually honest with yourself. If you have to pretend or force yourself to “believe” things that you just don’t intellectually, you are just a fraud. You are no better than those cheap salesmen who put on masks and don’t show the world who they really are.

My wife is Catholic, and she loves her faith, but not some of the more conservative angles of it. When my mother-in-law found out that I was not catholic, she was aghast. (she knows nothing about my atheism, just that I am not catholic). She did not want me to marry her daughter. But I cannot pretend to believe things I do not - I will be a miserable SOB if I did that. So I asked her, “what do you think is more important - that I love your daughter, cherish her, respect her for the rest of our lives - OR that I believe in the Trinity?” Intellectual honesty is of greater moral value to me than any church creed, doctrine, belief system, religion or faith - and before you but in and correct me - it is above any ‘relationship’ with a diety too.

If I ever have to face God and account for my life, all I have to say is that I was honest - honest with myself, and with everyone around me. That is what I have taught my wife too. She believes in a God that makes sense to her, not one imposed on her by her parents, her friends or least of all, by Rome. God will know that I cannot accept him on blind belief, because he did not make me with that capacity, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. That is the best I can do, and if God cannot accept me like that, I can’t help that. Personal integrity is too great a moral virtue to me to sacrifice for living in ‘righteousness’

Art, is there a way for you to seek out a new Christian community that would be a better fit for you? There are so many, many varieties and denominations - surely if you want to stay involved in Christianity there must be one that would suit you better.

I think you’re very balanced if religion makes you unhappy. It sure has made a lot of people unhappy over the centuries!

How is one going to be responsible to a non-existent being, a phantasm, a figment of imagination?

Now if you really think that you can pray and get results, please pray for God to show up. HIS, and I, and others here would be quite happy to acknowledge God and follow Him if he would do for us, something like what He did for the apostle Thomas.

Recall that Thomas said, “Unless I see the nail prints in his hands and place my fingers in his side, I wil not believe.”

That’s the exact stance I’ve taken, as have others here. If Jesus can miraculously appear to Thomas - if God can speak from a donkey’s mouth; if God can send angels to speak to mortals; if the omnipotent, omniscient; omnipresent, omnibenovolent Creator can spare an infinitessimal smidge of his time and power just to let us know He is really there and really cares - then I will gladly return to the faith.

Until that happens though, I can’t believe in the inaudible, intangible, unsensible being that you and others keep going on about. It’s not rebellion; it’s simply not believing in what we are sure can’t be any more real than fairies, elves, and unicorns.

But do pray. Pray that if He’s there, He’ll show up. I for one, would be very glad to be able to return to belief.