[SOC]

So, being married is killing me as a blogger. I know. I hardly write anymore since getting married. The reason for this is because I spend many hours conversing with my wife. This is because we actually like each other's company. But I still have time to write. The thing is that I spend most of that time reading. My thinking is heading in new directions these days, and I have to feed my brain.

I am embracing the Catholic faith. This requires some reading. Unlike becoming a Baptist, there is some book learning with becoming a Catholic. And why would I do something as crazy as become a Catholic? It is because they are right.

For those who know me, they will recall that I was a Protestant Christian in my twenties where I started out as an evangelical Baptist and migrated to a staunch Calvinism and became a Presbyterian. I attended seminary where my faith took a massive hit when I found my roommate's cold dead body in his bedroom at 6 am one morning. He had committed suicide. It troubled me. I was to learn later that he was an in the closet homosexual racked by guilt and self-revulsion. Calvinism gave him some solace with a belief in sola fide, but it did little for him in actually living it out or being accepted in the church.

My faith left me as I contemplated how a loving God could let one of his own be so tormented like that. But reading the history of the Catholic church or contemplating Christ on the cross simply shows that suffering is a normal part of a Christian's journey. Calvinists would agree, but you won't get sympathy being gay in a Calvinist church. You will in a Catholic church.

The suicide taught me that ideas have terrible consequences. The way you think has a large bearing on how you live or whether or not that existence is even tolerable. If you are gay, I don't recommend that you embrace Calvinism and attempt to become a Presbyterian minister. It is not going to do a lot for your psyche.

Atheism gave me a break from the austerity of Calvinism and also let me off the hook for everything subsequent. In the atheist world, you are your own god. You can do as you will. There is no guilt. Well, actually, the guilt never really leaves you. You just sublimate it better. The only thing atheism does for you is give you an expectation that is no longer justified by logic. Life as an atheist is mere suspension over the abyss of nihilism.

I spent the next decade studying philosophy in my spare hours attempting to answer my questions and address this nihilism. Switching from Calvinism to atheism is like switching from arsenic to cyanide. My political conservatism morphed into libertarianism. Being a libertine will do that to you. I spent the years in the caustic acid bath of nihilism. It did not improve me morally whatsoever. It merely provoked in me a stunning level of anger and hatred.

If Calvinism was the thesis and atheism was the antithesis, Catholicism is the synthesis of sorts. I can't stop believing in scientific truth, but I also can't escape this hardwired moral sensibility within me. Catholicism bridges this gap.

I think there are two basic types of atheists. You have your Sartre style atheists that embrace it all, become complete nihilists, and disgrace themselves by excusing the atrocities of Stalin. Then, you have Camus style atheists who accept the truth as they see it but would prefer it if there actually was a God. I have always been a Camus atheist.

I have attended various Protestant churches over the last decade leaving cold and empty. Going to a Catholic church has provoked in me waves of massive guilt but also hope. It is like having bandages taken off your eyes and letting the light sting those unused eyes. This is that moral sense in me getting a fresh workout once again.

This is where I am today. I'm sorry for not writing more. I just have a lot on my plate these days.

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