Understanding Sin as Tangent

Generally, I avoid the term sin.  This is not because i find the topic distasteful, but because most people don't know what sin is.  They see it as arbitrary divine judgement.  For them, sin is the violation of some supernatural legal code.  Just as crime results in prison, sin results in damnation.  It's cold and impersonal and alienating.  When they hear us say they are sinning they simply hear us passing judgment on them.  Although i will not shy away from talking about sins, generally, i will avoid the term.  It just confuses the issue and pushes people farther away.
      However, this is based on a misconception of God, of His relation to us.  God is not a power hungry tyrant, He is not an impersonal and wrathful judge.  He is a loving Father, and He created us with a purpose.  To understand sin, we must first understand this purpose and our relation to God.
      There is a meaning to life.  We were created for the greatest good of all, complete union with God, in which we find true happiness and ultimate joy.  We enter into this union through love, through the true self-gift.  This is not something we do, but rather something we allow God to do.  All you really contribute is your yes, when you say yes to God and offer Him the entirety of yourself.  So long as i pursue my own good, i will never find the ultimate good.  So long as i am looking out for myself and pursuing my own happiness, true joy and fulfillment will forever evade me.  So i let go, and offer myself to God.  I allow him to love me and to love the world through me.  In giving myself to Him, i receive Him in turn, and find the purpose for which i was made.
      There is this path, its narrow and steep, but when we travel it we travel with God, towards our true purpose.  This is the path of salvation.  God neither forces us to walk it nor to remain on it.  There are many other paths to choose from, often times they seem more appealing, but they do not takes us anywhere we really want to go.  They are tangents, leading us away from our true ends.  We walk the path of salvation so long as we pursue God, the ultimate good.  We leave this path and pursue the tangents when we choose lesser goods over God, temporal good over eternal good, personal good over the good of others.
      God does not send anyone to Hell.  If He did, he would be a monster, creating man simply to subject him to eternal torment.  God sends no one to Hell.  Each and every soul who arrives in this destination of the damned is there of their own free will, their own volition.  They refused God when He offered them salvation, when He offered them Himself.  The souls in Hell said no when God offered them Heaven.
      When we place our hope in anything apart from God it will eventually fail us.  We pursue lesser goods but they don't satisfy us.  They may grant us a momentary escape from the miseries of life, but soon they fade.  We seek them out again, but this time we need more to get the same feelings, and again they fade.  Soon it does not matter how much we get, our desire cannot be satisfied.  We desire a fulfillment which can only be achieved in finding our meaning, our purpose in being.  We all hope in someday finding that purpose, but the longer we seek it in vain the more our hope fades, until it finally dies, and all we are left with is despair.  Hell is not a place like Pittsburgh or Milwaukee, it is a state of being, it is the complete absence of a meaning only God can provide.  Hell is the complete and utter despair resulting from a life of self-gratification.
      Sin aught not to be seen as a legal term, divine or otherwise.  Our true fulfillment is found in union with God, and God desires that for us.  However, He gave us free will so that we could choose for ourselves.  We have the power to choose against God, to reject Him.  We can take actions that impede our union with God, that separate us from the ultimate good, that lead us on the path towards the misery of despair.  This is the essence of sin.  This is what we aught to mean when we refer to it.  Sin is that which separates us from God, from the ultimate good, from the purpose of our being.  It consists of those things which are spiritually harmful to the individual who does them. 
      God desires that which is best for us, which is union with Him.  Sin harms us by separating us from Him and binding us to the world.  Nothing in creation is evil in of itself.  Food is good, sex is good, music is good, everything is created good.  The problem comes when we prefer these things to God.  Again, God sends no one to Hell, it is not something God subjects us to, it is something we subject ourselves to.  But why?  Why would anyone choose Hell over Heaven?  It is because of the high cost of Heaven.  In order to gain paradise, we must be willing to give up everything.  All the goods of creation are distractions we must be willing to sacrifice.  No human being can do this alone.  It is only with God's aid that this is possible.  Even then we all will fall short on occasion.  Sins are those things which tie us to these lesser goods and distract us from God.
      When we do something that leads us away from God, we are choosing against Heaven.  When we stop pursuing God and go off on these tangents, that is sin.  When God tells us to give to those in need and avoid murdering our neighbors, it is because He desires what is best for us.  I could rightly say that contraception is a sin, but most people would hear something like; contraception makes God angry and now your going to hell.  This understanding would not only be unhelpful, but it could even lead people away from Christ and His Church.  So rather than give scandal, i say contraception harms you as a person, it impedes your true happiness and hinders your relationship with God.  Far less offensive, much more informative, and yet I have said the exact same thing in both cases.  For that is what sin does and why it is so bad; it harms us as people, impedes our true happiness and hinders our relationship with God.
      Sin is a tangent, because it distracts us from the real purpose of it all.

Catholicism and Same-Sex-Attraction - Part 2 The Act Itself

This is the post i've been putting off for years.  I don't really want to write it.  So many people already have, i almost don't see a point to adding my voice to the fray.  But maybe i'll say something unique, maybe i'll impact someone whom others have missed.  Maybe...
      I've already written Part 1 and you can't leave a series uncompleted.  (I'm looking at you Swordquest!)  I would just ask, before reading this post, if you haven't already, go back and read Part 1.  It sets the tone for the series and hopefully establishes my position.  Basically, if you read Part 2 without first reading Part 1, you sacrifice the right to call me hateful, intolerant, close-minded, spiteful, ignorant, bigot or a stupid-jerk-headed-poo-poo-face.  So long as you read Part 1 first, i'll contend myself with the knowledge that i tried and you can call me whatever you wish.
      As i set out on this particular sojourn, i want to be very careful of what i say.  I'm not interested in passing judgement on anyone.  Each of us has a unique temptation set.   In fact, as far as what i have to say here, it doesn't matter in the slightest if you are gay, straight, lesbian, bi-gender or tran-sexual.  There are, basically, three ways of dealing with a temptation.  It doesn't matter who you are or what the temptation is.  These three responses are about as universal as it gets. 
      The response that takes the most flak is resisting the temptation.  You stare it in the face and say "NO" until you inevitably give in or go crazy.  Catholics don't like this tactic because it doesn't work.  Secular folks will speak poorly of it because it drives you insane. Pretty much everyone (maybe not puritans) will tell you it leads to self-hatred and depression, suicidal tendencies and perhaps even bed wetting.
      A second response is to simply give in.  Accept who you are and embrace your desires.  A lot of people will tell you this is the best option.  This view says, "Do what makes you happy."  Meaning, do what grants you the greatest immediate satisfaction.  I don't need to appeal to Christ or Catholic teaching here.  Buddha, Confucius, Mohammad, Socrates and a host of others will all tell you the same thing; Short term gratification leads to lasting misery.  Unless your desire is to love God and neighbor, this is definitely the wrong response.
      Before i look at the third response, i will try and explain why these first two don't work.

      Buddha had a lot to say worth hearing.  One of the things he says is that all desire leads to suffering.  This is true.  Now, his solution is to eliminate all desire. (Makes since, right?)  Confucius would agree that all desire leads to suffering but would disagree with the solution.
      Confucius (In accord with my Catholic faith) distinguishes between right desire and wrong desire.  Wrong desire grants temporary happiness but inevitably leads to a lasting suffering.  Right desire comes at the cost of temporary suffering but grants a lasting joy, true happiness.  Consider this in regard to pornography.  The first time, you look at pictures of girls or guys in swim suits, and that satisfies, for awhile.  But soon you need to look again, only now you need more, you need erotic poses.  Next time you need nudity, then sex, then video...  Eventually, no matter how many hours you spend in front of a computer screen, you cannot find images that satisfy.  This desire has left you empty, with nothing to show for it but a very large credit card bill and a lot of suffering.
      Right desire is the exact opposite.  Perhaps as a child your parents dragged you to an art museum.  In boredom you suffered through an endless lineup of stupid painting after stupid painting.  Minutes seemed like hours.  But then, this one paining catches your eye.  You don't know why, but you are drawn to it.  Something about it lightens your burden, gives you a sense of joy.  You stare at it for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, examining every nuance, until you parents forcibly drag you away.  Some time latter you return to the art museum, looking for that painting, but it's gone.  You begin to look at others, examining them for that trait you found in the first.  And you find it.  It's beauty.  Each time you come you find more of it.  Whereas before, you would look at twenty paintings in a minute, now you can spend twenty minutes looking at a single painting.
      With wrong desire, the more you indulge it, the more you need to be satisfied.  With right desire, the more you receive of it, the less you need.
      All right desire consists of truth, goodness and beauty.  We can pursue these desires, it is okay to give into them.  (to pursue truth, goodness and beauty; to love God and neighbor; same thing)  At times we may abstain from a lesser good in order to receive a greater good.  But these are topics for another time.
      When we pursue wrong desire we inevitably find nothing but suffering.  When we actively resist these temptations, we are desiring a falsehood, we are desiring to be someone else.  You create a contradiction within yourself where you both desire to have cake and desire to not have cake at the same time.  Either you give in and hate yourself, because who you are is someone who ate cake, or you resist and the unfilled desire for sweet, moist, chocolaty goodness eats at you.  Holding on to your wrong desires will destroy you, whether you are fighting and wrestling with them or indulging them.  There is only one thing to do.
      You need to let them go.  There are only so many hours in the day.  If you spend 24 of them pursing truth, goodness and beauty, you will not have time to pursue sex or drugs or chocolate cake.  And here is the best part; truth, goodness and beauty do not exclude sex, drugs or chocolate cake.  When untied with marriage and procreation, sex becomes a right desire, it leads to greater happiness.  If you are married, i would advise having more sex. (and don't use contraception; large quantities of procreative sex leads to large quantities of children, large quantities of children leads to large quantities of birthday parties, large quantities of birthday parties leads to large quantities of chocolate cake. (contraception is an impediment to chocolate cake, so don't do it!))
      For Catholics love and meaning ought to be recognized as almost equivalent.  Love gives meaning and is the natural response to meaning.  Meaning is expressed in the world through truth, goodness and beauty.  Don't waist your time pursuing something else.  Nothing else matters.  Love truth, love goodness and love beauty.  You will find meaning, and meaning will give you joy.  Everything else will pass away.


      The undefended assumption here is that gay sex, that pursuit of sweet man flesh, is a wrong desire, which will lead to misery, to suffering.  I could write a philosophical treatise defending this position, but it wouldn't matter.  The most convincing argument is lived experience.  Go live it.  Go experience whatever life you want to.  If you find i'm right, the Church will still be here when you get back.
      True love is to desire that which is best for another.  This is what the Catholic Church desires for us, what God desires for us.  I would encourage you to consider carefully what the Church says, to offer God a place in your life.  Know that your loved and go find the meaning in your life.

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