Category Archives: Notes

My life as an atheist was very mysterious. Feelings spontaneously grew and shrunk inside of me and it was my duty to respond to them. Something similar happened with beliefs: I did not decide what to believe. If I wanted to know what “I” believed, I had to probe inside myself and check whether I believed this or that. I don’t know how I came to these beliefs but I knew I had to live by them. The same with opinions. Sure I read books and informed myself, but mostly really to find confirmation of opinions that existed inside of me, mysteriously grown without my interference. I couldn’t help that I thought a certain way: “It is just my opinion! I’m not responsible.” It was all a great mystery! As if something was living inside of me that had convinced me that it was my true self and that I needed to follow its instructions in order to be “true to myself” which was not only fair and just and honest but also the way in which I could be happy. I wasn’t to “fight myself”. I had to align my actions with this thing inside of me.

While the Roman soldiers were mocking Him and torturing Him, Jesus felt nothing but compassion for them. Because He knew that they were capable of so much more, yet they chose to behave like this.

The good enables us to live well, while evil leads to death.

The key to faith is humility. The thing that keeps most away from faith is pride. But nothing is harder for a person than understanding that they are prideful. Pride protects itself. And in many cases, as it was in mine, pride is a vital protection mechanism. Pride is the only thing that keeps us standing. We would collapse without it. And we don’t understand that it is precisely this collapse that will save us.

Dear atheist, imagine God. Now imagine Him ten times bigger. And now a million times bigger. Keep going until you believe.

A life with God is infinitely better than a life without God, disregarding whether He exists or not. Atheists have likened it to a narcotic. That’s how good it is! So the real choice is utterly pragmatic and simple: do you want a good life?

Only the devil can make anyone believe that Christianity is false.

Confessing that we are sinners is nothing more than admitting that we are imperfect. And naming our sins is simply figuring out the areas where we could improve. In the sacrament of reconciliation we receive the strength to grow closer to perfection, to holiness, a state we can only fully achieve after death.

Without Christ we’re basically just managing emotions. We try to avoid feeling bad. And when we do feel bad we try to get rid of the feeling through breathing exercises or relaxation, maybe meditation or even vacation, or simply distraction or sleep. Until we feel good enough again to go on living. There’s no reason why we want to prevent or remove the anger or the jealousy or the sorrow other than that it doesn’t feel nice. We’re afraid of bad feelings so we avoid situations that could provoke them. This is how we live without Christ. On a desperate rollercoaster beyond our control.