I'm reading mr. hitchens essays on cancer.

I hadn't found out about him until this morning.

"You're in a funny mood this morning, Jeffrey."

"Ah. Is it the British accent that's throwing you?"

"No. That's normal. Just extra...something."

"Well. I did stay up last night. One of the four horsemen died and I wanted to remember him. In an honoring sort of way. He was an incredible man."

"Four horsemen?"

And so it began. All day. He really wants me to see the truth. What he believes. And I don't think it is because he is scared or insecure. I think it's because he actually cares. It's really crazy.

At one point this afternoon he said - "Exactly. Completely irrational. you don't even know any of this stuff."

"Well, Jeffrey, I guess I've never needed it. Never needed that much proof. I know a lot of Christians that are, actually, quite intelligent. So I trust them."

"But what is it? Why do you believe this thing?"

"Well."

"I think you're a christian only because those are the people you've made friends with."

"False. I can't explain it. There isn't a way to prove it. I know why I believe, and how I believe, but I don't think you'd understand."

"Well. That's bullshit, and you shouldn't settle for that."

And now we're here. Real time. Blog time.
I don't feel like I need to defend something that is. And I have no judgment against him. None. Absolutely none. This kid is brilliant. And hilarious. And yes, sinful. but so am I. Probably more so. I'm at least more irresponsible and childish. He could probably pass as a better human being.

So it's neither here nor there. I know he won't hear me. So I won't say it. I want to see the world the way he sees it, and not try to change him. that's not me. We need Christ. We need him because we can't do it. We don't fit the laws. And if anything I believe in the law and our shortcoming. ergo Christ, who came, unexpectedly and not a way that was too convincing for anyway.

God is not waving a flag, yelling and writing essays of apologetics. And I don't think I will either. I will keep investing trust. We'll see i guess. It's here nor there. I think. I don't know.

The same thing happened the other night with Alexis. I prayed God would change the subject  because we were toeing the line of ...this conversation is about to turn to gossip,..and I said "It's like that television show, Growing pains."

"Kirk Cameron?"

And out poured all of her thoughts and feelings on fundamentalist christianity. Though she only called it Christianity.

And then I got to ask her what it was like to be in a Catholic school and not agree with things.

I didn't disagree with her. I could only say "yeah.....yeah....yeah....that's true...yeah."

Christians do suck. It's hard. It's really hard. But after tearfully reading these essays...i found this quite interesting. I think this is how I react to friends that aren't believers. I keep questioning if it is right or wrong. i think it's right. But it could be seen as cowardly.

I have saved the best of the faithful until the last. Dr. Francis Collins is one of the greatest living Americans. He is the man who brought the Human Genome Project to completion, ahead of time and under budget, and who now directs the National Institutes of Health. In his work on the genetic origins of disorder, he helped decode the “misprints” that cause such calamities as cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s disease. He is working now on the amazing healing properties that are latent in stem cells and in “targeted” gene-based treatments. This great humanitarian is also a devotee of the work of C. S. Lewis and in his book The Language of God has set out the case for making science compatible with faith. (This small volume contains an admirably terse chapter informing fundamentalists that the argument about evolution is over, mainly because there is no argument.) I know Francis, too, from various public and private debates over religion. He has been kind enough to visit me in his own time and to discuss all sorts of novel treatments, only recently even imaginable, that might apply to my case. And let me put it this way: he hasn’t suggested prayer, and I in turn haven’t teased him about The Screwtape Letters. So those who want me to die in agony are really praying that the efforts of our most selfless Christian physician be thwarted. Who is Dr. Collins to interfere with the divine design? By a similar twist, those who want me to burn in hell are also mocking those kind religious folk who do not find me unsalvageably evil. I leave these paradoxes to those, friends and enemies, who still venerate the supernatural.