The Christian Vanguard

I was asked to give a short talk to the Newman club here at CSULB, and they asked me to answer the question: How did you fall in love with God? Now, I'm not the sentimental type, and this was definitely out of my comfort zone, but they asked for a short 5 minute talk, and I figured it wasn't that bad. So here is what I wrote up. I didn't read it out, but I typed it so that when I gave the talk, I knew in my mind what to say. Here it is.  How I Fell In Love With God Many of you have already heard my long and dry conversion story from atheism, that is, my move from believing that there was no such thing as God and no such person as Jesus, to not only believing such people did exist, but that they were legitimately Lord of my life. While many people are interested in the arguments and evidences of my beliefs, I don’t really talk about how my relationship with God developed. I’ve said a lot about how I came to know God, but not how I came to love God.  The two are

I have seen on Facebook many Catholics calling Pope Francis by his birth name, Bergoglio. This seems disrespectful. Popes change their names as God changed Simon to Peter. To call Pope Francis "Bergoglio" is like saying they do not recognize his Papacy. They certainly do not do this out of affection. Even if he were a sinner worse than Judas, we should still love him. And we should still call him Pope Francis. 

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it finally caught up to me. Shoving my face with burgers and pizza has given me high blood pressure, and after seeing the doctor because of a two week long headache, he told me I was in danger of a stroke and now I am medicated. I wish to use this opportunity to make a few cheap and easy points about sin. 1) Sin, like High Blood Pressure, can be silent but deadly. In the last year or so, I've had some pretty bad headaches/hypertension. Pain on the top of my head as well as on the back of my neck. But I thought I could sleep it off, and it was usually gone within a day with some sleep. In the moment, I would think, "Aw man, I really need to cut back on the sugar and salt" and I wouldn't take in anything that day, but then when it went away, I felt invincible again, and next think you know, I'm taking home twelve hamburger patties from my friend David's wedding, wondering if I can have a normal relationship with a woman and be he