I've only got a couple of minutes right now, and the
caffeine has failed, this morning, to provide any sort of wakefulness or energy for this sort of tripe, but here goes...
Intellect is very important in all this. And moJoe takes a swipe at Deuteronomy and asks some of The Questions in such a way as to imply intellectual laziness or flat-out ignorance; maybe he was taught badly, or was a bad learner during his Catholic School education. Obviously, I don't know. Intellect is important, but mainly for doing the groundwork; intellect doesn't get you to see or experience God. Christianity is supposed to be accessible even to those people who aren't intellectual or even literate. But if you're going to take potshots at religion, you should load your potshot gun first by knowing your enemy, lest ye look kewl but stupid.
Work is very important in all this. Faith is work, and a life's work. It's hard to impart this to a kid, since I figure one is deluged with facts facts facts in the aforementioned Catholic education, perhaps divorced from a full context. Christianity has the One Triune God, but each of us experiences His Clear White Light through our own unique prisms, so the One Size Fits All approach of Religious Education can sometimes be counterproductive.
Christianity is "simple", but it's not user friendly, nor is it cool, nor was it meant to be popular (no matter how nicely you put it, the sin-Hell connection and the "don't do this, don't do that" admonitions can't be sugar coated, though it all comes from love, believe it or not). It's a lot easier to slide into Churchianity or Christianityism than to actually come to grips with a God who insists that you give up your rights of autonomy and to spread your radius of compassion as far as a radius can reach.
Maybe I'll get this thing finished later, but, in general, I find all this ranting about religion quite boring. This isn't where the action is.
You can't just blindly "look inside yourself" for spiritual nourishment - in this discipline, the Holy Spirit dwells within you (...should you choose to accept it), and that's where one looks, if one looks inside; we ourselves are vile creatures, however much gooditude we may innately contain.
Maybe I'm finished now. I don't know. moJoe, just remember this: Jesus loves you. I love you. I want to fuck your brains out. I'll even divorce dannye and elope with you. I'm one sexy motherfucker who can please you 'til your eyebrows drop off. Or something. Do you have eyebrows?
I'm sorry. What was the question again?