Pickup
Yes, I think sincerity is really important. After all, if you can fake that you've got it made :-)
But more seriously, Cardinal John Henry Newman brought the conscience right back into mainstream Catholic thought. He was famous for saying "I toast the Pope, but to conscience first". Like Newman, I have a high view of conscience but, also like Newman, I think the conscience must also be allowed to be formed and then listened to.
On risk, for me the risk of Christianity was committing to something I can't be 100% intellectually sure of. In a way the 'safest' option, I think, is to be agnostic to the point of not committing oneself to Christianity (or much else besides), but then so much can be missed by not taking a risk. Kierkegaard called this commitment in the absence of any certainty, the 'leap to faith', usually rather wrongly remembered as the 'leap of faith'. I can relate to Kierkegaard's thoughts on this.
Yes, I think sincerity is really important. After all, if you can fake that you've got it made :-)
But more seriously, Cardinal John Henry Newman brought the conscience right back into mainstream Catholic thought. He was famous for saying "I toast the Pope, but to conscience first". Like Newman, I have a high view of conscience but, also like Newman, I think the conscience must also be allowed to be formed and then listened to.
On risk, for me the risk of Christianity was committing to something I can't be 100% intellectually sure of. In a way the 'safest' option, I think, is to be agnostic to the point of not committing oneself to Christianity (or much else besides), but then so much can be missed by not taking a risk. Kierkegaard called this commitment in the absence of any certainty, the 'leap to faith', usually rather wrongly remembered as the 'leap of faith'. I can relate to Kierkegaard's thoughts on this.
