Agnostic, perhaps it would help you to know that unwanted lustful or sexual thoughts are not, in and of themselves, sinful. It is how we choose to deal with them–whether we attempt to push them from our minds or entertain them. And I am confident that human beings in general–yes, even teenagers–are capable of self-control (especially since the more we practice it, the better we get at it). Therefore, we are also capable of avoiding sin. I’m not saying it’s always easy, but it’s certainly not impossible. Yet even when we do mess up, remember, God doesn’t leave us hanging.

God bless.

God does love us – so much so that He became one of us, and allowed HImself to be humiliated and shamed to save us – the proud ones.
That is how you know Christianity is true. You will find the truth about love and humility there.
It is a blessing to humble ourselves, admit we can’t live a good life on our own, and ask for God’s help to do so.
Ask for the gift of faith.
We won’t always get things right – but we can ask for forgiveness, too.
We can only be lost by refusing God’s saving help. He wants to help us. We just need to ask.
There are a lot of people in the world who claim to be Christian but do not live by the precepts of Christianity.
Do not look to them for example.
Read the life of a saint. See what level of true love, joy, peace, happiness, truth, compassion, etc. is possible when someone truly entrusts their life to Jesus Christ.
By the way, don’t assume you know Christianity unless you read for yourself what Christians themselves say they believe (not what others THINK they believe.)
You have a responsibility to seek truth. PRAY. Ask God to show you the truth.
Read the first letter of St. John in the Bible. Tell me if you are impressed by it.
Get a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church off Amazon and read it.
When you’re done, come back and tell me what you think.

God bless you.

And yet, somehow, those that don’t believe are judged by a different standard, because they don’t believe in the diety that they must ask forgivness for.

The question that I’ve always had, that no religious person has been able to answer satifactionally, is how are we supposed to know which religion to pick.

I believe, sort of abstractly, in a god (being godless is tough… I don’t have the balls to be an atheist…) . But if there is a god I do not believe that god would be fundamentally unfair. Picking a religion is like picking a lottery number. Say I don’t want to go to “hell” and want to ask god for forgivness – how am supposed to chose? Protestant (and they’res a million different ones of that), Catholic, Orthodox – maybe even Jewish or Muslim (wait now, next problem, which one, Shiite or Sunni). All of them seem to be mutually exclusive… so after much deliberation, I choose one.

I die. Boom. Discover that I picked wrong – picked Catholic, should have picked Muslim. Damn. Hellfire for all eternity. Fun. Totally fair – what about people born into different religions? They get damned for being born into the wrong culture? How wonderful.

Which is why organized religion is nonsensical, especially the kind that damns people who disagree with them.

And Jacob is a teenage boy – if that damns him, so are 99% of the human population. Guess they’re all going to hell… and here I thought god was supposed to love us?