I'm in the middle of doing homework, but I have this thought and I'm going to lose it if I don't discuss it right now. I still haven't decided if that is a good or bad thing when it happens.

My thought is this, when dealing with a particular belief structure, the church for example, and you fundamentally disagree with one or two tenets of the faith, should you take that as a sign that the whole structure is wrong or just that it is wrong in very particular instances? And knowing that beliefs can change over time--as many churches have changed church doctrine over the years--do you ride it out and follow what you feel to be true, or go with what you're told to be true by the belief structure?

Before I continue I just used "belief structure" and "church/faith" interchangeably above. I think for the purposes of this thought process I'm going to stick with church/faith since it was in thinking about the church that I specifically asked these questions.

Obviously this doesn't apply as much to me since I don't belong to any church nor am I Christian. But I do have a spirituality which could be described as faith and there have been times I thought I disagreed with it. There is significantly more wiggle room in my personal spirituality than most church doctrines, of course, but I think it has ended up working out in the end each time. And perhaps that is the answer for someone belonging to a specific church. My friends who are very active in their respective churches have told me countless times that often when they had questions or issues it was revealed that they actually agreed with the church satisfactorily after some investigating. But what about something fundamental like sex or homosexuality?

People argue heatedly over these issues obviously, but what happens when one knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that having sex with someone they love (or having sex with someone of the same gender) is morally right and true, but their church disagrees? In many churches there is no way around it. They are explicit in their instructions regarding sex before marriage or engaging in homosexual activity. The most obvious answer is, of course, they pray and things work themselves out--there can't be two "right" answers there. But what if you're church is wrong? Or, rather what I mean to say, you think your church is wrong? Do you abandon the church or do you live a hidden lifestyle?

I ask this not because I am ranting about churches or morality, but because as I sat here reading composition theory (don't ask) I suddenly began to think on this. You can tell this particular comp theory has me riveted. But nothing is quite so morally ambiguous as sex and homosexuality. People feel fervently that it is right and people feel fervently that it is wrong. I am, of course, speaking specifically of sex outside marriage--people who just think sex is wrong have obviously never had good sex.

Joking aside, I am curious at what point a difference of belief is cause for a break. And how do you know if you should break or just wait it out? Many people still attend Mass, for example, while sleeping with their significant other outside of wedlock. There is little to no guilt now-a-days about that. But if you feel that the church is wrong and that you know better, how can you trust the church at all? Or am I drawing to fine a point a on it? Certainly churches have been mixed up in politics since their inception, and sex has been mixed up in both. One could argue, therefore, that while most (if not all) churches are confused about sex, it is only because of the world we live in, and they have the rest of it more or less right. That is, no doubt, supported by society's discourse on the topic.

I am not attempting to debate sex here because, like religion, it is a debate that cannot be won. Those who believe sex before marriage is immoral have scripture on their side, I have other texts on mine. We can both agree, I think, that there is good sex and bad sex, healthy and unhealthy. But I have no interest in convincing anyone of the morality one way or the other. I am wondering very specifically, what you do when what you believe in tells you you're wrong.

Assuming for a minute you are unwilling or incapable of accepting that you are wrong underlies this whole thought process, of course. But, probably, since I am often incapable of accepting that I am wrong I have no trouble imagining other people with the same issue. And why I then ask the question when do you subvert the system and when do you abandon it?