Leaving the Faith
By the early to mid-1990s I had come to think that whatever I had held dear and cherished on the basis of my belief in the Christian God, could still be held dear and cherished without that belief. Do I stand in awe before the unfathomable vastness and incredible majesty of the universe? Do I welcome and feel heartfelt gratitude for moments of grace? Do I value the love of family and the companionship of friends? Do I appreciate the many good things in life: My work? Travel? Good food and good drink? All the little things that make life enjoyable? Yes, but what does any of this necessarily have to do with God? As a Christian – from the time I was able to think, through my teenage and early-twenties fundamentalist period, up to my more mature adult liberal phase – I had believed in some form of the traditional, biblical God. This was a God who was not some kind of remote designer of the universe who had gotten the ball rolling and [...]