ATHEIST

There’s no time in my life that I haven’t believed in God. Is that a double negative? Either way, God has always been present in the world I inhabit.  God, for me, a given.  My dad’s work was to pastor; he and my mother sang together. The four of us - Dad, Mom, my sister and me - would all sing together, a family quartet, for church services, at the offering time or just before the sermon.  I remember one tune in particular: Household of Faith it was called.  That title would be a pretty good chapter heading if you were to pick up a volume about my family.  Grandparents, aunts, uncles, both sides, everyone shared a commitment to belief in God. Everyone would put God at the top of their hierarchy of priorities.  Something like: God, family, community, work, etc.  And me too, ever since I was a little boy.  The work of God, the hand of God, the voice of God, all these ways of talking about, and orienting oneself around the reality of God, have given my life its content and shape.  I’ve been so immersed in such a world that even though reflecting on it allows me to see, in a way, how exceptional my life may seem to some, I can’t imagine it any other way. 

So, how am I to explain what might be called practical atheism within myself?  I know the reality of a God Who Is.  But I’m all-the-time caught in a predicament of trying to solve the problems of my own making with my own thinking or, worse yet, with my worry, anxiety, and fear.  And trust me, these aren’t effective tools. Not to mention they’re lonely tools.  And, of course, that’s the paradox summed up: how did I, from the household of faith, end up all alone?  Why am I acting like it’s me and then the end of the rope?  There’s obviously a deep flaw in the programming.  This is one way to think about what we Christian folk call The Fall.  Here we are with God in the garden. Paradise.  Why would I want to leave paradise?  Why would I go experimenting with anything that would compromise my enjoyment of paradise?  Why would I prefer my own company to God’s? 

But I guess this means that no matter how hard I work at being alone, I’m not.  There’s more than one practical atheist out there.  And thinking on it: if we commit to pray for each other, those prayers will - perhaps - be a bit less hypocritical than the prayers we pray for ourselves. Arm in arm into the Kingdom of Heaven together.