God Is (Not) Great

My local Books-A-Million has the largest selection of sale Books on CD that I've ever seen. Realizing how much I was going to be traveling with my job, I bought around 20 audio books a few months ago--fiction, non-fiction, Christian, non-Christian...whatever looked interesting. Ever since I started "reading" (with my ears) on a regular basis, I've tried to read a variety of books so that I'll be aware of the thoughts/ideas of larger society and be able to have intelligent conversations with friends and strangers :-).

As a result of this buying frenzy and desire to have a wide repertoire of book knowledge, I ended up with two books that have deeply challenged my faith. One book was Bart Ehrman's, "God's Problem: The Problem of Suffering," and the other book is Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." I'm currently listening to the latter...and it's had me off balance for the past couple of weeks. I don't suggest either of these books for the faint of heart, but if you want to know what intelligent, well-spoken, well-studied athiests are saying about God and religion, then give them a try. You can even borrow them from me.

Like I was saying, "God Is Not Great," has thrown me a bit off-balance. Yet, I came to a conclusion on Thursday morning:

We all need something to believe in and chase after. We all need a cause to rally behind and a purpose for which to live our lives. Whether those needs are met through following a religion or through spending a life arguing against religion, they are, and must be, met in some way, with something. And, as ridiculous as Christianity and all over religious systems sound when broken down like they are in this book--and as logical as it seems that it's all just made up to help enforce morality and give us something beyond ourselves to hope for--I choose God. I choose the message of Jesus Christ. I choose the parts of our narrative that demonstrate openness, grace, and love, and I choose to believe that God is a God of time and creation and that belief in God and God's goodness compels me to live a higher call.

For as much as religion has done to damage people, it has also done much to help people and provided a basically good moral foundation that has woven its way through life. Even the firm non-believer has been blessed by love. And if I believe that God IS love, then I must trust that it is precisely because of God that the non-believer has felt that which he/she processes not to believe.

In talking about my capacity to love and keep in touch with people--even those who have hurt me--one of my friends came to the conclusion that I come from a long line of commitment. And then she looked at me and said this--a statement that I will likely never forget--"You would be committed to God even if you weren't sure there was a God." And, well, I think she's right.

I don't understand pain and suffering. I'm not proud of the Crusades and genocide and countless murders and persecution that have been exacted in the name of Christ. I am not proud that so much of Christianity is about what we cannot do rather than what we can; what we should stand against rather than what we should stand for; how we should define ourselves as "other" and "better" rather than as "part of" and equals in God's image; how we are often led to do "good" out of guilt rather than genuine desire to help bring this world to redemption. But I AM proud of following a Christ who showed that each person is a person of dignity and worth and that, through belief in his story, there do not have to be major separations of Greek, Jew, Gentile, male, or female but that we can all live and love and walk this life's journey together.

So while this book has been extremely challenging, and while I'm sure it will continue to be so as I finish hearing what Hitchens has to say, I have a strange peace and certainty this morning that I choose God...

I choose Love.