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God Off Road:
Does being a Christian mean
having faith? Or knowledge?
Because the term "faith" assumes the believer has no rational evidence to follow
the religion s/he follows, nothing more than hope s/he is correct. And that
seems like a pretty weak reason to waste every Sunday morning and a decent
percentage of your income on Church.
Now "Hope" may be a great
political campaign motto, and "faith/belief" may be how religion is described
... but for me ... I'd love to believe in Santa Claus. Except my life has made it clear there is no
Santa Claus. But just as clearly my life and experiences have proven there IS a God.
And the existence of God is obvious and undeniable unless you actively resist
and just plain refuse to recognize Him. I could list some of the times God has affected my life
directly,
but those who already believe would just nod and those who don't would roll their eyes and write my experiences off as spooky coincidences
that could happen to anyone.
However ... regardless of my own
beliefs this novel makes no pretense of
preaching the Gospel, but rather approaches religion as a cultural
tradition and a point of discord between people who follow a "faith" and those
that don't. My goal is to help atheists understand why sane,
intelligent, rational people can (and often do) become practicing believers.
And help Christians understand why sane, intelligent, rational people can deny
that there is anything greater in the world than mankind.
I certainly hope readers will look further into the subject if they are so
inspired, but there are many fine books
for that.
Chapter Thirteen (excerpt):
There was an air of
finality to his words. But it bugged me to let it end like that. “I’m an
educated guy, Gary,” I hoped my tone of voice would shut off a retort, “and I
graduated with honors on a scholarship. And the whole concept of some
supernatural ghost-creator-in-the-sky goes against every bit of science we have.
I’m sorry, but we’ve grown beyond it. That’s medieval superstition.”
Gary laughed out
loud. “You can’t grow beyond the truth, Paul, whether it’s convenient or not.
But just think about this. What if I’m wrong? What if there is no God? I’ll use
a wise old book to be a good man, I’ll love my family, and when I’m dying I’ll
look forward to what comes next. When a non believer’s dying he’s got nothing to
hope for. But the biggest difference is … if I’m wrong, I’ll never know it. If a
non-believer is wrong, he’ll know it forever.”
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