I’m an agnostic. I’m not proud of it. It’s a waffling, middle of the road, straddling the fence, indecisive thing to be, but the fact is I don’t know if God exists. Now, before I go any further this is not an invitation for anyone to persuade me one way or the other; don’t do it. My best friend is a devout Catholic and one of his good friends, and the godfather of his first daughter, is a priest. Neither one of them tries to convert me, and I expect the same of others. In fact, please don’t try to convert people uninvited. It is a disservice to your religion or lack there of. Militant atheists irritate the hell out of me. So against my better judgement I’m going to leave this post open to comments. If you have something insightful, funny, or educational, please share your thoughts. If you want to proselytize go somewhere else.
Periodically, much to the chagrin of my wife, I get this tugging feeling. It’s an odd sensation in my head and chest that leads me to consider the question of God. I’m not being rhetorical, it is actually a physical sensation akin to anxiety. It usually starts and builds for few weeks comes to a head and then dies away. When it does come to a head I find my drawn to the works of C.S. Lewis. Today was one of those days. I woke up from a night filled with odd dreams feeling discontent. At lunch I usually head to the gym, but today I went to the book store looking to find a running magazine or maybe a book of poetry to read over a cup of coffee, but walked away with C.S Lewis’ The Abolition of Man. Last time it was Mere Christianity. Before that it was the Bible, although I didn’t finish it. I will.
Maybe it’s the fact that Lewis was a convert from atheism that draws me to his writing, or that he was a professor of Medieval and Rennaissance English at Cambridge. But the fact of the matter is that C.S. Lewis wrote about good and evil, and right and wrong, not for literary effect. He wrote about them, because he believed in them. He believed that evil exists in the world and that good men can overcome it. There is a love of man that comes through in his writing, not in a new age everyone’s good at heart way. No, in a way that father loves his son. It’s an old school, hickory switch kind of love. Real love. Not love debased by rationalizations, not cowardly love.
I only just started reading The Abolition of Man, but will post on it when I’m done. Until then I leave you with the wisdom of a child and my chagrin as a father.
When The Boy was about three years old he was asking me about religion. I don’t remember what exactly. It might have been about what happens when people die and if they go to Heaven. He asked me a two or three questions and each time I replied with an answer prefaced with “Well some people believe…”. He finally said “I’m asking what you believe.” Be blunt with your kids. I wasn’t and I ended up embarrassed. It’s okay to say “I don’t know”.