One of the exchange students whom I got to know this last year who attends a Roman Catholic school in Seville, allowed as how he was an atheist. My own exchange student, Thibault, claimed to be an agnostic…he too is child of a Roman Catholic family…though a French one. You can imagine how two non-believers blended into our American High School often hyper-religious atmosphere.
The Reverend Buddy Stallings, the Vicar of St. Bartholomew’s, NYC, wrote an excellent article about this. His article follows:
“Recently while visiting with some friends, the conversation veered into a serious, and according to custom, somewhat dangerous category: religion. That happens to me a lot - probably an occupational hazard. I really need to lose the costume. One person tired of the diversion more quickly than the rest of us - though speaking for myself not by much - and offered, I suppose as a conversation re-director, a fact which we knew: he is an atheist. There is nothing particularly extraordinary about that. After all, we live in New York City, one of the great godless metropolises of the world - at least according to any one of several fundamentalist preachers. And, yet, I found myself somewhat troubled by it, a surprising pang given the fact that there seems not to be one singular evangelical bone in my body.
“What is that about? I long ago stopped worrying about hell, save the kind we occasionally choose to live in here on this side of eternity. So it is not that I worry about the mortal soul of my atheist friends. They will do fine in the end. Nor is it that I worry about their behavior and priorities. Far from living what others would describe as "godless" lives, they are good moral people, demonstrating a wide variety of commitments that are not terribly dissimilar from those of my friends who are believers. “So what is it that makes me slightly uneasy by the uncomplicated atheism of so many?
Surely some part of the answer is a moment of thinking that they may be right, that all of this religious stuff is a lovely but ultimately made-up way of living and hoping - or worse, simply a way of coping. I won't speak for others of my ilk, but for me there is always a twinge of that question. “But there is more too. The absence of even an uneasy relationship with God, sort of like the one I have with God, seems unimaginable to me. So here it is: my evangelical moment (everybody gets one). The more I love someone the more I wish they had this relationship too.
Once when Dolly Parton was asked her feelings about whether gay couples should be allowed to marry, she said, "Absolutely, they should suffer like the rest of us do." I feel that way about being a believer. "What do you mean you don't struggle with God? Why should you be any different from the rest of us?" No matter how screwed up and impartial and conflicted my experience of God is, in the depth of my soul I know (in that way of knowing that is beyond knowing - faith, I guess) that life without God is not life for me. I don't get to impose that on anyone; but if I truly love you, I want it for you. I will tell you my story, admitting all the while that it is just mine; but be forewarned: in my heart of hearts I want you to have the deep yearning, hoping and struggling that reside in me. Arrogance or love? It's sometimes hard to tell the difference.”
- Buddy Stallings
| permalink
Back Next
Calendar
