The Divine Romance (1 of 5) – Apologia

“The fool says in his heart, “There is no God” (Psalm 14:1)

I remember in 7th grade around 12 or 13 (I repeated the 1st grade), walking through the woods behind Susan Wagner H.S. with my friends Steven P., Steven C, and Mark A.. We had just finished playing ice hockey on a frozen pond at Pouch Camp on Staten Island, NY one of the few places left in NYC outside of Central Park where there’s still trees and lakes. It’s actually part of what’s called the “Green Belt” on S.I., an area of woods and forest set aside from development, which prevents S.I. from becoming the concrete jungle that much of the other boroughs resemble. It was an improvised game where we used dead tree branches for hockey sticks and a flattened soda can for a puck. Those were fun times. And as we trekked through the woods on our way back home, the dead leaves crunching beneath our shoes, the late afternoon sun shining through naked branches, I jumped over a small creek and remarked, “You know, all we live for are memories.” It was a statement that earned me some mild sarcasm and scorn characteristic of adolescent teens more concerned with what was on TV that night, or what was for dinner than what was the meaning of life. In the years leading up to this, my belief in God began to wane. Please don’t misunderstand; my brother, my sisters and I were brought up believing in God. Our mom used to “drag” us to church on a regular basis. I vividly remember, when I was 5 yrs old our mother teaching us the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” (we grew up Roman Catholic) as we lay down to bed. In retrospect, I realize how absent our father was in our spiritual instruction and formation. In my experience, at least, he played no active role that I can remember. I suspect the absence of fathers in their children’s spiritual formation to be a contributing factor to the struggles or hang-ups people may have later in life with a belief in God, let alone seeing God as a Heavenly Father. This is a little of what John Eldredge calls the “father wound”1 that many of us suffer (abusive and/or absentee fathers – in my case both) – a wound that unfortunately is often perpetuated from generation to generation as evidenced by the decline of the nuclear family in our day 2 But I also came to realize with increasing clarity how unfair and unjust life can be, how the good doesn’t always win, how the fairy tales we were taught as kids didn’t correspond to “reality”, and how very few stories end in a “happily ever after”. As a result, an increasing sense of despair, loss of hope and meaning, a profound “teenage angst”, seemed to settle upon me as I came to the unsettling conclusion that “God is dead”.3 It was unsettling because if God was dead, the question then arose, “what’s this life for?”4 If the idea of God and the notion of absolute right and wrong, good and evil was no longer relevant; then by what compass, what navigational chart, what guiding principle do I steer and sail my vessel through this ocean of uncertainty called life? Ah, but the good ship “Atheism” was ready to weigh anchor, and Capt. “Relativism” and his first mate, “Nihilism” beckoned me to ““Come sail away“5. I perused the brochure and toured the boat, but I never set sail or left port. For it was while entertaining the notion of atheism and peering into that abyss of relativism, that I began to understand the nihilistic consequences that life would entail, leading to my melancholy observation regarding life’s purpose (If living for nothing more than memories wasn’t depressing enough, consider that upwards of 50% of us will develop Alzheimer’s in our old age.6) And isn’t it an insidious “nihilism”, a helpless, hopeless sense of life, bereft of meaning, purpose, and value that’s characteristic of a certain “quiet desperation”7 that afflicts many, particularly our youth, resulting in suicide as the “third leading cause of death among those aged 15-24”?8 I remember entertaining the notion myself from junior high through high school, even sharing the idea with friends, but I have to admit, I was too much of a coward to avail myself of that “suicide solution”9 (To be continued…)

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? …Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own [relativism]. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. -C.S. Lewis

To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, "I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge" --Ravi Zacharias

A disbelief in God does not result in a belief in nothing; disbelief in God usually results in a belief in anything. —anonymous



[1] Wild at Heart, John Eldredge 2001

[2] http://ezinearticles.com/?Single-Parent-Family-Statistics---Single-Parents-a-New-Trend?&id=1552445

[3] “The Gay Science”, Friedrich Nietzsche 1882

[4] “What’s this life for?”, Creed 1997

[5] “Come Sail Away”, Styx

[6] http://www.zarcrom.com/users/alzheimers/w-06.html

[7] “Walden”, Henry David Thoreau, 1854

[8] http://www.friendshospitalonline.org/teensuicide.htm

[9] “Suicide Solution”, Ozzy Osbourne