Love is the most excellent way

Recently I posted something I wrote, Spirituality and Everyday Life on Jason Clark’s blog. One of the commenters asked me to define “almost an atheist” . I’m posting their comment and my response because it turned out to be one of my more concise attempts to explain what I mean by “almost an atheist”.

They wrote

Helen, your candour is welcome; and I would happily agree that everything is spiritual in some sense because there is part of us as humans that is spiritual. We just can’t run away from it. I’m interested in your statement about being ‘almost an atheist,’ what do you mean by that? Are you waiting for a defining argument or are you happy to live with the dialectic of God/non God producing the synthesis of sprituality? If so I would feel somewhat vulnerable in your shoes.

This was my reply

Thanks for your comment.

‘Almost an atheist’ means I’m unsure whether God exists and prefer to live my life without attempting to be in communication with a possibly non-existent person. For much the same reasons as: I wouldn’t want to be married to someone who was often gone at night and gave no explanation; I wouldn’t continue to hire an employee who didn’t show up; and I wouldn’t work for an employer who didn’t pay me some months and gave no explanation. I can’t live that way.

I am open to defining arguments but am not putting my life on hold waiting for them; I spent about five years re-examining the intellectual, evidential, emotional and experiential basis of my faith which brought me to where I am.

When I was a Christian I was fairly well versed in apologetics and I pretty much knew what was out there in that realm. When those apologetics ceased to be convincing to me I was open to something I hadn’t come across showing up (I still am) but didn’t expect that to happen since I probably would have found it as a Christian interested in apologetics already. And so far it hasn’t happened.

My reasons for not being a Christian at present are extensive - I am not a closed-minded person but rather a person who is realistic about the likelihood of something being out there I missed in almost 20 years of being a Christian who liked to read and was very serious about my spiritual formation and relationship with God.

It’s ironic (no offense intended) that you say you’d feel vulnerable - it was because I felt so vulnerable that I had to do something different. As I alluded to earlier, nothing in my life has made me feel so vulnerable as when I became unsure the One I was depending on and had been doing my best to center my life around might not even exist.

I don’t feel vulnerable because I believe that if God is as loving and fair and merciful and just as the Bible claims, I have nothing to fear from him if he does exist. I have not defied God; I am simply living the only way it is possible for me to live, given my heart, mind, soul, strength and experience. And if anyone knows and understands that, it’s God (Jesus).