the Good Question

From the moment I opened the Table of Contents (Literally. Have a look.), I knew "Finding an Unseen God" was going to be an interesting read. And it was. The book alternates between two threads: her reasons for her now "former Atheist" status, and the story behind it all—going back to the beginning of her childhood. The net: you begin to feel that you know this young Atheist, you understand (if not accept) her reasons for being an Atheist, and you understand (if not accept) why she can now say that she not only believes that God exists, but believes in Him, as well.

Through the weaving reason and experience, Alicia confesses why her belief does not mean for her intellectual high treason and why Atheism can mean intellectual integrity.

Atheists will find the Christian Chole respectful, level-headed, and even partially affirmative. She says,

"Some would say that the Atheist disbelieves too quickly. Perhaps. But then, perhaps some Theists believe too easily.... Atheism still makes sense to me and I am delighted whenever I meet a practicing Atheist. No doubt my past biases me, but I find Atheists to be thoughtful, intelligent, concerned about the world, and grounded in reality."

Theists will find the former-Atheist Chole challenging, inspiring, and even tonic.

"...not having grown up in this faith, I had very few preconceptions of what followers of Jesus did and did not do. No doubt, more than a few were puzzled by the dissonance between my clearly earnest faith and still-in-formation theology. But the close-to-blank slate gave me the freedom to focus on simply knowing God as opposed to worrying about if it looked like I knew God."

"Finding an Unseen God" not only traces the course and pulse of Alicia's life, believing and unbelieving, it provides sound reasoning for integrity in the dialog between Theists and Atheists. Atheists can sometimes be heard demanding of believers of any kind, "Prove to me the existence of deity." Theists often reply with the regretful explanation that God's existence cannot be proven empirically. Alicia comments,

"When the tables are turned, however, I think the honest Atheist might say, 'But God's non-existence cannot with finality be proven.' I agree. Why, then, is it considered ethical to ask the Theist to absolutely prove what the Atheist knows cannot be absolutely disproven? Theists are challenged to do the impossible, and then their failure is entered as evidence that their beliefs are misplaced.
"This is not a cry for mercy. It is a cry for integrity in the discussion."

Chole does not ask Atheists to consider an easy, ignorant Theism. Instead, she describes a God who isn't afraid of being questioned:

"What a relief it was for me to discover that this continual questioning did not make God nervous. Interrogatives do not irritate God. Emotionally charged query does not shut God down. Over the past quarter century I have come to the conclusion that God is, after all, rather secure."

"Believing" she says, "does not mean that you will no longer have questions.
"Believing does not mean that you will turn off your brain.
"Believing does not mean that you will enter into a relationship with God in which you can bribe him to do your will.
"Believing does not mean that you will live in denial about real, raw life."

She describes a God who pursues personal relationship and who loves indiscriminately.

"When this pursuing Presence caught up with me, it did not crush me with anger or cause me to cower in the corner with shame.... love itself was redefined. God's love had a backbone. God's love was strong and volitional: a trust-inducing blend of unreserved devotion, full knowledge, and acceptance so lavish, so complete, that it was healing.
"The one reasonable response? Surrender.
"God was. My worldview was irreparably altered....
"It was true that God's existence would change everything. But I had never intentionally lied to myself before, and I was not going to start then."

Though more directly written with Atheists and Christians in mind, whatever your conviction, "Finding an Unseen God: Reflections of a Former Atheist" is a very appreciable read, one I personally found both fun and stimulating. And at 164 pages and interwoven with very well-written biographical story, it's a breeze to be sure. This is a book I'm proud to have on my shelf.

"Finding an Unseen God: Reflections of a Former Atheist" by Alicia Britt Chole

At length I came in sight of the keeper's farm; and just at that moment the moon peeped from behind a hill, throwing as long shadows as the setting sun, but in the other direction. The shadows were very different too. Somehow they were liker to the light that made them than the sun-shadows are to the sunlight. Both the light and the shadows of the moon were strange and fearful to me. The sunlight and its shadows are all so strong and so real and so friendly, you seem to know all about them; they belong to your house, and they sweep all fear and dismay out of honest people's hearts. But with the moon and its shadows it is very different indeed. The fact is, the moon is trying to do what she cannot do. She is trying to dispel a great sun-shadow—for the night is just the gathering into one mass of all the shadows of the sun. She is not able for this, for her light is not her own; it is second-hand from the sun himself; and her shadows therefore also are second-hand shadows, pieces cut out of the great sun-shadow, and coloured a little with the moon's yellowness. If I were writing for grown people I should tell them that those who understand things because they think about them, and ask God to teach them, walk in the sunlight; and others, who take things because other people tell them so, are always walking in the strange moonlight, and are subject to no end of stumbles and terrors, for they hardly know light from darkness.
[from Chapter 24 of "Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood" by George MacDonald]

"This then is the message," he says, "which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." [1 John 1:5]... Whatever seems to me darkness, that I will not believe of my God. If I should mistake, and call that darkness which is light, will he not reveal the matter to me, setting it in the light that lighteth every man, showing me that I saw but the husk of the thing, not the kernel? Will he not break open the shell for me, and let the truth of it, his thought, stream out upon me? He will not let it hurt me to mistake the light for darkness, while I take not the darkness for light. The one comes from blindness of the intellect, the other from blindness of heart and will. I love the light, and will not believe at the word of any man, or upon the conviction of any man, that that which seems to me darkness is in God....

Neither let thy cowardly conscience receive any word as light because another calls it light, while it looks to thee dark. Say either the thing is not what it seems, or God never said or did it. But, of all evils, to misinterpret what God does, and then say the thing as interpreted must be right because God does it, is of the devil. Do not try to believe anything that affects thee as darkness. Even if thou mistake and refuse something true thereby, thou wilt do less wrong to Christ by such a refusal than thou wouldst by accepting as his what thou canst see only as darkness. It is impossible thou art seeing a true, a real thing—seeing it as it is, I mean—if it looks to thee darkness. But let thy words be few, lest thou say with thy tongue what thou wilt afterward repent with thy heart. Above all things believe in the light, that it is what thou callest light, though the darkness in thee may give thee cause at a time to doubt whether thou art verily seeing the light.
[from "Light" in "Unspoken Sermons, Third Series" by George MacDonald]

¹  Technically, I was listening to an audiobook version from Librivox.org. To see how I am progressing in "Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood" and, when I'm finished, my review of the book, please click here.