On the one hand I was happy with the direction and fulfillment of my Christian life; on the other hand, my intellectual doubts were sprouting all over. Faith and reason began a war within me. And it kept escalating. I would cry out to God for answers, and none would come. Like the lonely heart who keeps waiting for the phone to ring, I kept trusting that God would someday come through. He never did.
The only proposed answer was faith, and I gradually grew to dislike the smell of that word. I finally realized that faith is a cop-out, a defeat—an admission that the truths of religion are unknowable through evidence and reason. It is only indemonstrable assertions that require the suspension of reason, and weak ideas that require faith. Biblical contradictions became more and more discrepant, and apologist arguments became more and more absurd. When I finally discarded faith, things
became more and more clear.
But don't imagine that this was an easy process. It was like tearing my whole frame of reality to pieces, ripping to shreds the fabric of meaning and hope, betraying the values of existence. It hurt badly. It was like spitting on my mother, or like throwing one of my children out a window. It was sacrilege. All of my bases for thinking and values had to be restructured. Adding to that inner conflict was the outer conflict of reputation. Did I really want to discard the respect I had so carefully built over so many years with so many important people? But even so, I couldn't be distracted from the questions that had come to the forefront. Finally, at the far end of my theological migration, I was forced to admit that there is no basis for believing that a god exists, except faith, and faith was not satisfactory to me. I did not lose my faith—I gave it up purposely. The motivation that drove me into the ministry—to know and speak the truth—is the same that drove me out.
I lost faith in faith.
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