Scot McKnight shares a story on his blog that I have seen countless times in ministry. He says,
One time a student came to my office and rather doggedly and aggressively said, “I don’t believe in God.” I knew the student a bit and I knew the student’s family, and I knew enough about the situation to say something that can only be taken as a “prompting.” I said to him, “What I think is that you don’t like your dad.” He stared at me so I suggested more: “You don’t really not believe in God. You don’t like your dad, and your dad is a pastor and therefore you reject not only your dad but everything he stands for.”
Odd thing is that the student agreed with me. Over his college career he gained back most of his faith.
Lately I’ve had so many conversations with people who are just leaving God behind. I get that. The conversation about God has shifted into a sort of complacency and disinterest. But the problem of God doesn’t go away when we leave God behind. Agnostics, atheists and doubters still talk about God incessantly. We’re hard wired for God.
Sometimes I wonder if our shift to a postmodern mindset, and a shift away from organized religion has something to do with the loss of the father in the home. The industrial age took the Father out of the home and it took 100 years to show that it had profound implications for the family. This is just the first generation to speak up about it in a provocative way.
I hold onto the idea that we search for God because we are on a quest to understand ourselves. If we are created in the image of God, to reject God is to reject the very thing that informs the self.
