Last night, I read an article in Wired called The New Atheism (November 2006). I don’t read too much about Atheism, but it was a great article to get an introduction to this line of thought. My understanding is that interviews with the three men, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett provide insight into atheism as would interviews with three leading Christian theologians into Christianity.

Sam Harris has recently written a new book, Letter to a Christian Nation. In the article there is a quote that struck me about talking to Christians. “Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well – by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God.”

I could argue the reality of God, I could draw from my 7 years of studying for degrees in religion, I could prove the importance of religious traditions such as baptism and communion, I think I might be good at that even….but instead I will just say…

I understand my faith as something that I can no longer really explain. I can tell you what I believe – the importance of peace to my theology, the importance of fighting for economic justice and racial justice, the importance of community to my theology. But the base of how I know God loves me, I can’t explain. I think maybe I would have tried before, but I know that it so deep that I just can’t explain it anymore.