Searching For God (Instead of Ideas About Him)

During a recent and prolonged discussion with someone undergoing a faith crisis—prolonged because she brought up reasons for disbelief while I countered with reasons for belief, which could go on in perpetuity—I had a moment of clarity: We were not talking about the same thing. Her religion is a set of ideas weighed on a scale in which those on the belief side never quite outweigh those on the doubt side. But my faith is based less on epistemic certainty and more on a relationship I’ve developed with a capital-s Someone. He has carried me through a lot of hard times and been the source of my deepest joys. While abandoning religion for her means discarding ideas that don’t fit her worldview, leaving the faith for me feels more like betrayal.