“I’m an atheist.”

“Ok, well, welcome to our church.”

“I’m only here with my sister,” the young man said. “She wanted to come.”

“And who is your sister?”

“Karina, over there, with the blond hair. She’s the religious one in the family.”

“Great,” I said. “And what’s your name?”

“Oh, sorry about that,” the young man said, his face flushing a bit. “My name is Ben Mitchell.”

I introduced myself as well and then there was an awkward silence.

“So can I ask you a question, Ben?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Why did you introduce yourself as an atheist?” I wasn’t sure if the direct approach would work but I might never see this young man again.

“Sorry about that,” Ben said. “I guess it was a bit defensive. Just didn’t want anyone assuming that I belonged here.”

“No problem. But can I ask how you came to the conclusion that you are an atheist?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s grab a cup of coffee and go outside for a minute,” I said. “I think there are some benches we can sit on.”

He nodded his head, grabbed a cup of coffee from the serving table and followed me outside.

“Normally there are two ways that people become atheists, did you know that?”

“Not really. I guess I’m just an atheist by default since I don’t believe in God.”

“Good enough,” I said. “That also works. I grew up in a religious family so I guess I was religious by default.”

Ben smiled at me. “That’s honest.”

“Yeah, in High School I won some public speaking contests and people just naturally thought I would become a pastor, you know?”

“Looks like that’s what happened.”

“Well, yes and no,” I said. “I had a bit of a rebellious streak in me and I decided that I would go to Bible College for one year and really investigate this stuff in depth before I made my decision.”

Ben nodded in agreement. “Looks like you became a believer.”

“Yes, I did. But it was a very rocky road. I fought it at every turn. I asked questions of the teachers and the other students until they were sick of me.”

Now Ben was laughing.

“I remember asking one of my teachers how Jesus could be in my heart when my heart was nothing but a blood pumping organ.”

“What did they say?”

“They asked me where I was,” I said. “You know, in terms of my body and I said probably my consciousness is in my brain somewhere.”

“And?”

“They told me that wherever I was, that was were Jesus would be as well. Not physically but in terms of his consciousness as well.”

“That’s still strange.”

“Yes, but it was a better answer than just saying that he was in my heart.” I paused for a moment. “I guess back in those bible days, they didn’t understand about the brain and consciousness so they used the language that made sense to them.”

“Ok, but I’m still an atheist,” Ben said with a straight face.

Now it was my turn to laugh. “Well, that only proved to me that there were some good answers out there if I was willing to do the work and look for them. I couldn’t just assume anything anymore.”

“So you think that I am just making a bunch of assumptions about God?”

“I don’t know, are you?” I looked him in the eye and he looked back at me thinking it through.

In the end he, apparently, decided to be honest about it, at least to a degree.

“You said that there were two reasons people normally become an atheist,” Ben said.

“Well, if you leave the default position alone for now and assume that you have done some homework on the topic, you would be a philosophical atheist.”

“I’m in a religion class at my college right now and we are looking at the arguments for the existence of God but my professor is an atheist so….”

“No problem,” I said. “So long as you do your homework, you can believe what you want. It just would be a shame to be an atheist by default without thinking it through.”

“My professor is quite adamant about atheism and thinks it is the only intellectually honest option out there.”

“I’ll bet that he is over fifty years old and teaches at a community college.”

Ben nodded. “How did you know that?”

“Philisophical atheism kind of went out of fashion a number of years ago, so it isn’t too common to find someone still trying to push it on students.”

“Why not?”

“Well, strictly from a philosophical point of view, it is difficult to prove a negative.”

Ben looked confused.

“In order to prove that God doesn’t exist, anywhere in the Universe, in any form or way, you would have to be God yourself with all of the knowledge necessary to prove a negative that big.”

Ben chuckled out loud. “I never thought of that.”

“Most people today are agnostics for that very reason.”

Silence. I expected him to change his opinion and declare himself an agnostic but he was fighting it.

“I know what an agnostic is,” he said finally. “But I’m still an atheist.”

He was a bit adamant himself about it and I wondered if I lost him. He looked like he was about to get up and leave.

“Perfectly normal,” I said. “You are probably a practical atheist.”

That got his attention and he seemed to engage in the conversation once more although I could see that he was getting bothered by the whole thing.

“What do you mean?”

I wanted to be careful here because I was treading on holy ground.

“Look, Ben,” I said. “I don’t know you at all. We just met. If you don’t want to talk about your real reasons for being an atheist, it’s fine.”

Ben took a deep breath. “No, no, it’s ok,” he said. “Let’s keep going. You were going to tell me what a practical atheist was.”

“It’s someone who has endured a terrible tragedy and blames God for it. But even that doesn’t make sense to him so he just denies the existence of God altogether.”

The silence grew between us. I waited.

“Because if God exists, he would be a monster,” Ben whispered.

“Exactly.”

Now there were tears in his eyes as he hung his head. I could see one leaving a trail of pain down his cheek.

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

Ben looked up with a wild look in his eye. “Tell you what? That God allows little children to suffer and die in pain. Have you even been to the hospital lately? Don’t go into the cancer ward for children because you can’t handle it. Look them in the eye and tell them that God loves them and is taking care of them and they won’t believe you. And don’t let the family hear you because they will throw you out. God is a monster so it’s better that he doesn’t exist.”

Ben was breathing heavily and didn’t want to look me in the eye. I didn’t blame him. The pain was too intense.

“Was it your little brother that got cancer?”

Silence.

“No,” he whispered. “My sister, Sorrell. She was only eight years old. Lasted nine months. Lots of pain towards the end. Nothing anyone could do.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Ben wiped away his tears and stood up. “I don’t need your pity,” he said. “You wanted to know why I was an atheist, and now you know.”

“You blame God,” I said. “I get it. Frankly, if God was responsible for what happened to your sister, I would be an atheist too.”

Ben just looked at me blankly.

“Yes, I would be an atheist, too,” I said again. “In fact, God would also be an atheist if that were the case.”

Now Ben just looked confused but he sat down again.

“How can God be an atheist?” he mumbled.

“Why not?” I said. “If what you mean by God is someone who hurts little children by giving them cancer and allowing them to die scared and in pain, then I don’t want to believe in that kind of God either.”

“What? Are you going to try and get God off the hook? Who else could be responsible?”

“Off the hand, I can think of a number of options. Scientifically, we could blame our DNA or our environment for most cancers. Sometimes cancer or disease comes because of our own fault.”

I looked at him quickly. “Not in your sister’s case, of course,” I said. “But I have diabetes and that is mostly due to my lack of a proper diet and exercise for most of my life. I’m a bit of a junk food addict.”

I got a shadow of a smile out of him for that. I decided to push on.

“If you want to get spiritual about it, why not blame the Devil?” I said. “Jesus tells us that he is always looking for ways to deceive us, steal from us and generally destroy us.”

“Well, God allowed it at least,” Ben said.

“Yes, he did and he had a very good reason for doing so.”

“Really?” Now Ben was getting mad again. “What in the world can justify letting a little girl die in pain from cancer?”

“I can think of a couple of things but what I can tell you for sure right now is that if you had the opportunity to talk to Sorrell now, she would tell you that she agrees with God and that she is proud of the role she was allowed to play. Even though it hurt and she was scared.”

“I have a hard time believing that,” Ben said.

“If I didn’t believe that myself, I would also be an atheist just like you.”

That seemed to make him think.

“So, are you going to tell me what these reasons are?”

“Yes, I am but I have to warn you that you need to spend a little bit of time on this issue in order to really understand what I’m talking about. It isn’t a quick and simple answer.”

Ben was quiet for a long moment.

“Ok, I’m willing to invest some time into this train of thought. What do you want me to do?”

I breathed a prayer of thanks and then invited him to participate in the next Alpha Series about The Questions of Life and meet with me after each one to talk about God’s perspective on life and death and all the pain that lies between.

It was a journey of healing that would bring him to a new understanding of the character and love of God.