Josh was steering the car around streets blocked off for summer construction, searching for a route through the suburbs to get us back home after visiting my parents. We were talking about a new book by Richard Rohr he had bought that morning, a book about spirituality.
“I decided to listen to a couple of podcasts with Richard Rohr—well, until my Bluetooth headphones died,” he said.
“Were they any good?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “They were, actually. In one he talks about how many of us grow up with a more fundamentalist religion, and in the spiritual stages of development that can actually be a good thing because it gives us something to rebel against.”
He went on to describe how Rohr acknowledged the religious diversity of the world, of how if one was born a Hindu in India then one would most likely be Hindu, or if one was born a Muslim in Egypt, chances are he or she would remain Muslim.
“He said that it’s common for people to go through a period of deconstruction,” he said. “And I know that’s what I’ve been doing these last five years. But it’s not a place where I want to stay forever.”
I listened to him talk, my eyes scanning the traffic, my ears registering the hum of the air conditioner vents, my nose picking up hints of sunscreen and sweat from our children in the back, my tongue still carrying the aftertaste of decaf coffee. Or was it that way? Was I looking at him, or staring at the notifications on my phone, or counting the cars rushing past? I can never fully remember, though I do know there was a Styrofoam cup with black stripes in the center console, nearly full of decaf coffee.
Why is it so important to remember the details of this conversation—the early evening light stretching its legs, the green, leafy bonanza of summer in Minnesota, the coffee dangerously close to sloshing over the sides of its cup?
It’s because of what he said next: “I think I love God.”
I started blinking, my eyes suddenly prickly, and I turned to him. “What?”
His eyes didn’t leave the road in front of him, though the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.
“Don’t get too excited,” he said. “I don’t know what God is or how to define God.” Then he turned to look at me and smiled. I smiled back, still blinking.
“Woah,” I said, taking my hand to wipe my eyes. “Wow. I can’t believe you just said that. That’s amazing.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, God is mystery. And I think I love the mystery.”
We sat in silence for a while, staring at the road.
“Does this God love you back?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
The next morning before church, when I was recounting this story to a close friend over the phone, she gasped. “I am so surprised,” she said. “But having an agnostic who loves God is pretty great. As a Christian, I need to cultivate a greater love for God in my life.”
I thought about how I had all but given up praying for Josh’s conversion back to Christianity, not wanting to set myself up for disappointment, not really trusting that God would do anything about it. Why would God intervene in my piddling life when homeless people held signs at the intersections along Broadway Avenue near my house? God surely had more urgent matters to attend to—though I knew that wasn’t quite it, either. The issue, really, was me: my lack of trust, my lack of belief, a sort-of functional agnosticism. My fear of being disappointed, masquerading as some bold commitment to Josh’s freedom.
Flannery O’Connor wrote that faith comes and goes. “It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will.”
Perhaps there are some Christians who are so close to God that their underlying belief and trust never wavers, their faith more like a steady body of water than rising and falling tides. I am not one of those Christians—I am more like O’Connor’s shore, the tides of faith coming and going with some regularity. That Sunday morning after Josh declared his love for God, or mystery, I went to church. There were a few moments in that service, when I held the hands of my neighbors in the pews to sing our closing song, when the choir performed special music, when I cried and whispered thank-yous to God for showing up in Josh’s life.
The associate pastor preached a sermon about how Jesus goes and hunts down that lost sheep. The pastor said, “That sheep isn’t being led gently back by the shepherd in this situation. The shepherd is grabbing that sheep, picking it up, and hoisting it around his neck.” The pastor moved her hands up to the tops of her shoulders, mimicking the motion. It looked like she had on an invisible neck pillow, the kind people wear on airplanes.
“That sheep is getting carried back,” she had said.
I sat in church and prayed for Josh. I prayed the great Mystery would scoop him up like a lost lamb and carry him home. I prayed that a wave of faith would crash over us both, giving us an undeniable sense of God’s presence.