Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Have we met the Practical Atheist in us?
By Bishop Paul V. Marshall
June 2002One of the most insightful pieces of theological literature I have ever read is on the dollar bill: "In God we trust."
Whether those words belong there is for judges to decide. In either event, the slogan stands in pointed contrast to the attitudes of most Christians and Jews I know. Most people I know are atheists. I suspect they would be offended to hear me say so.
Most Americans believe that God exists, but most of us lead our lives as though there were no God, and no basic commitments that govern ordinary living.
We would have to admit that what we know of God was not on our mind the last time we spoke impatiently or rudely to a loved one, the last time we slightly adjusted the numbers on our tax returns, or the last time we allowed ourselves the luxury of speaking of some person or group with contempt.
Real atheism is not just a question of belief. It is a question of actions that deny a basic relationship with God. It is one thing to say that God exists; but do we trust God and act on the basis of that relationship?
In this sense, the most profound religious statement available to us on a daily basis is on the money we use.
Early Christianity concluded from the scriptures and their experience of God that the one God was at the same time three persons. That boggles the mind. It's supposed to. Human language simply cannot contain the infinite.
What each of us can understand is that when speaking this way of God, Christians are at the very least saying that God is essentially and eternally in relationship, in communion, in love.
When the New Testament says that God is love, it is not a throw-away line or a sentimentality; it is a tough-minded conclusion about what is the highest and greatest value.
To believe in God in the sense that our money puts it when it says, "In God we trust," is to take the risk of living that trust by loving where and when it is not convenient to love.
I have seen this recently in my primary care physician. She has begun to treat some patients on public assistance at no charge because they would otherwise have to wait for six weeks for a clinic appointment to treat what could kill them in three weeks. She is bucking the ethos of her profession and the idea that the poor should only have table scraps. She is bucking the system because her faith tells her that compassion is more important than comfort.
People tend to think in magical terms about God. When human evil causes a great tragedy, the cry goes up, "How could God have let this happen?" as though it is somehow God's job to underwrite human efforts and neutralize every act of human will except our own.
Will Rogers wrote many years ago that religious people sow wild oats six days out of the week; on the one remaining, they pray for crop failure.
Until we take very seriously the cumulative effect of human evil, evil of both the everyday and catastrophic types, until we see our own brokenness and arrogance, talk of God is meaningless, merely veneer.
To get past our practical atheism is to undertake the hard work of monitoring our actions and motives at precisely those times when it is inconvenient to do so.
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