I received a call from a potential client a few years ago. In this conversation she called attention to the fact that she had visited my website and could tell that I was a Christian. She then asked, “I am an atheist and I am wanting to know if that would be a problem?” I replied that my core principles that come from my faith in God invade what I do and how I do what I do. I told her that I don’t need to use Christian lingo in order to work with her and that I had no problem with her atheism.
Fast forward a couple of years to when this same client found herself going through some really challenging situations and she stated that she had been recently praying. That got my attention so I explored this a little more. She wasn’t sure if she was praying to God or the universe but she was looking outside of herself for strength or something, but she wasn’t sure what.
Her story is not unusual. I encounter many people who say they don’t believe in God . . . and some don’t. However, more often than not, they are resisting belief in God for a myriad of reasons. Most often they have little or nothing to do with having truly examined the evidence and concluding that God does not exist. Instead, individuals resist for what are often experiential factors. In other words, it may have nothing to do with the veracity of God’s existence and much more to do with what they “want to believe.” Yet, their experiences – their hurts and fears, are very real and deserve to be addressed. Next time I will begin to address some these reasons for resisting the evidence.