Off track

"The truth is, Evie, you are in a dangerous place. You are playing with fire. You are lying on the railroad tracks, by your own choice, and you may like it there and you may feel like that is the place for you, but you are not aware that you are on railroad tracks. You are not aware of the coming train. You don't feel the tracks vibrating. You don't hear the distant whistle of the train. You cannot see the cloud from the coal in the engine off in the distance.

"I am trying to get your attention and help save you. Only a miracle can get you off the tracks. Only God can reach down and pull you from their grip."

It's this memorable metaphor that closes an associate's earnest seven-page plea to me in the fall of 2010, followed by the friendly, handwritten postscript, "Please don't ever hesitate to call me any time [number]. I'd love to hear from you, and please feel free to write back." The young pastor's typed epistle has been sitting in a file folder with other kindly-meant attempts at salvaging this prodigal soul--other items I couldn't quite bring myself to toss.

The sermon-like qualities are striking to me, along with evidence that the correspondent invested much time and energy in crafting the letter and felt deep concern upon learning of my departure from the conservative faith in which we were both raised. "My faith has only grown in my correspondence with you," he writes in an earlier passage. "I've seen more clearly the utter hopelessness, sinfulness, and foolishness of unbelief ... I have spent hours thinking about how I might help you see our good God, hours writing and hours praying for you. But these hours cannot be compared to eternity."

I still feel a kind of guilt for becoming a burden to certain dear people along these lines and imagine ways I could have handled my loss of faith with greater care for others. There are some.

But this train is bound for doubting, this train.

"You said that you are more and more convinced that personal uncertainty about the biggest questions in life is a good trait. So you are becoming certain that it is good not to be certain?

"You would not think it good to be uncertain of whether you had enough credits to graduate, or whether your book was to be published, or whether you had cancer or not, or whether it was raining outside or not ... these are minor things in comparison to the major life and death questions of God and faith and so forth--very important questions that one must have certainty about. They are essential. Where did life come from? Where are we going? What is wrong with the world? What is the solution? Is there a God? What happens after death? It is essential that we understand and know these answers so that we can live."

I, for one, am still relatively stumped on a lot of those questions--even though I'm almost done plowing through Jim Holt's Why Does the World Exist?(!). (It's a good book, by the way!)

Happy new year, all. I really like trains, by the way.