Over time I have learned a few things about my oncologist. Early in our every other week sessions he learned that I am a pastor. He was quick to tell me that he’s an atheist. Growing up in Spain where orthodoxy was strict, he didn’t find any room for his questions – only the standard answers of his church. I suppose that didn’t give him much room to discover that doubt is always the companion of faith. I am not on a campaign to “convert” him. Rather I am interested in hearing his thoughts, questions and struggles with his practice (he doesn’t sleep well.)

I believe that God is no less present in my oncologist than in me. I think that if God had to choose between a person having faith or being a compassionate member of the human race, God would choose compassion any day. This perspective comes from the audacious process that most of us go through – putting ourselves in God’s shoes to try to understand the infinite divine. So I think, “What matters to me, as a parent, is that my child is a decent human being – more than whether or not they turn to me with prayerful reverence.” Of course, I’d like it both ways – but if I had to, I would choose to have a compassionate child, more than a believing child.

I suspect and know from anecdotal evidence that many people within the church struggle with this issue as they experience children and close friends who don’t plug into the institutional church and seem to have little structure to their faith, or like my oncologist have arrived at a conclusion of atheism – and yet who are wonderful people. We want for them to have both, and are a bit flumoxed when they don’t.  Where does that leave us? To love them as they are, give thanks for their goodness, and put the rest in God’s hands.

Andrew