Last week, Jeffrey Overstreet quoted part of an interview with Sara Zarr, a finalist for the National Book Award this year for her first novel, “Story of a Girl”. When asked why she didn’t make her book safe and inoffensive, why she included stuff like underage sex and curse words, she gave this answer:
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I have a friend who tells me that he is a follower of Christ because he really thinks he doesn’t have any choice. Like the apostle Peter, who, when asked by Christ if he and the other disciples would leave, said “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”, my friend says he knows that he has been chosen by Christ and has no where else to go.
I, on the other hand, don’t usually find myself in that camp. More often than not, I find myself wondering how I still believe after everything I’ve heard and seen, growing up in church and around religion. And there are times, like after browsing a christian bookstore or hearing another sermon that comes off more like an argument from ignorance, or having to endure another ‘praise and worship’ song, that it is hard not to be convinced that Christianity is nothing more than opium for the masses, a (sometimes) clever story created by and for the delusional.