Why I still believe in God.
Ten years ago I was sitting in a rainy car park in Cornwall, the rough sea only visible between strokes of the windscreen wipers, the soft notes of a Sigur Ros song playing and I was crying. Sometimes crying feels beautiful, you feel sadness in a way that you have not been able to and in doing so, release it. I was crying because I was sitting in a car park where we came on holiday as kids, a big group of our family, my parents and brother, my uncles and aunts and my cousins. They were Christian family holidays, we had bible studies and meetings and sung hymns and choruses, and usually everyone there was a Christian. I was overcome by the sadness of being there again with my family who are all Christians, happy and purposeful, while I was long adrift from church life, lost and doubtful. But I also felt the goodness and kindness of Christian community, there in that beautiful place and I longed for it, wished I could have had it as easily as others, fitted into church as contentedly. But I didn’t, I like so many of my generation who grew up in church found myself wandering in a desert of uncertainty, never fully freed of the feeling of being an alien to the world and yet unable to embrace the church culture I grew up in.
Try to ask the question of God in our moment and you will be stuck between the…
