I have long pondered the attitude of atheists, thought that were I an atheist, crosses and crèches would arouse my humor, not my gall.  I would smile and shake my head in wonder that so many people can believe in such hogwash, and I would go merrily on my way, safe in the knowledge that I had not been so duped.

Why then do atheists protest so vehemently against religious symbols? 

This morning I read a meditation on Psalm 63 that served as something of an epiphany.  Perhaps the Psalm speaks more truth than I had thought.  “O God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as a dry and weary land yearns for water.”  Perhaps the core of every cell in our bodies is imprinted with a thirst for God, a hunger to know the almighty. 

Perhaps those cell walls are our intellect, our noble reason of which we are so proud.  It resists. “Silly, how could Jonah have been swallowed by a whale and lived to tell the story?  How could the blare of Joshua’s trumpet have felled the walls of Jericho?”

Perhaps the symbols of religion reawaken that longing to such an extent that they must be banned lest we fall into the humble pit of faith.