Once again the Freedom From Religion group is on the
warpath. They want “In God We Trust”
eliminated from our coinage. I have long
pondered the attitude of atheists, thought that were I an atheist, crosses and
creches 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.
But Atheists cannot go merrily on their way. They feel compelled to fight every symbol to
the death, ban them from market place to hillside. It has always puzzled me. Why do they care? Why do they protest so vehemently.
Then I read a meditation on Psalm 63 that served as
something of an epiphany. Perhaps the
Psalmist speaks truth. “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 proudly resisting. “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 reason manages to quiet that thirst to know God, but
those religious symbols destroy the peace, reawaken that longing. They must be banned lest the atheist fall
into the humble pit of faith.
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