My daughter Violet was seven years old when Penny Lane died. Penny was our beloved Golden Retriever (and yes, she was named after the Beatles’ song). While grieving, Violet became intensely interested in the question of what happens after death. It didn’t make sense to her, that our beloved Penny Lane, who had been around since before she was born, was suddenly and simply… gone.
I had been wrestling with God for seven years up at that point. Having walked away from my faith after a terrible experience at church. I had then studied World Religions. Philosophy and Anthropology at university, searching for the answer to what was essentially my daughter's question writ large - is there something more than physical life? Is there a God?
But fast forward seven years, when my daughter asked me that question my focus shifted from a concern for truth to a concern for comfort. She was grieving and needed hope. Ironically, although I wasn’t a believer myself, you might say my concern was pastoral. I sifted through all the religious possibilities - Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Islam, and settled on Christianity because there lay the most hope.
“People go to heaven,” I said, “to be with Jesus.”
“Oh. Okay then.” She replied and went off to play.
I didn't let go of the question quite so easily however ... it got me thinking.
Freud said, in Future of an Illusion, that he envied the believer for the freedom that their belief afforded them; the practical benefits of believing in a benevolent Father God who providentially orders their lives for the good. The hope of life after death and the comfort of knowing that although the world is full of injustice, it will ultimately be set right by God.
I must admit, since entering the ministry myself, I have pondered this question more than once: do people on the inside of the faith have as high a view of Christianity as an atheist like Freud?
Although he ultimately thought belief in God a delusion, he recognised the deficit caused by a lack of belief. He had what I call faith envy.
I’d had faith envy too.
After I left the church, I seemed to come across Christians everywhere: in the music community, in my university, at the pub. They seemed to me to possess a confidence and self-assurance that I lacked.
Anyway, back to my daughter's question - "What happens after you die?"
Freud's diagnosis was that Christians greatly benefited from their delusion. I figured the benefits would be real whether Christianity was true or not.
What if I took my family to church so they could enjoy those benefits? Did it really matter what I personally believed?
I mean, I loathed sport, but still trekked around town every Saturday morning taking the kids here, there, and everywhere because I recognised it was good for them. Was church really that different?
So we started going to church again.
I insisted on sitting up the back for a quick get-away. During the services I mostly crossed my arms and tried to ignore what was being said. As far as I was concerned, I’d already settled the issue and I lacked the energy to have my cage rattled again.
But a curious thing happened.
Over the course of a few months, I’m not sure whether I got tired of the energy required to keep my walls up, or whether it was something else, but I began to simply suspend my disbelief.
As I did so I began to feel less assured of my previous convictions. I began to realise just how shaky the ground was on which I was standing.
The church I had left had serious problems, but was it possible I had thrown out the baby with the bathwater? Was it possible that God really did exist?
If not, what was this stirring within me, responding to worship and the Word of God being preached?
My original idea of joining the community was working - the children had made friends and the church was welcoming.
My plan to remain aloof and detached was failing.
My heart began to feel strangely stirred by the music, vaguely warmed by the Word.
This provoked my intelligence into a three-month obsessive pursuit of “the truth”. I pursued God the way I’d been taught in my Arts degree, like an object to be studied, using logic and reason and science. My mind desperately trying to catch up with my heart. To understand, catalogue, illuminate.
I spent each night after work researching, reading Christian apologetics, watching YouTube videos, sorting and sifting through various views and perspectives.
But I reached an impasse — my mind could only take me so far.
You can argue eloquently for or against the existence of God easily enough, it turns out. Reaching a conclusion requires something else.
I’d been playing a solo gig in town one night, performing Aussie classics in a pub, singing and playing guitar on autopilot as my mind wrestled with the issues, the reasons for and against, the proofs, the counter arguments.
I was over it. When I got home, exhausted, in the middle of the night, something inside me broke.
I fell to my knees and silently cried out to God to do what I couldn’t - to make himself known to me. If there were words to my prayer they might have been, “I believe! Help my unbelief!”
The response was both instantaneous and indescribable. I lacked the Christian conditioning to say that I was filled with the Holy Spirit.
What I did say at the time was that God’s presence had suddenly filled the room and made me different.
I described it to a friend like this: "I felt like I was taken apart and put back together again." Something flowing, surging, wave after wave going through me. Jesus' own words resonated deeply with my experience: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scriptures have said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).
The experience aside however, the point is, I knew in that moment that God is real, that Jesus is Lord and that the Holy Spirit means business to those who seek.
My seven-year hiatus was over. I was back. I wept with joy. Next the only reasonable words I could think of came to my lips: “God, I am yours.”
All this from my daughter asking a simple question.
It’s been the ride of my life, honestly, with more twists and turns in the eight years following that event than in the thirty something preceding it. I’ve been stretched and challenged in more ways than I could imagine, but through it all, with the very real peace, joy, and freedom from God that Freud envied.
It turns out Freud was correct about the benefits of the Christian faith, delusion or not.
I want to encourage you therefore, to listen to those small voices that come along, whether it be from a child or something else.
God is always speaking to you. His voice never stops speaking. In Psalm 19 it says that it goes out to all the earth, His words to the ends of the world.
The seemingly disparate threads of your life are not as accidental as they seem.
For me, a deceased pet, the curiosity of a child, and the dark musings of an atheist all led me back to God.
I know what you’re thinking — do I really believe God used Freud, my daughter, and my pet dog to get me back into church?
Well there is biblical precedent for God using odd ways to speak to people. I mean, He spoke through a donkey to Balaam the Prophet. If He can use a donkey...
Who or what is God using to speak to you? To nudge you?
Follow the inquiry, ask the hard questions, step out of your comfort zone.
It might be that you feel disconnected from church like I did, disconnected from your beliefs. But He never disconnects from you. In Psalm 139 the writer says that God knows every day of your life before one of them comes to be. He's got his finger on the pulse.
Pursue God and dare to believe.
For He is as real as your next breath and has been pursuing you since the day you were born.
Why? Well simply because He loves you. He made you, He rejoices over you, and He wants you to come home.
Life with your Creator God is unbeatable, His presence inimitable.
Why live without?
But as always, it’s just my two-bob worth.
"Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
and satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's." Psalm 103:1-5.
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