Notes from a Reluctant Deist

Part I

I once interviewed the journalist Krista Tippett, host of the “On Being” podcast, which examines questions of faith and spirituality. I was excited to speak with her because I figured, if anybody knew if there was a God, it would be her. So I asked her:

Michael: “Is there a God?”

Krista (obviously embarrassed): “I never ask anyone that question.”

Michael: “Why not?”

Krista: “It’s like asking somebody ‘Do you have sex?’”

Michael: “Do you have sex?”

Krista: “That’s easier to answer!”

The question flustered her and, for years, I didn’t know why. Now I do.

I have been an atheist, or at least atheist-adjacent, for most of my life. It wasn’t my choice. I didn’t want to be an atheist, but I couldn’t find any conception of God that made sense to me, nor could I find any evidence that any kind of God-like entity is present. In a book I wrote, I described myself as a “praytheist” (a word I have subsequently learned I did not make up), which I defined as somebody who prays to a God they do not believe in, with the hope that God will present some evidence of Its existence, which, if presented, the person will immediately dismiss. I wanted to believe, but couldn’t find anything in which to believe.

Moreover, I had a problem with the phrase “a higher power” because it suggested to me that we were, in some very real sense, subservient. There’s nothing wrong with subservience in the sense of “service,” but I always felt like the idea of a higher power, particularly one as capricious as the one I kept hearing about, robbed me of free will. If my life is in the Lord’s hands instead of my own then I feel like I’m being stripped of my own agency. The word “Lord” itself, with all of its heraldic connotations, also sucks. My people didn’t escape shtetls in Eastern Europe to be serfs by another name. If we are nothing before God, then what’s the point of anything? Why get out of bed in the morning if our lives aren’t our own?

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So I didn’t believe in God. At the same time, I had a hard time not not believing in God – or something that I wanted to call God. Like everybody, I feel myself to be more than the sum total of molecular interactions happening within my body. We all sense something ineffable about ourselves. Call it spirit or soul or essence or, maybe, consciousness. Whatever that thing is, we know it exists apart from our physical being. Skeptics – or, maybe, rationalists is a better word - have tried to find materialistic explanations for this essential part of ourselves. They’ve sliced our brains and teased apart our DNA. They’ve dug into our genes. They’ve given us all manner of psychological testing. So far, they’ve come up about as short as I have when trying to find evidence of God. We know ourselves to be something more, but cannot prove it, nor can we disprove it.

Going backwards for a moment, part of my issue with God was, as I said, I couldn’t find a definition that worked for me. I mean that partly as a joke because, if there is a God, it takes a lot of chutzpah to be like, “Yeah, that’s not going to work for me.” At the same time, why believe in something that makes no sense? Why believe in a Supreme Being who notices every flap of a butterfly wing but also allows as much suffering as we experience? Did I really believe that our eternity is determined by a short stint here on Earth? That somebody in a green visor is tallying my sins against my virtuous deeds? Did I really believe that this God sent his kid here to die on my behalf – don’t me any favors, dude. Or the Jewish “Get off my lawn!” God? Or any of the numerous Hindu gods? It all seemed so nutty. The only ones who make any sense to me about God at all are the Muslims who believe that God is all-seeing, all-knowing, without race or gender, has no kids, exists without time or space, and just Is. That’s a vagueness about that kind of God that I find compelling because it jibes with what I think a God would be like, although the “all-seeing, all-knowing” part rubs me the wrong way because it makes humanity seem redundant. Why put us here, God? You’ve already got all the toys in the toy box. In fact, you’ve got the toys, the box, the room in which the box is stored, the house with the room, and so on. You’ve got, literally, EVERYTHING. So, what’s our job? Humanity is a purpose-driven species. When the One already controls All, humanity is left twiddling our thumbs doing diddly squat with our lives while waiting to be judged for whether or not we masturbated too much? Or ate milk with meat or slept with the wrong person or what have you. Seems kind of dumb.

Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash

(Pictured: mortal Jewish sin)

I never accepted that humanity’s purpose was to worship God. It just felt so narcissistic of God to be like, “Aren’t I the best? Tell me I’m the best.” Why would an omnipotent presence need daps from the likes of us? It made no sense. None of it made any sense. So I rejected it. But I still looked for proof.

But then I changed. Believe me, I didn’t expect to change. Wasn’t looking to change. But I did. I have gone from atheist to praytheist to where I am now – reluctant deist.

So what happened?

A lot of people grow closer to their own spirituality as they age. I used to think that was just because we’re getting closer to death, so it makes sense to hedge our bets. My own mother, as she grew sicker over the last dozen years of her life, went from non-practicing Jew to an over-the-top Super Jew, before settling back into becoming a comfortable Believer, which is when she died. She believed in something, although she never told me exactly what.

But she did give me a little insight. As I said, she was in poor health for years, beginning with uterine cancer. Her treatment left her in a severely depleted state, screwing up her organs one after the after. Consequently, her body was in slow decline from the moment she received her initial diagnosis Everything failed. Towards the end, she developed another tumor. The doctors thought it was probably a return of her cancer and they told her, if it was, there wasn’t anything they could do because she’d already had so many surgeries, so many treatments, that anything else they did to her would kill her. The phrase “Get your affairs in order” was used.

Devastated, she spent an anxious weekend with her partner, Sandy, waiting to go back in for a biopsy. On the morning of her biopsy, she and Sandy were driving to the hospital when she heard a Voice telling her not to worry, the tumor was benign. I asked her about the voice – what kind of voice? She had a hard time explaining it. Just a voice, not her own. Male, she thought, authoritative but kind. A voice. She told Sandy what the voice had said. Sandy basically told her some version of, “That’s nice, you’re crazy.” She went in for the biopsy. The tumor was benign. She said she was the only who wasn’t surprised at the news. The Voice had told her and she had believed the Voice.

She told me she heard the Voice one other time, in the mountains of North Carolina where they sometimes vacationed. I asked what it had said and, maddeningly, she told me she didn’t remember. How the hell do you not remember what the Voice (of God?) tells you? My mother would have made a terrible prophet.

An interesting anecdote, but hardly definitive. So why do I now think there is a God? Even attempting to answer the question is mortifying. Not because it speaks to anything actually embarrassing but because the question of God, I now know, is so deeply personal, that it is, in fact, much easier to discuss our sex lives.

In subsequent posts, I’ll discuss how my transition from atheist to reluctant deist happened. It’s a sloppy and incomplete transition, but I think it’s probably something a lot of people can relate to, so I’m going to do my best. Not trying to convince anybody of anything. How could I? I’m still trying to convince myself.