I’m frankly dumbfounded when told by those whom I shall call “believers”, that they put themselves and all their troubles in the hands of God or Jesus and that he looks after them and guides them through life.
Is this a displacement, or a kind of mind game where the problem is put out of, or to the back of one’s mind (as best one can), tries not to think about it and hopes it goes away, or until the problem resolves itself anyway? A kind of devout irresponsibility! Perhaps believers have conditioned a compartment of the mind to receive and to hold problems of this kind – a sort of mental trash basket for pain and stress; maybe, but they will swear that they are not speaking figuratively! So for me, as an atheist this is nonsense. To put my troubles – few as they are … and phew! as I’m lucky – in the hands of an imaginary being is tantamount to madness, but it seems that a large number of people the world over do this as a way of coping with the stresses and strains of everyday life. I do like to think and I sincerely hope that if and when serious problems occur for me that I will be able to rise to them and accept the challenge without resorting to fantasy.
Of course there are times when a problem can appear so overwhelming that to sit and try to reason it out only seems to increase its power and spread the misery of it through other parts of one’s mind, resulting in a kind of mental paralysis. I’m talking about life and death matters in which one is emotionally involved like learning that a loved one has cancer or has been killed or badly injured in an accident. At times like these, to “put it in the hands of God” is the only way for so many people, but this way for me is forbidden in the name of sanity as I see it. Believers will say it is precisely for their sanity that they do it! What a polarization of reason! Some will even go so far as to say that it was God’s will that the problem occurred in the first place! Take the recent tsunami disaster: even in insurance terms it was an “Act of God”.
What kind of a god is this whom they love? To put my trust in the hands of a being who wills such terrors upon his creatures seems unthinkable.
“It’s to test our faith.” Believers say.
“God moves in a mysterious way!”
John Ward April 2005