Out of all hooping

People who believe in God are not stupid, although it’s often difficult to parse that out when you hear the so-called representatives of Christianity – who seem to be carefully selected by news networks for maximum controversy – spouting their provocative and often lazy theological perspectives. Bad theology abounds, sadly, but this is (or should be) different from the thoughtful theology of people of faith. I’ve never thought that faith was stupid, or the stuff of fools, or the opium of the masses. Yes, it’s often presented that way in public discourse – easy solutions offered up as made-for-television answers for overwhelmingly complicated problems – but writers as smart and bad-ass as Dostoevsky, Atwood, O’Connor (to name a few) and others, living and dead, have been concerned with faith. What it is, how to find and keep it, how one withstands the testing of it, and what the point of having it might be in the first place.

(Via Ellie @ Facing West)