The Devil's Secret (24 page)

“You
brainwashed
him! You—”

At the sound of Brandon closing the door behind him, the two women turned.

“Hey, it’s bad luck for you to see the bride in her dress before the wedding,” Karen said, as if Brandon hadn’t just walked in on the screaming match of the century.

Brandon raised his hands, palms up, in a gesture of bewilderment. “What are you doing, Pastor Noyce?”

Heather patted down some creases in her dress. Karen paced across the linoleum floor to Brandon, her shoes clacking. “Brandon, you deserve better than her. I know you think you disagree with me now, and I know her agenda is appealing to you, but God loves you much more than she ever will. And I love you, too, and so does Tim, and—”

“Agenda?” Brandon said. “What agenda? We’re in love.”

“I just think you should give it a few more months and really think it through. I know you had a ceremony in Seattle, but you haven’t signed the papers yet as far as I know, and she’s not a Christian, Brandon. She’s not good for you.”

“That’s a pretty bold claim to make.”

“Well, I have faith that God has a better plan for you.”

Heather stood on one leg while she tried to pry off one of her high heels. “Faith,” she said to Karen. “By faith you mean unproven assumptions. Faith is just another way of saying you don’t know—or care!—whether any of what you believe is true.”

Karen smiled kindly. “Of course I know that my faith leads to truth.” Her voice carried a humble warmth. Her words irked Brandon, but he couldn’t help being a bit disarmed by her modest sort of conviction. “I know it because I have the Holy Spirit in my heart. And if you and Brandon would listen, you would find that the Spirit stands at the door of your hearts, too. He’s knocking. All you have to do is let Him in, and you just might see things the same way I do.”

“Well I don’t have the Holy Spirit in my heart,” Heather said, emulating Karen’s amiable tone, yet adding a trace of caution. “I base what I believe on evidence. So if you want to convince me about anything, you’ll have to tell me a bit more than that, okay? Without evidence, how could you ever be confident that what you believe aligns with reality?”

“Reality exists independently from what we believe.”

“Well, we can agree on that much.” Heather shifted onto her other leg to get at her other shoe.

“There are examples of God’s presence in the world all around us, Heather. Haven’t you ever looked up at a mountain peak, or seen a baby smile, or seen any of the beauty of the natural world? The world inspires such a sense of wonder in me. So there must be a Creator.”

“That’s quite a logical leap, Ms. Noyce. I’m not religious, yet I, too, have a massive sense of wonder about the world. In fact, I think a natural world that functions without God is even
more
amazing than one that needs religion to explain its existence. Look at astrology: isn’t it sad that some people have such frivolous ideas about stars, when the real stars are so much more incredible to know about?”

Karen balked at that. “Did you just compare my faith to
astrology
? Who do you think—I mean, why do you atheists always try to take away our joy for the world, to take away the wonder we feel?”

“Hey, I’m not trying to do that. I’m just saying that you don’t need to have faith to experience either wonder
or
joy.” As Heather spoke, Brandon caught her gaze and pleaded wordlessly for her to just stop arguing. Her expression shifted briefly to one of apology, but then Karen’s sharp voice demanded their attention.

“How can you even say something like that? Atheists know nothing of the joy and peace that God brings—to me and to anyone who asks for it. And judging from what I’ve heard these last few minutes, I don’t think you even
want
to know God’s love. I bet that deep down, you’re an atheist because you don’t
want
to admit the truth of God’s word. Maybe a Christian has hurt you in your past? If so, I apologize, but you—”

“No, hey, stop right there,” Heather interrupted. “I’m nonreligious because there’s simply no evidence for any faith-based claims, okay? That’s the only reason. Hell, I
want
God to be real. I’d love it if a deity existed that loved us all and enforced justice, but there’s no reason to believe any such thing.”

“Sure there is,” Karen said. “Just look at the universe we live in. It’s so fine-tuned for life, for the perfect ecosystem we have on our planet, that God
must
have created it for us.”

“No!” Heather said. “No, you’re looking at it all backwards. If our universe were any other way, then life would have evolved differently, to suit
that
universe. Or it wouldn’t have evolved at all. Life fine-tunes itself to the universe, not vice versa.”

“Then where did our universe come from? How did something come from nothing? I know your science has no answers to those questions, but you cling to it anyway. Just taking it on faith, are you?”

“I don’t know where the universe came from,” Heather said. “But just because science hasn’t explained something yet doesn’t mean you get to choose any explanation for it that you want. Not understanding something—
yet
—makes me want to learn more, not retreat into invocations of God.” Her brow was getting wet. Brandon hoped her dress wasn’t too hot or constricting.
I’m sure she never imagined her wedding day going quite like this.

Karen shook her head. “And how do you atheists explain how without Christian faith, society crumbles into terrible dictatorships, like the atheist governments of the Soviet Union or North Korea?”

“Or Sweden. What a hellhole.”

“Oh, come now, darling. You can’t deny that the more Christian a country’s government, the better the society it builds for its people.”

Heather stepped forward. Karen backed up a little. “Oh, like in Haiti? Or Northern Ireland in the seventies? Or how about all the religious minorities who are routinely disenfranchised in America? Would you really rather live in a world where everyone thinks the same, where everyone lives in fear of the Other, where no one thinks long-term because Jesus will return soon?”

“I’d rather live in a world full of the more moral, purposeful lives led by Christians,” Karen replied simply.

“I wouldn’t exactly call priests who molest children or fanatics who bomb abortion clinics moral,” said Heather.

“Oh, come on. Those people aren’t true Christians. It’s them who are broken, not their belief system.”

“Eh, that’s a pretty convenient way to look at it. By the same logic, can’t bad atheists be broken, and their belief system still be fine too?”

Karen flinched and looked away, apparently stumped.

Heather continued: “I’m just saying that having faith doesn’t automatically make you a good person, just like trusting science doesn’t automatically make
me
a good person. They’re just ways of determining what’s true about the world. Neither is moral by itself. Wouldn’t you still be a moral person if you weren’t religious?”

“No!” Karen said, bringing a hand to her chest in a gesture of alarm. “Without God in my life, I’d be a wreck. I’d probably drink all day, and sleep around, and treat everyone horribly.”

Heather knitted her brow. “So the only thing keeping you from that is your faith? Seriously?”

“Yes.”

Brandon spoke up, though less contentiously than the women. “You know, I actually quit drinking at around the time I
lost
my faith. I prayed for months for the strength to quit, and only after I’d quit did I realize that I’d been stuck in a victim mindset—because I’d been told that I was powerless and that only God could save me. When I quit, I did it myself. God didn’t help me.”

“Well, that’s your opinion,” Karen huffed. “God’s helped a lot of my friends through some tough times, and I think they’d disagree with you. We once sang a praise song at our Bible study that—”

“Ms. Noyce,” Heather said, “I’m not criticizing your friends or family, or your community, or your pastimes, or even the songs you like. The cultural heritage of Christianity is great, and if it helps people through hard times, then that’s great too. What I’m criticizing is your way of determining what’s true.”

“Young lady, you’re not seeing things from my perspective. Why do you atheists care so much about trying to win me over? About trying to win impressionable kids like
Brandon
over? Why not just keep your beliefs to yourself and let us keep ours? You always criticize Christians for trying to spread our beliefs, but you do the exact same thing.”

“Well, yeah,” Heather said. She left her discarded shoes in a corner and started pacing along the mirror that ran across one of the room’s walls, speaking now to Karen’s reflection. “What we believe about the world matters, because it affects our actions. Like how you want to keep two people who love each other from getting married. Faith stops being a personal, private thing when your actions affect others—like when faith drives politics, business decisions, and huge sections of pop culture. Faith helps dictate public policy for lots of countries around the planet, and since faith has no evidence to support its claims, its huge influence is a huge problem. If we screw up our planet because we take everything on faith, there won’t be a Second Coming to save us all. It’s just us: humans, alone. And if we die, then that’s it. We need to build our society around
that
truth. Not a bunch of age-old fables.”

“
Fables?
” Karen yelled, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “What a grim view of life. It’s just us, alone, and when we die, that’s the end? No God, no Heaven? If that’s the case, then nothing we do on Earth ultimately matters, does it? Just like Brandon says.”

Having reached the end of the mirror, Heather spun to face Karen. “Would any of it matter if there
is
a Heaven? If this life is just a preamble to a greater life after death, does anything we do on Earth matter? Anything that needs to be done could eventually be done in Heaven. There’s no reason to make Earth a better place when we have paradise waiting for us after we die, right? From
faith’s
point of view, life is meaningless. From science’s point of view, life is
everything
. And what about all the evil in the world? If God—”

“Okay, ladies, please,” Brandon interrupted. “Hon. Karen. This is getting ridiculous. Let’s stop arguing and have the damn wedding.” He didn’t want this debate, already so tense, to get any worse. He’d seen some rabid debates on his college green—debates in which the participants practically foamed at the mouth with hate for each other, more concerned with winning than listening. The last thing he needed was for the preacher and his bride to throttle each other on the pulpit.

“Hon, we shouldn’t back down from this,” Heather replied. “They’re just gonna keep doing this if we don’t stand up and say ‘enough.’ I don’t want you to have to deal with this shit anymore.”

“Neither do I, but—”

“Please. Brandon. This is important to me.”

Brandon gazed into her eyes for a moment, then relented. He walked to a chair and sat.

Karen spoke next: “Look here, Heather. I can’t claim to know God’s will. I’m nothing, and He’s great. He works in mysterious and wonderful ways. I don’t need to know why He allows evil.”

“Then how do you know He’s good? And why do you fight against evil in the world? Shouldn’t you just let evil happen, since any given evil might be a part of God’s ultimate plan?”

“Now you’re just twisting my words.”

“Am I? You know you still haven’t given me a single good reason why I should believe anything you preach is true.”

“Well, since you won’t listen to any of the other reasons I’ve given you, I’ll say that I know my God is real because I have
faith
that He’s real. And that’s all He wants from you, too: faith. Have faith, and He’ll wash all your sins away.”

“And why does God value faith?”

Karen stared blankly. Brandon coughed uncomfortably. He wondered whether the bridesmaids listening outside were entertained or bored. Hopefully they’d thought to run and get Tim.

“What do you mean, ‘Why does God value faith?’” Karen asked.

“I mean, does faith have intrinsic value? I can have faith that Santa Claus is real—I can even believe for all my life that Santa Claus is real—but that doesn’t mean my faith is justified. Why would God value faith? What practical value does God put on believing things that can’t be proven?”

“He—well, He wants to know that we’ve chosen Him freely, that we haven’t been coerced into our faith. That our faith and our love for Him are genuine.”

“Then why would He deliberately hide His own existence from us? Wouldn’t He want to give us all the information He could, so that we’d be fully aware of what exactly we’re choosing?”

“He gave us all the information we need to make our choice, in the Bible.”

“And how do you know that the Bible is true?”

“My faith! Is that so hard to understand?”

“So you have faith because the Bible is true, and the Bible is true because you have faith in it?”

Karen murmured something hostile and inaudible, then said, “Don’t you ever wonder if you might be wrong?”

“Every day. Do you?”

“Yes. I mean, I wonder sometimes, sure. When my faith is weak. But ultimately I know that the Bible is true and that God is real. The historical and archeological records prove it. You talk a lot about evidence, Heather, but I think you’ve misinterpreted a lot of it. The evidence, if you read it correctly, completely supports my faith.”

“Wait, wait, wait. So if your faith is based on evidence, then by definition, it’s not faith—isn’t that correct? And I’m very curious to see what evidence you have. But actually—no, actually, I have a better question for you. You say that your faith is supported by evidence, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then can you tell me a hypothetical piece of evidence that could persuade you that you’re wrong? It could be anything. Anything at all.”

“No evidence exists that proves I’m wrong.”

“Right, okay, I’m just talking hypothetically here. Imaginary evidence, if you will, for the sake of argument. Any belief that’s truly based on evidence might run into counterevidence. Can you imagine any type of counterevidence that would be able to dissuade you of your faith? Because if you can’t, then I don’t think your faith was based on evidence to begin with.”