The central idea is, of course, that Christian faith offers a sedative for suffering in this life by promising that we will be fully compensated in the next, when “many that are first will be last, and the last first” (Matt. 19:30). Atheists like to ridicule this aspect of faith as “pie in the sky.”1 What is almost always missed is that Christianity often puts the pie on the table! It makes life better here and now. Not merely in psychological ways, as faith in an attractive afterlife can do, but in terms of concrete, worldly benefits.
