It has been my own experience that the reason why there are no atheists in foxholes, so to speak, is not because of the roar of death and destruction that makes a person terrified, but because when one is truly confronted with one’s own end, everything goes icily quiet. (James Kugel writes well about this.) You don’t turn to God in a crisis because you are afraid, at least not primarily. You turn to God because, for once, all that background chatter in your brain, all that pandemonium of blab, ceases, and you can hear—and what some of us hear in those instances is a still, small voice.
