The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

by Dallas Willard

Charles Ryder, the protagonist in that novel, comments on the religion of the other central character: Sebastian’s faith was an enigma to me at that time, but not one which I felt particularly concerned to solve…. The view implicit in my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth, and that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of present value, a division in which the main weight went against it; religion was a hobby which some people professed and others not; at the best it was slightly ornamental, at the worst it was the province of “complexes” and “inhibitions”—catchwords of the decade—and of the intolerance, hypocrisy, and sheer stupidity attributed to it for centuries. No one had ever suggested to me that these quaint observances expressed a coherent philosophic system and intransigent historical claims; nor, had they done so, would I have been much interested.28 These words perfectly express the crushing weight of the secular outlook that permeates or pressures every thought we have today.