I think Dr. Hayden is using ‘agnostic’ to refer to the process whereby he engages with God. Skeptical. Questioning. Not entirely convinced. But doggedly pursuing God just the same. What he said resonated deeply with me because of the number of times when I’ve desperately held on to God. Over the last decade I’ve seen so many core beliefs get stripped away. I’ve often found myself in a place where what I believed about God wasn’t borne out by scripture or by my life experiences. But despite some knock-down blows, I just can’t walk away.

“Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!”

Bill Williams, the author of Naked Before God, didn’t doubt the existence of God. He doubted God’s sanity, doubted at times that God was *good*, and definitely was sure that the pie-in-the-sky God that gets dispensed at most churches was a fabrication. But believing that there is a God, almost by definition, makes you non-agnostic.

I’m with Bill, by the way. I think what gets dispensed as “God” by most churches in these darkened days is
a) a Christianized version of Zeus, hurling thunderbolts, or any of the other Greco-Roman stable of gods,
b) a politicized version of the Old Testament YHWH, also dispensing judgment and death and occasionally saving a few souls, or
c) some new-age cross between Jesus and Ravi Shankar, but with much less good music.

I guess I’m a Christian, but also an achristendomic - I don’t believe in Christendom as dispensed by Rome or Canterbury or any other so-called religious center.

My experience? Trusting God - I mean really, really trusting him - doesn’t happen without some kind of crisis. That looks different for everyone - some of the things I might brush off as being minor can be major life events to someone else.

I have a atheist friend who says if we haven’t come to our faith without some kind of struggle then what we have isn’t really faith. Interesting, no?