Curiously I was troubled by the hiddenness of God and the mandate of faith, which seemed unreasonable. More over (since this was in 1970-1990) atheists and Muslims were not yet regarded as a threat, so the ministries were glad to compete with each other, so they routinely asserted other churches were deceptions by Satan, which made the faith mandate even more extreme.

(I’d later learn of the Protestant doctrine of Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura that together mean its up to the individual what the bible means, and a reasonable Lord would accept any sincere effort. Faith of a mustard seed. However neither minister nor apologist is willing to concede this, eternally arguing that a believer’s salvation is forever in jeopardy, which makes Christianity look like a violent dad with alcoholism.)

My last bridges to naturalism were confronting my mortality and insignificance. It was especially hard once the climate crisis and the plastic crisis spelled a high risk of human extinction in the next few centuries, very much highlighting that we naked apes are still a petty species facing some serious great filters before us, and the universe is likely not to notice that we have gone.

So my ambitions of a long-tail contribution like a Pythagorean theorem or a Fifth Symphony are much smaller than they once seemed to be. My work as an absurdist was, and remains, cut out for me.