July 23

July 23 – AM

Page 45-46, We Agnostics, Chapter 4

We know how he feels.  We have shared his honest doubt and prejudice.  Some of us have been violently anti-religious.  To others, the word “God” brought up a particular idea of Him with which someone had tried to impress them during childhood.  Perhaps we rejected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate.  With that rejection we imagined we had abandoned the God idea entirely.  We were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence upon a Power beyond ourselves was somewhat weak, even cowardly.  We look upon this world of warring individuals, warring theological systems, and inexplicable calamity, with deep skepticism.  We looked askance at many individuals who claimed to be godly.  How could a Supreme Being have anything to do with it all?  And who could comprehend a Supreme Being anyhow?  Yet, in other moments, we found ourselves thinking, when enchanted by a starlit night, “Who, then, made all this?”  There was a feeling of awe and wonder, but it was fleeting and soon lost.

July 23 – PM

Page 18, There Is A Solution, Chapter 2

An illness of this sort—and we have come to believe it an illness—involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can.  If a person has cancer all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt.  But not so with the alcoholic illness, for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worth while in life.  It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer’s.  It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents—anyone can increase the list.