Nearly finished with Chuck Wendig’s apocalyptic tome, Wanderers, and I wanted to share a powerful exchange between two central characters (Benji, a CDC specialist, and Matthew, a broken and defeated pastor who’s lost his faith). No spoilers here, just one of those heady truths we so often find in good fiction.
‘You’re right that some use their faith as a crutch. Others use it as an excuse. You did, I think. You gave it too much power, ceded too much of yourself to it. And I’m sure I have, too, without ever meaning to. But God was never about power over us. It was about the power we possessed to either be good and in His graces, or be selfish and wretched in His shadow. So to speak, Hell is being in that shadow. It’s not in the next world, but this one, right now, anytime you choose not to do the right thing. As long as we’re still here, not merely surviving but trying to right by one another, then I believe the heritage of God’s light is still in us. Maybe not as the Bible would have us believe, maybe not as preachers such as yourself would have told us, but…there just the same […] Then again, maybe it is an excuse. Maybe it is a crutch. But it’s what keeps me going.’
‘Shouldn’t it be your fellow humans that keep you going?’
Benji smiled. ‘It is my fellow humans. Each of them carrying a bit of God in them, even now. Even you.’
(90% on Kindle) Wendig, Chuck. Wanderers. Del Rey Books. July 2, 2019
Ryan L. Purdy 