David Foster Wallace

Some of the most cogent Christian writing, for my money, comes from unbelievers. Some day I'll write about how I got saved partly through reading Bertrand Russell's Why I Don't Believe in God. The reason for this backdoor confirmation of the faith, of course, is that as the Apostle Paul said, "We cannot do anything against the truth." That is, everything that's said and that happens in the world confirms God's truth because this is God's universe.

Today's confirmation is from American author David Foster Wallace:

"In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship---be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles---is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things---if they are where you tap real meaning in life---then you will never have enough. . . . Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. . . .

"The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. . . . None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head."

What a tragedy to grasp so well only the first half of the truth.

David Foster Wallace committed suicide on September 12, 2008.

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