PASTOR'S PERSPECTIVE: DIARY REVEALS THOUGHTS OF WELL-KNOWN ATHEIST

A recent Religion News Service story reported that Jan. 23 some 2,000 pages of the private diaries of atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair will be sold at an auction to help pay off creditors and back taxes. O'Hair mysteriously disappeared along with a son, a granddaughter and $600,000 in 1995. The world's most famous atheist first became known for bringing the 1963 lawsuit that barred prayer in public schools. She also sought unsuccessfully to get the courts to remove the phrase "In God we trust" from U.S. currency.

The most interesting twist of fate about the saga of O'Hair might be that in 1980 her son, William, became a Christian and has since published several books, the most recent of which is titled "Let Us Pray" and the most popular of which is called "My Life Without God." How intriguing, I thought when I first read of William's conversion, that I know so many parents who struggle to teach Christian values to their children unsuccessfully and the one who strives to teach her children atheism also fails! Kids will be kids I suppose.

I look forward to the inevitable publication of O'Hair's diary. Though it may be an intrusion upon her privacy, and more than a bit nosy, to want to peek into her psyche, I think that what she has to say might be the most helpful thing that a generation of Christians, whose witness could be more effective, could read. Our enemies, after all, are our best critics (at least in some context). The quotes that have already been made public are pretty telling, I think, for the practice of modern-day spirituality.

"Somebody, somewhere, love me ..." O'Hair writes repeatedly in her diary. What an important insight that is into the heart of an angry and boisterous soul that deep down underneath we really are, all of us, simply asking for someone to please love us. O'Hair's diary makes me feel even more convinced than I have been before that this is so. The best gift that God ever gave us was grace that saves us. It is grace and not judgment and invective that transform a person. "God shows God's love for us," the Bible says in Romans 5:8, "in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." O'Hair's diary makes me think that anyone who doesn't feel loved has not really believed in the God who loves us this much even before we love God back. Of course an atheist would feel unloved because "God IS love" (1 John 4:8). Life without God is, by definition, life without love.

The other thing that strikes me about O'Hair's diary is the blatant, full-blown materialism of her outlook on life. She writes, "I want money and power and I am going to get it ... I want a $60,000 home, a Cadillac, a mink coat, a cook and a housekeeper ..." Every holiday season we bemoan the way that consumerism robs us of our joy when the bills come the first of the year, but O'Hair's diary helps me to see that what we are really talking about is not just a lack of discipline regarding finances but a certain idolatry of sorts. O'Hair's diary reflects that she was not a person who knew much joy. I think that our modern spirituality might be more effective in its witness if more of us were living joyful lives. Fact is that the same idol of materialism along with its accompanying malaise pervades our own spirituality in the Christian faith.

A peek into O'Hair's diary will be very interesting indeed. I suggest we look there, not in a self-righteous manner but rather with an eye to our own diaries. Are our lives different in their secret matters (which God sees and knows) than the life of the world's most renowned atheist?

I wonder how my diary will read if they auction it off someday? "Dear diary, I am grateful that `God is love' and so, no matter how low my esteem has sunk, I know in somebody's eyes I am always lovable ... Dear diary, I need to give some more thought to what it is that really brings me joy in life."

The Rev. Scott Lohse is pastor of New McKendree United Methodist Church in Jackson and is host of a morning program at KMHM-FM 104.1.