The following is an excerpt from The Kingdom of Couches by William Walker. I'm in the process of deleting an old blog, and I ran accross this. I thought it was worth copying and pasting. If you enjoy the excerpt you can find the book at amazon or crupress.com. Unfortunately, it is not in retail stores. 
"The day before that conversation-about what it means to love God-I ran into an old friend from college at Seattle's Best Coffee. I hadn't seen Jeff in seven years. I remember him as this commando Christian guy who listened to the Bible on tape while he ate dinner. The first thing he told me was that he had "chucked the faith." I inquired, "Chucked it as in you left and came back to the faith or chucked it as in you still don't believe." It was the latter. We talked for a while after that. The conversation was refreshing, because I didn't feel like I needed to explain or prove anything. Jeff already knew everything. At one point we started talking about the Bible. He said, "Man, Paul was either freaking brilliant or tripping on something. His arguments are airtight." I agreed and told him that I had mostly been reading the Gospels for the past couple years. I started talking about the way Jesus interacted with people and how simple and revolutionary his ideas were. As I recounted my discovery of the person of Christ, I began to talk about how Jesus never really asked anyone what they knew or what they could do. Instead He always asked people things like, Do you love me? Will you follow me? Who do you say that I am? All of his invitations were so overtly relational. It's like Jesus wants us to marry him. I was thinking these things out loud, and at this point Jeff interrupted me, "It's weird that you say that. I never read the Gospels much. I was always reading the Epistles. Maybe I married a set of ideas and arguments instead of a person."
He asked me how I could keep believing. The only thing I could think to say, the only thing that I felt was true, was, "Dude, I married Jesus. I'm in." He asked me if I ever had questions or doubts. "Of course I do," I said. "There are all kinds of things I don't know, and the life that Jesus has led me into is frustrating sometimes, but I'm not breaking up with Him because of it. We're married. I couldn't imagine life without Jesus." Jeff countered, "But you would be okay if you stopped believing. You really would. At first it felt really weird to me, but after a while I was okay. I learned different ways to cope and found other things to give my energy to. You don't think you would be okay, but you would be after awhile." I sat there for a minute and tried to imagine what it would be like to break up with Jesus and whether or not I could actually be okay someday. I sat there quietly, looking away in thought. Thinking about it made my heart hurt. After a minute or two, I looked at Jeff and said, "I wouldn't be okay. It would feel like divorce to me. In marriage you become one with the other person. Divorce would literally feel like death. If Debbie or Ethan died, I would never get over that. Sure I would cope and get on with life, but I would always feel a sense of loss, like part of me died. That is how it would be if somehow I walked away from Jesus. It would never be okay. We are married."
"The day before that conversation-about what it means to love God-I ran into an old friend from college at Seattle's Best Coffee. I hadn't seen Jeff in seven years. I remember him as this commando Christian guy who listened to the Bible on tape while he ate dinner. The first thing he told me was that he had "chucked the faith." I inquired, "Chucked it as in you left and came back to the faith or chucked it as in you still don't believe." It was the latter. We talked for a while after that. The conversation was refreshing, because I didn't feel like I needed to explain or prove anything. Jeff already knew everything. At one point we started talking about the Bible. He said, "Man, Paul was either freaking brilliant or tripping on something. His arguments are airtight." I agreed and told him that I had mostly been reading the Gospels for the past couple years. I started talking about the way Jesus interacted with people and how simple and revolutionary his ideas were. As I recounted my discovery of the person of Christ, I began to talk about how Jesus never really asked anyone what they knew or what they could do. Instead He always asked people things like, Do you love me? Will you follow me? Who do you say that I am? All of his invitations were so overtly relational. It's like Jesus wants us to marry him. I was thinking these things out loud, and at this point Jeff interrupted me, "It's weird that you say that. I never read the Gospels much. I was always reading the Epistles. Maybe I married a set of ideas and arguments instead of a person."
He asked me how I could keep believing. The only thing I could think to say, the only thing that I felt was true, was, "Dude, I married Jesus. I'm in." He asked me if I ever had questions or doubts. "Of course I do," I said. "There are all kinds of things I don't know, and the life that Jesus has led me into is frustrating sometimes, but I'm not breaking up with Him because of it. We're married. I couldn't imagine life without Jesus." Jeff countered, "But you would be okay if you stopped believing. You really would. At first it felt really weird to me, but after a while I was okay. I learned different ways to cope and found other things to give my energy to. You don't think you would be okay, but you would be after awhile." I sat there for a minute and tried to imagine what it would be like to break up with Jesus and whether or not I could actually be okay someday. I sat there quietly, looking away in thought. Thinking about it made my heart hurt. After a minute or two, I looked at Jeff and said, "I wouldn't be okay. It would feel like divorce to me. In marriage you become one with the other person. Divorce would literally feel like death. If Debbie or Ethan died, I would never get over that. Sure I would cope and get on with life, but I would always feel a sense of loss, like part of me died. That is how it would be if somehow I walked away from Jesus. It would never be okay. We are married."
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