From Face to Face: a Narrative Essay in the Theology of Suffering by Frances Young (1990):
It is not true that Christians are better people. My husband is one of the best people I know. Nor is it true that faith gives you the edge in coping with the problems of life. It may delude you into never facing reality, into false hopes, into a sentimental and unrealistic optimism about things. Or it may compound your problems by setting up a sharp dichotomy between an accepted idea of what the world is like and the awful reality you actually have to face. My experience has proved that religion is no escapism. It led me deeper and deeper into the agonies over the state of the world. It raised questions and difficulties which the non-believer never had to face. For many years I felt it would be so much easier just to give up on this Christian nonsense, the absurdity of claiming that this rotten world was created a by a good loving God, the illusion that with enough faith and goodwill everything will somehow be put right and the kingdom of God arrive. But somehow I could not live with that way out. There was something in me that resisted it as an easy option; there was an imperative in me to find again the world of meaning which has once energised my life, to find there was not a blank wall or a black hole, but God. I lived with a dreadful sense of loss. My doubts sapped my energy, deepened my distress, my sense of tragedy, my hopelessness. I was deeply depressed by the experience of living in a God-less world. Yet I could not just drift into a fantasy world and pretend everything was all right after all. The challenges were inescapable. I had to go on wrestling, fighting in the dark.
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