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"Well," Theophilus was saying, "if this man was on the level, I wanted to help him. I thought he was — but I needed to be sure."

I asked him, "So what did you do?"

"I asked him to explain his predicament a little more. If he was telling me the truth, then in order to help him I needed to draw him out anyway. But if he wasn't, drawing him out was the best way of getting him to betray himself."

"You've been reading too many Agatha Christie mysteries. How did you draw him out?"

"Agatha Christie, chah," he said, mustache bristling. "Discriminating readers prefer Dorothy Sayers. Anyway, I asked him, 'Does your difficulty lie simply in believing that there is a God? Or is it that you do believe there is a God, but you don't trust Him?' I also asked, 'What is it that makes believing so hard (if believing is the problem), or trusting so hard (if trusting is the problem)?"

"Very logical."

"Thank you."

"And he replied —?"

"He said that he thought that he believed that there isn't any God, but that he also thought he needed to believe in God to be happy. 'If I knew God was real,' he said, 'then I think I could trust Him.' I thought that answered my first question. The primary issue wasn't trusting God, but believing that He exists."

"What about the second question? Did he give a reason for not believing in God?"

"That was a little less clear. After telling me a little more about why not believing in God made him unhappy, he came back to the notion of trust, but this time it wasn't about trusting God, but about trusting the Bible. 'I want to be able to read the word of God and find hope and guidance,' he said, 'but I don't trust it. To me, it looks more like the work of men trying to make sense of this world than it looks like the word of God. My relationship with God seems to be nothing like the relationship between God and the men of the Bible.' A little later in his letter he added, 'I haven't seen any miracles in my life — no burning bushes, no fiery pillars.' What do you make of that, Budziszewski?"

I replied, "I'd paraphrase his argument like this. 'First, except for the Bible, there's no reason to believe in God. Second, the reason I don't believe the Bible is that it seems made up. Third, the reason it seems made up is that I've never seen a miracle. So I don't believe in God.'"

"That's just how I took it. You complimented me a moment ago for being logical. Well, his reasoning had three premises; logically, then, I could challenge it in any of three different ways."

I laughed. "And so the all-logical Theophilus challenged it in all three ways."

"No."

"What? Why not?"

"That wouldn't have done any good. First," he said, "I might have pointed out that the Bible isn't the only reason to believe in the Creator. Consider for example the evidence of Creation. But he knew it already! 'I don't understand how the universe or life came to exist,' he told me, 'but I take that stuff for granted because it has always been here right in front of me.'"

I protested, "That's like saying, 'Because the evidence is obvious, it doesn't count."

Theophilus gave that odd little smile of his. "I know. By the way, that's what convinced me that he wasn't trying to set me up."

"How so?"

"I think someone trying to catch me saying something stupid that he could post at his atheist website would have said that there isn't any evidence — not that he's ignoring the evidence."

"Well, you could have questioned his second premise. You could have pointed out that there are many good reasons to accept the biblical account."

"Of course I could have. But he knew that too! He said, 'I know I'm not being fair, because a lot of things back up the validity of the Bible, and I would trust any other document with such good credentials.'"

Now I was more perplexed than ever. "That's like saying, 'I know my reasoning is invalid, but I'm sticking to it anyway.'"

"Isn't it, though?" said Theophilus. "Third, I might have explained that the whole point of a miracle is that it's out of the ordinary. The fact that he hadn't seen something out of the ordinary hardly shows that it can't happen."

"But he already knew that too. Right?"

"This time, no. I don't think the point had occurred to him."

"So of course you pointed it out."

"No."

"Why not?"

Theophilus gave me a pitying look. "Because I already knew that from the other two points that he wasn't being rational. When someone isn't being rational, Budziszewski, you don't keep throwing rational arguments at him. You try to figure out why he isn't being rational."

"So what did you do?"

"I asked, 'Leaving the Bible aside, do you have difficulty believing in a Supreme Being at all? Or is it just the biblical portrayal of the Supreme Being that gives you difficulty?'"

"Good question. A lot of people misunderstood just how the Bible does portray God."

"Exactly. But that wasn't the problem either. Despite all that talk about the Bible, it wasn't just the biblical portrayal of God that he found unbelievable; it was God that he found unbelievable. 'Yeah,' he said, 'I think I have trouble believing in a Supreme Being at all. I might be able to believe in a God that can never be found, but I don't think that does me much good. Just like a scientist trying to prove that God doesn't exist and coming to believe that He has to exist, I've tried to prove to myself that He does exist, and I've come to believe that He doesn't."

I said, "The idea of a God whose existence can't be known has always seemed fishy to me. An agnostic would have to know so many things just to prop up his claim that he couldn't know any of the other things. I would have asked him how he'd 'tried to prove' that God exists, whether he actually knew any of the arguments for God's existence."

"That's not too far from what I did," he answered. "But you're overlooking a much bigger clue to his state of mind."

"What clue?"

"Well, never mind. I'm telling you what happened, and what happened at that point is that I overlooked it too. What I did ask him to do was fill in just one more piece of the picture."

"First clues, now pieces. What piece of the picture?"

He answered, "I remarked that the human race inclines so strongly toward belief in God that when someone finds it difficult to believe in God, it doesn't just happen; there is a reason. 'Do you know what the reason is in your case?' I asked. 'For example, have you had experiences that made you doubt the reality of God, and if so, what experiences? Have you come across arguments against the existence of God that seemed convincing, and if so, what arguments?'"

"Was he able to answer?"

"Yes, and this time I thought I'd hit the jackpot. 'I probably have a lot of issues with wanting to fit into God's morality,' he said. 'I want to turn God into what I want him to be, so that I can do whatever I want and He'll still love me. I think every time I sin, it makes it that much harder to trust in God. So I pray to God to help me stop sinning, but still I sin. I'm afraid I don't really want to repent of this sin. But sometimes I've blamed God for not rescuing me from temptation, or something like that.'"

"Oho! That sounds almost like a quotation from one of your books, Theo. 'Not many of us human beings doubt God and then start sinning. Most of us start sinning and then doubt God.'"

Theophilus shook his head. "You're doing it again, Budziszewski. That's not from one of my books. It's from one of yours. How to Stay Christian in College."

I felt my face reddening. "Sorry. But you agree with it, don't you?"

"Yes, of course. We've talked about these things."

"So did you follow up?"

"What do you think?" Theophilus answered. "Of course I followed up. I wrote a whole letter to follow up. Wait a moment. I'll pull it up on my monitor." Swiveling in his chair toward his computer, he pecked at the keyboard for a few seconds and said, "Here we are. Let's see. I told him that I could suggest philosophical arguments demonstrating God's reality — hedging my bets, I mentioned a few books — and I told him that's just what some people need. But I said that at this point in his life, I didn't think it was what he needed. By his own account, he hadn't been presented with overwhelming philosophical arguments seeming to show that God couldn't be real. The reason he was having difficulty believing that God exists was that he was living as though God didn't exist." Theophilus gave that odd smile again. "I wrote a lot more in that vein."

"So in the end you said — what? That he needed to begin living as though God did exist?"

"Yes, and also to pray that way. Something like, 'God, I don't believe in you, but if you're really there, hear me. I don't want the good things you desire for me. I am afraid of your enormous goodness, because I think it would interfere with the tiny pleasures that seem so big to me. I admit that I want to have my way with you. Please make me capable of wanting you to have your way with me instead."

I answered, "I'd say you'd hit gold."

He sighed. "No, I'd hit fool's gold. I'd guessed all wrong about him."

PART THREE: FOOL'S GOLD