The current vogue in atheism, if real, has a lot to do with the diminished understandings of God promulgated by some believers. There is a wonderful scene in The Color Purplewhere Celie talks about beginning to wake up when she realized she didn’t believe in that old white guy in the sky.

The ability to question and doubt, is, in my experience, the real beginning of a mature journey of faith. That spiritual journey has to wrestle with the inadequate images of God so eagerly touted by some. For example, if we assume that God is primarily interested in judgment rather than in human flourishing, we’ve missed a good deal. And at its demonic edge, that interest in dividing the just from the unjust leads to things like the Holocaust and apartheid. The God of the Bible and Jesus is about abundant life, not the diminishment of God-given human potential.

Productive conversation between people of faith and atheists can certainly engage at the level of what constitutes the fulfilling of human potential, even if the two begin from different assumptions about the origin of that potential.

In that process of meeting and conversation, both have the opportunity to be enriched – and in a real sense, if the two engage at a level of vulnerability, the potential of both begins to be more fully realized. That “more” is a good part of what believers speak of as the divine or the work of the Holy Spirit. In my tradition, we speak of human beings as made in the image of God, and we embrace the insight that God became human (in Jesus) in order that human beings might become divine. Meeting another as equally image of God invites the believer into hopeful encounter – and in the process both partners can be transformed.

The opportunity for transformation is open to believers and non-believers, particularly as both partner to care for those in need. People of faith speak of loving one’s neighbor as part of the great commandment that flows from loving God, but the results do not depend on one’s state of mind or belief. There are innumerable opportunities for believers and those who deny any belief to work for the betterment of other human beings as well as the earth and its non-human inhabitants.

People of faith understand compassion to be rooted in God, but that understanding is not necessary to its expression in caring for one’s neighbor.