A perfect example of this is found in an interview with Stephen King where he states the following:
“I choose to believe it. … I mean, there’s no downside to that. If you say, ‘Well, OK, I don’t believe in God. There’s no evidence of God,’ then you’re missing the stars in the sky and you’re missing the sunrises and sunsets and you’re missing the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything seems to work together. Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design. But, at the same time, there’s a lot of things in life where you say to yourself, ‘Well, if this is God’s plan, it’s very peculiar,’ and you have to wonder about that guy’s personality — the big guy’s personality. And the thing is — I may have told you last time that I believe in God — what I’m saying now is I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts and I refuse to be pinned down to something that I said 10 or 12 years ago. I’m totally inconsistent.”Keep in mind that all men believe in God but not all men recognize Him as God. What do you think? Interview link here.
3 comments:
I just started reading Stephen King's stories, and have read 8 in the last couple months. It is clear to me that he has a lot of knowledge about religion and about what the Bible says - being extremely precise and accurate in some places, and it is also clear that he is not afraid to write something that many believers might consider to be a sacrilege.
Hey Denny, good to hear from you. Hope all is well.
Yeah, well my point is he knows what he knows about God through natural revelation and you can read Paul's comments about this in Romans. But you get this when he sees the stars in the sky, sunrises, sunsets, bees, as evidence of a divine creator. That is natural revelation. All men have the same experience but choose to either supress it or not recognize God as the Christian God of the Bible.
Not sure about "sacrilege". I don't think there is enough in this quote to accuse him of that. In fact that terminology is typically used of someone who is within the Church who is accused of some kind of heresy. That isn't the same thing going here in the quote with King.
Thanks for the comment.
Hey Jim:
Yes, I didn't mean to say that you were accusing him of heresy or sacrilege or anything like that. I was more speaking from the reactions of some people here in the Bible Belt who have seen me alternating between reading the Bible and Stephen King novels. To some of these people, Stephen King is in some sense evil. My comment is that he is not afraid to shy away from his characters making blasphemous comments.
I personally know nothing about Stephen King's personal religious beliefs. I do see a lot of Biblical quotes in his works - and they are sometimes not the run-of-the-mill quotes, but some Biblical passages that are harder to find. This leads me to believe that he either has had a heavy exposure to the Bible, or he did extensive and fairly accurate research.
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