Easter presents the greatest challenge to faith, surely as experienced most by the first followers of Jesus, yet it contains too the rock upon which faith is built; or so they say.
There is a prayer I used to use as a Reader which went something like, ' I believe, help thou my unbelief'.
These two states live together.
Giles Fraser's article in today's Guardian (http://bit.ly/1hbNYsD) articulated this conundrum very well. He did not, though, grasp what to me is an increasing crucial distinction between faith and religion.
Philip Pullman's excellent short book, the Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, explored, through a fictional account of the gospel stories, how Jesus was in effect stolen from ordinary people by men of religion. Jesus was and is a man for all people, not just the religious or righteous. So it is a tragedy when good people turn away from religion to atheism abandoning Jesus on the way.
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