Are you searching for God?

The daughter of the famous Bertrand Russell says she believes her father was searching for God. She wrote in her book:

"I believe that his whole life was a search for God or, for those who prefer less personal terms, for absolute certainty. Somewhere at the back of my father’s mind, at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul, there was an empty space that had once been filled by God, & he never found anything else to put in it … He seized on the follies, which are many, & labeled them official religion, while claiming that Christians have never taken seriously the good parts of Christ’s teaching. But he never dealt with it seriously either. When he wanted to attack religion, he sought out its most egregious errors & held them up to ridicule, while avoiding serious discussion of the basic message I found so liberating.

For me, the belief in forgiveness & grace was like sunshine after long days of rain. No matter what I did, not matter how low I fell, God would be there to forgive, to pick me up & set me on my feet again. Though I could not earn his love, neither could I lose it…As I went deeper & deeper into religion, however, I found it ever more satisfying. I wished I could convince my father that it added to all I had learned from him & took very little away. I didn’t find it a denial of life, a brier patch of restrictions, but a joyful affirmation. ‘I am come that they might have life & have it more abundantly,’ said Jesus.

I would have liked to convince my father that I had found what he had been looking for, the ineffable something he had longed for all his life. I would have liked to persuade him that the search for God does not have to be vain. But it was hopeless. He had known too many blind Christians, bleak moralists who sucked the joy from life & persecuted their opponents; he would never have been able to see the truth they were hiding.”

--Katharine Tait: My Father, Bertrand Russell

Russell exalted knowledge above all things. But God's Word tells us that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." Saint Augustine who had been a libertine on finally finding God said, "Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand." Faith in God precedes a true understanding of reality. The Bible tells us "The fool has said in his heart there is no God." A man without God is a fool. Apostle Paul writes, "But the natutal man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Let us therefore not be fools, but wise, discerning the signs of the times.