Now Reading
What would you say?

What would you say?


Last Sunday morning, after a long walk through the streets of Beverly Hills, one of my friends asked me a profound question.

Unfortunately, I was driving and nearly killing us, so I gave a less-than-profound answer.

His sincere question: ‘Jason, what is God to you?’

My friend is an amazing human being, from Europe [which boosts his ‘cool’ status by a factor of 10] and a very humble atheist.

My answer was sloppy, half-baked…

…but at least, I suppose, equally sincere.

After blathering on in a philosophical way about my view of ‘God’ being not quite Eastern and not quite Western– something about ‘The Ground of All Being’ with a Personality– I finally gave up eloquence and said:

‘That’s a great question and I think God is really hard to define. He, She, or It is really hard to sense or to know. But I do know this: if God is real then I truly hope he is like Jesus. And I think that Jesus shows us the best picture of what God is like, and that is really beautiful to me.’

And then I ran a stop sign and nearly killed us again.

Having spiritual conversations often times feels like a first kiss. It’s something you looked forward to but are perhaps nervous about, it rarely goes the way you imagined, and is often times embarrassing.

At the end of the day, though, it’s usually worth it.

I think our friends that we care about will put up with our lame answers if they know we care more about them than about them agreeing with us. And maybe, just maybe, through our mistakes and– sometimes– moments of us really discerning our friend’s longings…

we can help each other find what we’ve both been looking for.

Here’s to more awkward conversations.

What would you say?

View Comments (6)

Leave a Reply

© 2023 RELEVANT Media Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Scroll To Top

You’re reading our ad-supported experience

For our premium ad-free experience, including exclusive podcasts, issues and more, subscribe to

Plans start as low as $2.50/mo