Beethoven’s companion and scholar Dorothea von Ertmann learned of her agonizing loss when she lost her only child. He sat at the music and improvised for an afternoon before he squeezed her hand and left, instead of offering words of comfort. Beethoven’s highest providing was to use his greatest gift to convey thoughts and feelings of satisfaction and pleasure.
In his moving new publication, Letters to God From a Past Atheist, Dr. Jason Hill provides a similar service to visitors. According to Hill, a professor of philosophy at DePaul University, the only way for him to return to God would be through his most advanced faculty and his greatest surprise, writing.
Hill describes this powerful voyage of belief through his personal experiences, which are portrayed as invocations to God: an autobiography told in the brave and modest language of raw and passionate prayers.
He requests that” I can find You in these words.”  ,
These consecrated letters have an incredible level of sublimity thanks to their unparalleled magnificence, which include pathos, intimacy, pleasure, and a level that is difficult to achieve through various literary forms.  ,
Hill’s book can be unsettling at times because he is so startlingly sincere. Imagine entering a man’s prayer closet and listening in on his most intimate and resilient thoughts and feelings, such as this one that reads,” I’m sick of living a morally divided life, carving up my society, my heart, into small pieces of hors d’oeuvres and feeding , them , to unwelcome friends.”
Hill ‘s , supplications , have an amazing gift of verbal expression that spares no information. I felt like a religious voyeur as he peered upon and upon upon his soul to be stripped bare. For him, I felt embarrassed. But I couldn’t help but be moved by the scene because it was so strong and intimate. His devotion to the user is next only to his devotion to God.
Atheism first proved “empowering and intoxicating” to Hill, in line with zeus nature. Faith gradually resurfaced as astonishment was replaced by “religious sensibilities,” originally from an unknown source. The secular” surges of elation” had replaced the nihilistic” sinking vacuum, emptiness, and hollowness”
Hill certainly was a guy who “proposed bravado and high confidence… but whose spirit had been shattered.” He takes you on a trip through his “epistolary outpourings” through his father’s “epistolary outpourings” through physical and mental illnesses, a near-death knowledge, sexual harassment, attempted murder, and filial rejection. As the gap between outer accomplishment and internal despair widened into a canyon, he kept up appearances and accumulated the accolades of professional achievement. When suicide seemed like the “reasonable and generous option,” Hill’s heart-wrenching agony, and I experienced transcendental and inexplicable joys like my grandmother’s “incandescent eyes guiding me back to God,” made me feel it.
Prayer became a manifestation of God’s grace, treatment, and healing. It saved his life, and the text revived my own sluggish worship life. How energizing it would be to sit openly, honestly, and carefully before God, as Hill exemplifies. He breaks down barriers to worship and opens up opportunities for reflection and transformational associations with God.
Hill details a fundamental tenet of all mankind: a desperate need for God, with a perceptive gaze that penetrates deeply inside his own soul. My Papa, believe me when we need something, don’t we? he claims.
For Hill, this requirement “was quickly transforming into belief.” His have has lost all ability to be distinguished from his faith because all real want corresponds to a real and satisfying reality.
Eventually, Dorothea von Ertmann recalled that Beethoven “uttered nothing” and “finally delivered me consolation.” I have faith that this book will offer its readers the same consolation that just unvarnished prayer does.  ,
Hill prayed to have the heart for society and a desire for God’s existence in every aspect of life. He prayed to become the person he most desired to become. He was delighted, but neither will the user, who will also be pleased.
Kendall Conger, MD is the author of” Give Me A Signal: A Study Through John’s Gospel.”
