When we encounter new details of our world we fill in more of the spaces. When we discover details that don't seem to fit with our view of the world, we have a kind of "crisis of faith," even if our worldview is not especially religious. We're forced to redraw our "map" a bit.

You may be a fantastic person, and you may have some wonderful religious views that might even turn out to be true, but the religion you'd be following would not be Christianity.

Every religion, every philosophy, every individual outlook on life tells a story of reality.

Though it's hard to be completely certain about things like this, I have a suspicion that only someone with deep freedom (one who makes decisions for reasons that are his own) and who's also a moral being (can experience goodness) can have a meaningful friendship with God. If friendship with God and sharing in His happiness are good things (and it seems they are), then making a creature who could enjoy these things is also a good thing, even if it comes with a liability. There's a risk.

Trouble, hardship, difficulty, pain, suffering, conflict, tragedy, evil - they're all part of the [Christian] Story. Indeed, the problem of evil is the reason there's any Story at all.

I'm hoping that The Story of Reality will fill in more details for the Christian believer and will create a crisis of faith for the nonbeliever.

According to "matter-ism," matter is all that exists. The only things that are real are physical things in motion governed by natural law. That story starts, "In the beginning were the particles," or, as one famous person put it, "The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." No God. No souls. No Heaven or Hell. No miracles. No transcendent morality. Just molecules in motion following the patterns of natural law. This is the story that most atheists, most "skeptics," most humanists, and most Marxists believe is true.