Losing faith in a silent God

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By Tony Anthony

I was listening to BBC Radio 2 earlier today, with Tina Daheley sitting in for Jeremy Vine, and the conversation turned to the experience of losing faith (starting at 1.05). The phone lines were open, and one by one, people shared stories.

These weren’t shallow grievances. They were lived-out stories, spoken with clarity and pain, from people who once reached out to God and felt they were left with nothing.

Unbearable contradiction

One contributor was the politician Kemi Badenoch, who shared that although she wasn’t raised particularly religious, she had considered herself a Christian in her earlier years. But that changed in 2008, when she read about the horrific case of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned and repeatedly abused his own daughter in a basement for over two decades.

What struck her most was how Elisabeth Fritzl had prayed every single day to be rescued. And yet nothing happened. Kemi said she was deeply shaken by that. She recalled how, at the same time in her own life, she was praying for things like good exam grades, for her hair to grow, or for the bus to arrive on time, and those prayers were being answered. But Elisabeth’s were not. For Kemi, it raised an unbearable contradiction, and her fragile belief in a loving God crumbled.

Silence

One man told how, as a teenager growing up in a Christian home, he prayed with all his heart that he wouldn’t be gay. But instead of help, he found rejection, bullying, and silence. Today he’s gay, and he’s also an atheist.

A woman shared how a tragic train crash killed hundreds, and for her, that moment marked the breaking point in her faith.

There were more. Stories of suffering, silence, and a deepening certainty that if God were real, surely He would have done something. And since He didn’t, they concluded He either isn’t there or isn’t worth believing in.

One author explained that while she doesn’t believe in God, she still values Christian tradition, she goes to church, holds to Christian ethics, and feels at home in the culture of faith. But not in faith itself.

Wounds beyond words

Listening to all of this, I found myself not wanting to argue, not even needing to explain at first, just to sit with the weight of it.

Because there are wounds in this life that go beyond words. They don’t only scar the body; they lodge deep in the soul. And when you’ve lived through things that no one should ever have to go through, it’s not surprising that bitterness can settle in, not just toward life or people, but even toward the idea of God Himself.

Bitterness is not born from apathy. It grows from disappointment, from betrayal, from loss that has no answer. It often forms when someone has called out, truly cried out, and nothing came back. No help. No sign. No interpreter. Nothing but silence. And over time, that silence becomes an argument. Then a conclusion. Then a wall.

So, if you’re there, if that’s where you are, I hear you. I don’t believe your rejection of God is petty or shallow. I think it’s rooted in something much deeper. And if I were in your shoes, I might feel exactly the same.

How does God speak?

But I also wonder: What if we’ve misunderstood how God speaks?

There’s an old story you might have heard. A flood was coming, and a priest urged his town to take shelter or evacuate. But he refused to leave himself. “God will provide,” he said. As the waters rose, someone offered him a lift in a car. “No, God will provide.” Later, as the waters reached his house, a man in a boat paddled by. “Come in, I’ll save you!” Again, the priest refused. “God will provide.” Finally, clinging to the roof of his church, a helicopter flew overhead, lowering a rope. Still, he refused. “God will provide.”

He drowned.

And when he reached heaven, confused and heartbroken, he asked God, “Why didn’t You help me?” And God replied, “I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter.”

Not the way we expect

It’s a simple story, but it touches something deep. Sometimes the answer to our prayer comes, just not in the way we expect.

Sometimes we’re looking for a miracle in the clouds, but God sends a person. Or a moment. Or a quiet strength we didn’t know we had. And yes, sometimes He sends help through people we wouldn’t even expect, even people from other faiths, or people with no faith at all. I’ve been helped by Muslims, atheists, people far outside my worldview. And I believe God was in it.

That’s what Jesus was trying to say when He told the story of the Good Samaritan. The religious leaders, the ones who were expected to help, walked by. But it was the outsider, the man from the wrong side of everything, who stopped. Who bandaged. Who carried. Jesus was showing us something powerful: love and mercy are not limited to those who claim to represent God. And if you’ve been let down by those who do, I want you to know, that wasn’t God. That was people.

The problem of Christians

And people fail. That includes Christians. In fact, one of the most painful things I hear again and again is this: “I might believe in God if it weren’t for Christians.” There are over-zealous ones who talk too loud, smile too wide, and assume your life can be fixed if you’d only join their club. The kind who shout hallelujahs while ignoring your trauma, or lay hands on you with too much confidence and too little compassion. I’ve met them too, the well-meaning but unhelpful, the smug and the plastic.

And then there’s the darker side, the stories of corruption, hypocrisy, abuse. People point to the Crusades, to church scandals, to moments in history soaked with violence done in the name of Christ. These are real, and they matter.

Power without love

But if we’re going to lay blame, let’s be honest. These horrors weren’t caused by Jesus. They were caused by people. And not only religious people. Some of the worst atrocities in history, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, were led by those with no belief in God at all. The human capacity for evil does not require religion. It just requires power without love. Faith without humility. Humanity without grace.

So where does that leave us?

Maybe the problem is not just unanswered prayer. Maybe the deeper struggle is with how we understand faith itself.

Faith as trust

Faith is not a button you press to make life go your way. It’s not a shortcut to comfort or success. It’s not magic. And it’s not certainty either.

At its heart, faith means trust. Not blind trust. Not passive surrender. But a living, breathing relationship with someone we can’t always see, someone who has scars Himself. Faith means walking with questions, not always having answers, but believing there is a deeper meaning to our pain. Believing that even if God doesn’t deliver us from the fire, He stands with us in it.

That kind of faith doesn’t ignore the wounds. It looks them full in the face and still dares to believe in love. In mercy. In resurrection.

More to discover?

So if you’ve lost your faith, or feel like you never had any, I’m not here to pressure you. I just want to say: maybe what you walked away from wasn’t real faith at all. Maybe it was a distorted version. A commercialised version. A damaged version passed down by damaged people.

And maybe, just maybe, there’s still more to discover.

Because the truth is, God hasn’t walked away from you. Even if you’ve walked away from Him. He’s still near. Still listening. Still sending the car, the boat, the helicopter, and the quiet whisper in the night.

All you need to do is open the door. Just a crack.

And grace will find its way in.

“The Lord is near to the broken-hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18

“You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13

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Tony Anthony is CEO & Co-Founder of the Great Commission Society