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This lukewarm agnosticism came to a boil during my college days at the University of Pennsylvania. During freshman and sophomore years at Penn, my friends and I spent many late nights arguing loudly about religion (usually after too many beers or too much pot). Those late-night sessions raised doubts about the God to whom I had prayed when I was young. But at the time they were just random doubts and unconnected questions.

They coalesced when my freshman-year roommate was killed in an automobile accident during our senior year. Brad was one of my closest friends, and his death was almost too much to bear.

At Brad’s funeral, on a humid spring day in a wealthy suburb outside of Washington, DC, I sat in a tasteful Episcopal church, surrounded by Brad’s shattered family and my grieving friends, and thought about the absurdity of believing in a God who would allow this. By the end of the service I had decided not to believe in a God who would act so cruelly. The Great Problem Solver wasn’t solving problems but creating them.

My newfound atheism was invigorating. Not only did I feel like a person with a first-rate intellect, I was proud to have rejected something that obviously had not worked. Why believe in a God who either couldn’t or wouldn’t prevent suffering? Atheism was not only intellectually respectable but also had some practical benefits: I now had my Sunday mornings free.

So I firmly stepped onto the path of disbelief.

This journey continued for a few months until a conversation with a mutual friend of Brad. Jacque (she pronounced it “Jackie”) came from a small town outside of Chicago and was what my friends derisively called a “fundamentalist,” though we had scant idea of what that meant. (It meant that her faith informed her life.) Jacque had lived in the same dorm with Brad and me during freshman year. Though wildly different from Brad in outlook and interests, the two became close.

After an accounting class one day, standing in a snowfall outside of our old freshman dorm, I told Jacque how angry I was at God, and how I had decided I would no longer go to church. My comments were flung at her like a challenge. You’re the believer, I thought, explain this.

“Well,” she said softly, “I’ve been thanking God for Brad’s life.” I can still remember standing in the cold and having my breath taken away by her answer. Rather than arguing about suffering, she was telling me that there were other ways to relate to God, ways other than as the Great Problem Solver.

Jacque’s response nudged me onto the path of return. She hadn’t answered my question about suffering. Rather, her words reminded me that the question of suffering (or the “mystery of evil” as theologians say) is not the only question to ask about God. Her reply said that you can live with the question of suffering and still believe in God—much as a child can trust a parent even when he doesn’t fully understand all of the parent’s ways. It also reminded me that there are other questions that are equally important—such as “Who is God?” Not being able to answer one question does not mean that others are not equally valid. Her answer opened a window onto another vista of faith.

Yet I was still stuck with a big question: if God wasn’t the Great Problem Solver, the God of my youth, who was He? Or She? Or It?

Not until I entered the Jesuits and began hearing about a different kind of God—a God who was with you in your suffering, a God who took a personal interest in your life, even if you didn’t feel that all your problems were solved—did life started to make more sense. That’s not to say I ever found an entirely satisfying answer for the mystery of suffering—or for why my friend’s life was ended at twenty-one. But it helped me understand the importance of being in relationship with God, even during difficult times.

When I was a novice, one of my spiritual directors quoted the Scottish philosopherJohn Macmurray, who contrasted “real religion” and “illusory religion.