Our friend Rev. Paul T. McCain, Publisher at Concordia Publishing House, directs our attention to this article about novelist, biographer and former atheist A. N. Wilson, who has now embraced faith (of some sort; it seems a little vague) again.

I first became aware of Wilson some years back, when he published a critically acclaimed biography of C. S. Lewis. Fans of Lewis, and people who actually knew the man, were less enthusiastic. It was reported in the Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society that Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham was considering suing Wilson on behalf of the estate.

As it turned out, Wilson was losing his Christian faith precisely during the period when he was writing that book. And now he’s got it back.

When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue.

I’m somewhat cheered by the news, but—frankly—my enthusiasm isn’t great. Probably it’s a personal prejudice based on the hatchet job the man did in his Lewis book, but I simply don’t trust him. One thing that came out in discussions after that publication was that Wilson takes a “novelist’s approach” to biography. If he can’t find a documented fact or a witness to substantiate something he wants to say, he just makes one up (he apparently did the same with his Tolstoy biography).

In other words, this is a man who has trouble with the concepts of truth and falsehood. So he’s going to have to prove himself to me.

Which brings me to another issue that’s been on my mind.

Tomorrow many of you are going to participate in Tea Party protest events. More power to you. Wish I could be there, but it would involve actually going out to be among my fellow men, and I’d have to go to downtown St. Paul alone, in the evening. Not only inconvenient for me, but positively dangerous.

But here’s what I’ve been thinking. I’d be willing to wager that groups like Code Pink and ACORN are going to have their minions there. Not only as counterprotesters, but as infiltrators.

It seems to me there’s nothing some of those people would like more than to get some tax protesters to join them in making excessive, off-putting statements, so that they can film them and put them up on YouTube. Somebody with a Tea Party sign shouting that we should burn down Washington or lynch prominent government officials would suit them down to the ground.

So if you run into anybody crazy—anybody who’s taking it too far–disengage from him/her. Back away. Do not join them, even if it seems like they’re having fun.

And if they call for insurrection or violence, report them to the police.

Our great handicap in this struggle is that we believe in moral absolutes (so that there are things we won’t do), while they believe only in utility (so there’s nothing they won’t do). For that reason, you should keep your guard up.