“How is love something you can credit to science?” he asked.
“Brain chemistry. Hormones, dopamine, synapses…science.”
He had to bite his lip to keep from moaning in disappointment. “That’s…clinical.”
“It doesn’t make love any less real,” she replied quickly. “In fact, I would argue it makes those emotions more real. Instead of being some vague, kind of out-there feeling, love is based on physiological events in the body and brain. Very real.”
He nodded, swallowing the ache rising in his throat. “Fair enough.”
But inside, he felt a tiny tear in the fabric of his soul. He knew that his faith—the very foundation of his life—might be the thing that eventually broke them apart.
They walked a few more steps. A lone gull cried overhead, and the wind seemed to pick up.
“It’s an issue, isn’t it?” she finally asked, looking up at him.
“An…issue?”
She gave a light scoff. “I can read your every expression, you know. You’re gloriously transparent, which is yet another thing about you I find infinitely attractive. But we—if I can be so bold as to call us a couple—have to face what is and what isn’t an issue. I did with Jeffrey.”
“And look how well that worked out,” he said dryly, making her laugh.
“It was a very logical way to end a marriage. That’s how I roll. Hey…” She elbowed him, lightening the mood. “You fell for a lab rat, so that’s what you get. Logic. Science. Studies. Physical proof and unwavering facts.”
He laughed again, wrapping an arm around her. “Okay, okay, doctor. How I feel about you is a fact.”
“And so is how I feel about…faith,” she added, easing the conversation back to the core point. “I get that your faith brings you comfort, Eli. And peace. I’m not knocking it. If it makes you feel good—helps you cope with everything you’ve been through—then I think that’s a beautiful thing. It just can’t and will never bemysource of comfort.”
Eli stopped walking and turned to her, needing to be very still to make his point.
“Kate,” he said firmly. “I’ve heard that a hundred times. But that’s not what faith is. Not real faith. It has nothing to do with being a ‘source of comfort’—that’s a side benefit. I don’t lean on Jesus like a crutch. That’s not what it is.”
“Then what is it?” she pressed.
“It’s…not about feeling good,” he said after a breath. “It’s not a fairy tale to help me sleep at night. And it sure isn’t easy. In fact, having faith in this world, in this culture, is way harder than walking away from it. But I know He has a plan and a purpose for my life, and some of it is awesome and some of it actually sucks—like losing the wife I loved in a plane crash or Jonah’s girlfriend getting hit by a truck. Faith is not a choice to me. It’s part of my soul, which you probably don’t believe we have because it can’t be found on an X-ray.”
She winced at that. “I get having a soul.” But she didn’t sound so certain, and turned to look out at the water. “But the Bible? Eli, you have to know how it looks to someone like me. A book written over centuries, passed through countless hands, languages, cultures…edited, changed, politicized. And you think it’s the absolute truth? You don’t find that a little… questionable?”
“There’s historical backing, Kate. Plenty of it. Archaeology, written records, early manuscripts?—”
“Written by people who believed the story,” she countered. “That’s not fact. That’s confirmation bias. People recorded what they wanted to be true, and three hundred years after Jesus died, they decided which books made the cut and which ones didn’t.”
He crossed his arms. “And science doesn’t have biases? You think researchers aren’t influenced by funding, or ego, or politics?”
“Science changes with evidence. It grows. That’s the point.”
“So does faith,” he said.
“No, Eli,” she replied, gentle but insistent. “Faith resists change. It demands you hold the line even when logic says otherwise. Science is my religion. I trust what can be proven.”
He looked at her, searching her face.
“But youdohave a religion,” he said. “You just said it. Everyone worships something. God puts a hole in our hearts and we choose how to fill it. I think the longing, the questions, the need to make sense of the world—that’s not random. It’s divine design. It’s a pull toward Him.”
Kate faced the water again, quiet for a long time. The breeze caught one more sad sigh as she finally turned back to him.
“I have to ask you something,” she said in a low voice.
“Anything. I just hope I can answer.”
