Stephen King spoke on God and other topics during a recent interview with NPR Fresh Air’s Terry Gross , later reported by The Los Angeles Times and other media outlets. The prognosis, at least from a faith standpoint, is that King “chooses to believe,” but it’s not without some reservations.
King inferred that “the jury’s out on that” when asked about his belief in a higher power.
“It’s certainly a subject that’s interested me, and I think it interests me more the older that I get,” King said. “And I think we’d all like to believe that after we shuffle off this mortal coil, that there’s going to be something on the other side because for most of us, I know for me, life is so rich, so colorful and sensual and full of good things, things to read, things to eat, things to watch, places to go, new experiences, that I don’t want to think that you just go to darkness.”
King remembered that as a child, he would think to himself, “oh God, I hope I don’t die because I’ll just have to lie down there in that box and I won’t be able to play with my friends or go to baseball games or any of those things.”
The Master of Suspense admitted that death always seemed “boring” to him and that as an adult, “it seems more like a waste of everything.”
Thus, King said, “I choose to believe it, yeah. I think that … I mean there’s no downside to that, and the downside — if you say, ‘Well, okay, I don’t believe in God, there’s no evidence of God, then you’re missing the stars in the sky, and you’re missing the sunrises and sunsets, and you’re missing the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything seems to work together at the same time.”
King added: “Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design.”
While the Stephen King belief on God certainly seems conservative, the bestselling author has been anything but throughout his career — siding heavily with Democrats on everything from taxes to gun control — and he’s not ready to attend any tent revivals just yet, stating that “as far as God and church and religion and the Buddy Rosses and that sort of thing, I kind of always felt that organized religion was just basically a theological insurance scam where they’re saying, ‘If you spend time with us, guess what, you’re going to live forever, you’re going to go to some other plain where you’re going to be so happy, you’ll just be happy all the time,’ which is also kind of a scary idea to me.”
The ultimate stance of Stephen King on God: not as sure as he was 10 or 12 years ago. King said there was a “lot of things in life where you say to yourself, well, if this is God’s plan, it’s very peculiar. And you have to wonder about that guy’s personality, the big guy’s personality.”
King continued: “The thing is, like, I may have told you last time that I believe in God. What I’m saying now is I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts.”
Do you agree with Stephen King on God — do you choose to believe or really believe? Share your thoughts.
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