Like B. Harry Dyck (“Opting to Be Humanist,” Letters & Comments, Aug. 14), I have struggled at times with the way God runs the universe. I could expand Dyck’s list of troubling issues. But declarations about God do not change who God is. If I say God is dead, he does not die. He is dead in my mind. I wonder if Dyck or I could really do a better job of managing the universe. Given the complexity of human interactions, I don’t think he or I could fix things. However, I wonder if perhaps that was in some way the task God assigned us.

Given his complaints, what can I assume about Harry the Humanist? Does he assume Christians don’t care about or respond to human problems? Should I assume his life is absorbed in reaching out to the poor, visiting the sick and those in prison? Does he live simply so as to help the needy and put less strain on the Earth’s resources? Does he support the Humanist Central Committee, the Humanist Legal Defense Fund and the humanist NGOs fighting to fix things an impersonal God seems to ignore? Is he providing counsel to those addicted to drugs, porn or materialism? Is he teaching a humanist ethic, based on reason and science, where all care for all and self-interest is extinguished?

What about the rest of us? What keeps us awake at night?

Floyd M. Mast
Greenwood, Del.