Anyone can lose faith, in God or in anything or in anyone that appears to let us down, or not be there, or goes away. Faith is born out of the crucible of doubt, wrote Victor Hugo. Os Guinness, the British Christian theologian and apologist agrees, I think. He writes that he is not surpised when people say they've lost their faith.

Guinness concludes that they have a false view of God in the first place and says that it is "surprising that they did not reject it much earlier."

A flawed view of God is dangerous, not to mention futile. For those with such a 'fundamentally false' view of God, says Guinness, "it would be better for them to doubt than to remain devout."

Why is this? we may well ask. What difference does it make. Well, Guinness writes: 'The more devout they are, the uglier their faith will become since it is based on a lie. Doubt in such a case is not only highly understandable, it is even a mark of spiritual and intellectual sensitivity to error, for their picture is not of God but an idol.'

Well, that's not good.