Free Losing My Religion by William Lobdell Page B

reflective, intelligent and precise. He carried himself ramrod straight. Susan, a stylish woman, was the extrovert of the pair, with an easy laugh and an enthusiasm that was quickly fired up. She grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles and said her strong faith, a constant since childhood, had made instant wealth easier to handle.
    The Samuelis said they were brought up in the Jewish tradition, which teaches tzedakah , the Hebrew word for justice. It can also be translated to mean charity. Henry, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, said he had been troubled that his synagogue, Temple Beth El in Aliso Viejo, existed in a series of trailers that “had the implication of nonpermanent.”
    The couple also disclosed for the first time that they were trying to give permanence to the emerging liberal Reform movement in Israel, a country dominated by Orthodox synagogues. At the time, of the estimated 20 Reform temples in Israel, only four had their own buildings. The Samuelis had already given $2.5 million to a Reform temple near Tel Aviv.
    Henry Samueli, then 45, described himself as “very much a moderate in all aspects of my life.” When he spoke of his religion, his voice rose in passion only on the subject of fundamentalism.
    “Broadcom is probably the most multicultural company on the planet Earth,” he told me. “We have every race, creed, color, religion, which is great. I love that.
    “One of the things I like most about Reform Judaism is that it promotes tolerance of various religions and cultures. I’m very much against orthodox religions of all kinds, including Judaism. They don’t have their heads on straight.”
    Henry Samueli’s only harsh words of the morning stayed with me. He inadvertently had hit on a religious paradox that would become one of my preoccupations. Are true believers crazy and misguided or do they just take their religion more seriously than others? Evangelicals ask each other an interesting question: If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? For many people, the answer would be no. I loved to write about people who put their faith above all else—not in words, but in deeds. They were just so different . Down the road, when my faith faltered, I held onto these stories of pure belief like a life preserver. They reminded me that holiness could be achieved.
    For instance, there was Pastor Ed Salas. If you want to see whether your pastor’s faith is real, watch how he reacts after a tumor is found inside the brain of his ten-year-old son. Study whether his faith wavers after the doctors remove a quarter-sized mass from his child, after a biopsy reveals an aggressive cancer, and after his son is left dizzy and so nauseated that he drops from 84 pounds to 67.
    On a Sunday service that was supposed to celebrate his church’s move into a larger facility, Salas told the congregation about his son Timothy’s cancer. He delivered a sermon about how to stand firm in faith. He chose Daniel 3:17–18:
If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us…. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods….
     
    “Faith doesn’t depend on circumstances,” he told his congregation. “It depends on who God is.”
    Then there were Leia and Dwight Smith. The couple had carved out successful careers in sales. She sold textbooks; he worked for 3M. But as middle age approached, they determined that they weren’t following Christ’s admonitions to live a selfless life and help the poor.
    “You just can’t say Jesus is your Savior,” Dwight says, “you have to act like it.”
    They quit their jobs for a life in the Catholic Worker, an independent poverty-relief group with a branch in Santa Ana, California. Living in a donated two-story Craftsman home in a hardscrabble section of the city, the couple began to take in homeless people, especially