Nick Cave - The Red Hand Files - Issue #280 - I am finding your religious turn and proselytising difficult. How do you reconcile your faith with the church’s devastating...

I was always being encountered by other (spiritual) forces. They were all genuine, but some sought to enslave me, while others sought to free me. The problem with the relics wasn’t that they were inauthentic but that they were binding; they were seen not as meaningless or lame but as threatening and demonic.

“My theory? I think maybe you just want the social connections back from our childhoods. You don’t want God. You want religion. You don’t want to win Pascal’s wager. You just want to maximize your remaining time, and you know that deep down, your happiest place is in a group of people who all believe the same thing. Secular friend groups are what,

demands that as you tell of your own experience—say, an experience of feeling God’s presence as you pray in the midst of marital turmoil or a child’s illness—if I have a moving experience in hearing you, I may agree that Christ has come to me. But I will only believe it because I have experienced it, because I have felt a personal force come to me