It feels like much of theistic rejection is a simple insistence that we call our souls our own.
A defiant: “But, I don’t want to be told what to do.”
I don’t know. Maybe it was in our hearts all along.
And thank goodness we’re adjectives and not adverbs.
I despise useless adverbs.
They wanted, as we say, to ‘call their souls their own’. But that means to live a lie, for our souls are not, in fact, our own. They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God, ‘This is our business, not yours.’ But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives.
-C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain (Amazon)