Before I spent 10 years among Humanists and freethinkers I thought everyone had an implicit understanding of God's reality, and that some simply denied it. I now understand what a terribly misguided and misinformed take that was. I have met many people over the past decade who told me that they never believed. Some said that they were told about God as a child and simply didn't accept the notion, while others believed until it dawned on them that it didn't all make complete sense. All this in childhood. Whereas my experience was one of always believing and only coming to break with that faith after I faced certain realities about life. Mine was an easy theism, one that I don't think holds much merit without testing.
Easy theism is when people simply accept that God exists and generally believe there is a life hereafter. They don't question it, and more often than not criticize those who do. It can be expressed in the most banal of ways, such as when someone comes through a surgery successfully and people thank God rather than the doctors. I had my gall bladder removed in emergency surgery several years ago, and I made absolutely certain to let the surgeon know my gratitude to him.
When someone recites the creed by rote memory at a mass without thinking about it, that's easy theism. Simply going along with it because that's what we've always done.
When someone says "God needed an angel" when a child dies, or "Grandma's watching over us," these are expressions of easy theism.
Hard theism, by contrast, is an examined faith. It is faith in the face of suffering, not shrugging it off but wrestling with its reality while holding on to belief. It can be a philosophical theism, one born out of difficult study of arguments for an against (cosmological, moral, teleological, etc). This is a deliberate faith, not one that is reflexive. It is a faith willing to live with unresolved tensions. Hard theism is one that calls us to radical acceptance of the ethical demands of faith, such as living among the poor, renouncing wealth, or dedicating one's life to service. It isn't about comfort, but rather costly discipleship.
With hard theism, the questions are valid, considered, and dealt with either by turning away from theism or by persevering on while bearing the questions.
