The authors of the Genesis don’t stop at the realization that something truly terrible must have happened between God and mankind, something so awful as to earn us death. In fact, the same book of Genesis opens a new chapter in our relationship with God: God himself is willing to restore his friendship with humanity, graciously and freely.

All we have to do, it seems, is to accept his gracious gift.

According to the biblical tradition about the patriarch Abraham, after he is invited to leave his land in today’s Iraq and to relocate to an unknown country, he is made a promise: "Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be." To this promise, Abraham responds with what in the Bible becomes the model of faith: “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” You may want to check Genesis 15:1-6.

Righteousness is a key word here. It is the English translation of the Hebrew word Zedaqah, that is also used in the New Testament (the writings of the early Christian church) in its Greek equivalent Dikaiosune. It means: “to be put right with God”, and it refers to the condition of someone who is acceptable to God.

In Genesis, Abraham is put right with God because he “believed the Lord”. Many centuries later, in his letter to the Romans, St. Paul would state that this was not said only for Abraham’s sake but also for our sake to whom faith will also be credited as righteousness (Romans 4:23-24).

So, the act of believing in the Lord—faith, that is—is crucial for all of us after we broke off with him. Believing, having faith in God, is, therefore, a key word too. It is the English translation of the Hebrew Haamin from Genesis and of the Greek Pisteuo, which recurs countless times in the New Testament, particularly in the same letter to the Romans (4:3). It means: “to think to be true” and “to place confidence in”, primarily when used with the preposition “in”.

What the book of Genesis and the letter to the Romans are saying is that we are put right with God when we place our confidence in what he says. For Abraham, it was God’s promise that he would become the father of a great nation, although Abraham, at the time, had no children and his wife was sterile. Do you know what it is for us?

In February of 1976, I met Therese. We were both working in a mental health center serving a culturally mixed, low-income population in Chicago. After some skirmishes and a few episodes of friendly rivalry, we discovered each other and started a relationship that would lead to 29 years of loving, learning and building as husband and wife.

Never did we doubt that we were meant for each other. Ours was really a match made in heaven. So was its undoing. Therese died during heart surgery in September of 2008, after having announced for over a year that she would not survive the surgery, no matter what assurances her doctors gave us.

She tried to prepare me for it, but there is no preparation for such an event. Even for a Christian, death is intolerable. I had to surrender to the same conclusion reached by the authors of the book of Genesis: it was not meant to be this way.

Something happened between God and mankind, something truly awful. I will leave it to the theologians to decide whether there was a time when we were not mortal. The fact is, we are mortal and this condition is intolerable. It could not have been initially intended.

I spent the last six months pealing off the onion of my faith to try to reach a solid core on which I can rely. Surprisingly, I found one. This is an onion with a core. And it is shared. That is why I started this blog. I want to share that core with you and I hope that others out there will want to share theirs with all of us, a little at a time.