You said that it was not flippancy. Your whole point of view is wrong.
Do not ask me how I "know"--some conclusions do not need to be
analyzed. I wonder if you realize, for instance, what you said about
faith? I haven't the charity to call it even childish. Have you ever
got below the surface of anything at all? Do you want to know what it
is that has brought you to the verge of suicide? It is not your horror
of illness, nor your oddly concluded determination to marry a man whom
you do not love. Suicide is an ugly word--I notice that you avoid
it--and love is a big word; I am using them understandingly and
soberly. You came to the edge of this thing for the reason that there
is not an element of bigness in your life, and there never has been.
You lack the balance of large ideas. This man of whom you tell me--of
course you do not love him--you have not yet the capacity for
understanding the meaning of the word. You like to ride and you like
to dance and you are fond of the things that please, but you do not
love anybody or even any thing. You are living, yes, but you are
asleep. And it is because you are ignorant.

If your letter had been designedly flippant, it would merely have
annoyed. It is the unconscious flippancy in it that is so
discouraging. You do not know what you believe because you believe
nothing. Your most coherent conception of God is likely a hazy vision
of a majestic figure seated on a cloud--a long-bearded patriarch,
wearing a golden crown--the composite of famous pictures that you
have seen. You have been taught to believe in a personal God,
and you have never taken the trouble to get beyond the notion that
personality--God's or anybody's--is mainly a matter of the possession
of such things as hands and feet. What can be the meaning to one like
you of the truth that we are made in the image of God? The Kingdom of
Heaven--that whole whirling activity of the commonwealth of God--the