The way we saw things, it didn’t matter that God had created the heavens and the earth—he did not want us excited about living here. A good fundamentalist worth his weight in guilt was quick to remind any skeptic that the world was going to hell in a handbasket.

The more spiritual successes that Edwards experienced, the more he seemed to intentionally infuse his sermons with language deemed to move a person’s emotional center—their souls—to spiritually and physically respond.

Edwards’s God was glorious, full of beauty, and seemingly uninterested in making people feel insecure. Edwards was a mystic, a man who didn’t simply write or preach about God, he experienced him.