The Confession of Arian Foster

The Pro Bowl running back doesnt believe in God. Now, for the first time publicly, he's ready to share why.

- Tim Keown

Life’s biggest questions are leading me through a narrow street in a stately Houston neighborhood, where haunting piles of home furnishings - cabinets, carpet, curtains - lie on the north side of the street in mud-streaked abandon. Meanwhile, the south side, unharmed by the torrential rain, looks as if it took up arms and ravaged the other. The difference is so stark, so precise, that some might be tempted to invoke divine intervention.

But if a just God intervened to spare the folks on the south side, why would he beget fires-of-hell vengeance upon those who happened to purchase a home on the other side of the street, where the floodwaters flowed over the curb, across the lawns and through living rooms and kitchens? 

And is it blasphemy to even ask?

In a room toward the back of a home on the dry side of the street, Arian Foster ponders such questions. Given the reason I’m here, he laughs at the notion of celestial involvement in the water’s path. Where some might see the hand of God, Foster sees physics and engineering, the slope of the road and the elevation of the homes in relation to a swollen runoff canal that bisects an arterial a few hundred yards away. 

Science and faith. They’ve brought us to this place, where Foster is ready to tell the story he’s been leading toward for as long as he can remember.