By choosing to view his childhood Rabbi from the objectivity of adulthood, this writer is reconciling innocence and experience. There is certainly a difference between the easily-won faith of a child and the pain-staking faith of an adult, so part of the book involves conversations between them about what it was really like for Lewis to be a positive influence and role model, knowing the full weight of life's difficult, tragedy, and challenge.
Lewis's experience in ministry is not just growing a congregation and performing rites of passage. His ministry involves cooperating with other religious leaders in the community from different faiths, and collaborating on improving the community, starting with the needy among them, like the homeless and the poor. As a child, perhaps young Mitch knew something about that, but as an adult, the complexity of those kinds of ministry are more apparent.
Against the backdrop of stories and sermons, both men share a dilemma. They are asked by the format of religion to practice faith, and they spend much of these conversations comparing and contrasting notes on faith. There is something easy about faith, and there is something more tedious and difficult. They agree that in light of the cosmic nature of human experience, and in light of the unimaginable unlikeliness of this reality, faith is warranted, but when applying that cosmic faith to particular moments in the drama of life, they find that faith pushes them toward honesty, doubt, and self-improvement.
